roud, and of the powerful. I and
you began in the same way. I must confess, that, if our place was of our
choice, I could wish it had been your lot to begin the career of your
life with an endeavor to render some more moderate and less invidious
service to the public But being engaged in a great and critical work, I
have not the least hesitation about your having hitherto done your duty
as becomes you. If I had not an assurance not to be shaken from the
character of your mind, I should be satisfied on that point by the cry
that is raised against you. If you had behaved, as they call it,
discreetly, that is, faintly and treacherously, in the execution of your
trust, you would have had, for a while, the good word of all sorts of
men, even of many of those whose cause you had betrayed,--and whilst
your favor lasted, you might have coined that false reputation into a
true and solid interest to yourself. This you are well apprised of; and
you do not refuse to travel that beaten road from an ignorance, but from
a contempt, of the objects it leads to.

When you choose an arduous and slippery path, God forbid that any weak
feelings of my declining age, which calls for soothings and supports,
and which can have none but from you, should make me wish that you
should abandon what you are about, or should trifle with it! In this
house we submit, though with troubled minds, to that order which has
connected all great duties with toils and with perils, which has
conducted the road to glory through the regions of obloquy and reproach,
and which will never suffer the disparaging alliance of spurious, false,
and fugitive praise with genuine and permanent reputation. We know that
the Power which has settled that order, and subjected you to it by
placing you in the situation you are in, is able to bring you out of it
with credit and with safety. His will be done! All must come right. You
may open the way with pain and under reproach: others will pursue it
with ease and with applause.

I am sorry to find that pride and passion, and that sort of zeal for
religion which never shows any wonderful heat but when it afflicts and
mortifies our neighbor, will not let the ruling description perceive
that the privilege for which your clients contend is very nearly as much
for the benefit of those who refuse it as those who ask it. I am not to
examine into the charges that are daily made on the administration of
Ireland. I am not qualified to say ho