eamt of any such thing; but now the great professors may
stimulate them to inquire (on the new principles) into the foundation of
that property, and of all property. If you treat men as robbers, why,
robbers, sooner or later, they will become.

A third point of Jacobin attack is on _old traditionary constitutions_.
You are apprehensive for yours, which leans from its perpendicular, and
does not stand firm on its theory. I like Parliamentary reforms as
little as any man who has boroughs to sell for money, or for peerages in
Ireland. But it passes my comprehension, in what manner it is that men
can be reconciled to the _practical_ merits of a constitution, the
theory of which is in litigation, by being _practically_ excluded from
any of its advantages. Let us put ourselves in the place of these
people, and try an experiment of the effects of such a procedure on our
own minds. Unquestionably, we should be perfectly satisfied, when we
were told that Houses of Parliament, instead of being places of refuge
for popular liberty, were citadels for keeping us in order as a
conquered people. These things play the Jacobin game to a nicety.

Indeed, my dear Sir, there is not a single particular in the
Francis-Street declamations, which has not, to your and to my certain
knowledge, been taught by the jealous ascendants, sometimes by doctrine,
sometimes by example, always by provocation. Remember the whole of 1781
and 1782, in Parliament and out of Parliament; at this very day, and in
the worst acts and designs, observe the tenor of the objections with
which the College-Green orators of the ascendency reproach the
Catholics. You have observed, no doubt, how much they rely on the
affair of Jackson. Is it not pleasant to hear Catholics reproached for a
supposed connection--with whom?--with Protestant clergymen! with
Protestant gentlemen! with Mr. Jackson! with Mr. Rowan, &c, &c.! But
_egomet mi ignosco_. Conspiracies and treasons are privileged pleasures,
not to be profaned by the impure and unhallowed touch of Papists.
Indeed, all this will do, perhaps, well enough, with detachments of
dismounted cavalry and fencibles from England. But let us not say to
Catholics, by way of _argument_, that they are to be kept in a degraded
state, because some of them are no better than many of us Protestants.
The thing I most disliked in some of their speeches (those, I mean, of
the Catholics) was what is called the spirit of liberality, so much and