so diligently taught by the ascendants, by which they are made to
abandon their own particular interests, and to merge them in the general
discontents of the country. It gave me no pleasure to hear of the
dissolution of the committee. There were in it a majority, to my
knowledge, of very sober, well-intentioned men; and there were none in
it but such who, if not continually goaded and irritated, might be made
useful to the tranquillity of the country. It is right always to have a
few of every description, through whom you may quietly operate on the
many, both for the interests of the description, and for the general
interest.

Excuse me, my dear friend, if I have a little tried your patience. You
have brought this trouble on yourself, by your thinking of a man forgot,
and who has no objection to be forgot, by the world. These things we
discussed together four or five and thirty years ago. We were then, and
at bottom ever since, of the same opinion on the justice and policy of
the whole and of every part of the penal system. You and I, and
everybody, must now and then ply and bend to the occasion, and take what
can be got. But very sure I am, that, whilst there remains in the law
any principle whatever which can furnish to certain politicians an
excuse for raising an opinion of their own importance, as necessary to
keep their fellow-subjects in order, the obnoxious people will be
fretted, harassed, insulted, provoked to discontent and disorder, and
practically excluded from the partial advantages from which the letter
of the law does not exclude them.

Adieu! my dear Sir,

And believe me very truly yours,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, May 26, 1795.

A

LETTER

TO

RICHARD BURKE, ESQ.,

ON

PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND.

1793.

My dear son,--We are all again assembled in town, to finish the last,
but the most laborious, of the tasks which have been imposed upon me
during my Parliamentary service. We are as well as at our time of life
we can expect to be. We have, indeed, some moments of anxiety about you.
You are engaged in an undertaking similar in its principle to mine. You
are engaged in the relief of an oppressed people. In that service you
must necessarily excite the same sort of passions in those who have
exercised, and who wish to continue that oppression, that I have had to
struggle with in this long labor. As your father has done, you must make
enemies of many of the rich, of the p