I am so convinced of the weakness of interfering in any business, without the opinion of the people in whose business I interfere, that I do not know how to acquit myself of what I have now done.—I have the honour to be, with high regard and esteem,

My Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient

And humble servant, &c.

EDMUND BURKE.

A LETTER

ΤΟ

SIR H. LANGRISHE, BART. M P.

ON THE SUBJECT OF THE

ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND,

AND

THE PROPRIETY OF ADMITTING THEM TO THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE,
CONSISTENTLY WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION
AS ESTABLISHED AT THE REVOLUTION

MY DEAR SIR,

1792.

YOUR remembrance of me, with sentiments of so much kindness, has given me the most sincere satisfaction. It perfectly agrees with the friendly and hospitable reception which my son and I received from you, some time since, when, after an absence of twenty-two years, I had the happiness of embracing you, among my few surviving friends."

I really imagined that I should not again interest myself in any public business. I had, to the best of my moderate faculties, paid my club to the society, which I was born in some way or other to serve; and I thought I had a right to put on my night-gown and slippers, and wish a cheerful evening to the good company I must leave behind. But if our resolutions of vigour and exertion are so often broken or procrastinated in the execution, I think we may be excused, if we are not very punctual in fulfilling our engagements to indolence and inactivity. I have indeed no power of action; and am almost a cripple, even with regard to thinking: but you descend with force into the stagnant pool; and you cause such a fermentation, as to cure at least one impotent creature of his lameness, though it cannot enable him either to run or to wrestle.

You see by the paper1 I take that I am likely to be long with malice prepense. You have brought under my view a subject, always difficult, at present critical.It has filled my thoughts, which I wish to lay open to you with the clearness and simplicity which your friendship demands from me. I thank you for the communication of your ideas. I should be still more pleased if they had been more your own. What you hint, I believe to be the case; that if you had not deferred to the judgment of others, our opinions would not differ more materially at this day, than they did when we used to confer on the same subject, so many years ago. If I still persevere in my old opinions, it is no small comfort to me, that it is not with regard to doctrines properly yours that I discover my indocility.

The case, upon which your letter of the 10th of December turns, is hardly before me with precision enough, to enable me to form any very certain judgment upon it. It seems to be some plan of further indulgence proposed for the Catholics: of Ireland. You observe, that your "general principles are not changed, but that times and circumstances are altered." I perfectly agree with you, that times and circumstances, considered with reference to the public, ought very much to govern our conduct; though I am far from slighting, when applied with discretion to those circumstances, general principles, and maxims of policy. I cannot help observing, however, that you have said rather less upon the inapplicability of your own old principles to the circumstances that are likely to influence your conduct against these principles, than of the general maxims of state, which I can very readily believe not to have great weight with you personally.

In my present state of imperfect information, you will pardon the errors into which I may easily fall. The principles you lay down are, "that the Roman Catholics should enjoy everything under the state, but should not be the state itself." And you add, "that when you exclude them from being a part of the state, you rather conform to the spirit of the age, than to any abstract doctrine;" but you consider the constitution as already established-that our state is Protestant. "It was declared so at the Revolution. It was so provided in the acts for settling the succession of the

This letter is written on folio sheets.

crown; the king's coronation oath was enjoined, in order to keep it so. The king, as first magistrate of the state, is obliged to take the oath of abjuration,' and to subscribe the declaration; and, by laws subsequent, every other magistrate and member of the state, legislative and executive, are bound under the same obligation.'

As to the plan to which these maxims are applied, I cannot speak, as I told you, positively about it. Because, neither from your letter, nor from any information I have been able to collect, do I find anything settled, either on the part of the Roman Catholics themselves, or on that of any persons who may wish to conduct their affairs in parliament. But if I have leave to conjecture, something is in agitation towards admitting them, under certain qualifications, to have some share in the election of members of parliament. This I understand is the scheme of those who are entitled to come within your description of persons of consideration, property, and character; and firmly attached to the king and constitu tion, as by "law established, with a grateful sense of your former concessions, and a patient reliance on the benignity of parliament, for the further mitigation of the laws that still affect them."-As to the low, thoughtless, wild, and profligate, who have joined themselves with those of other professions, but of the same character; you are not to imagine, that, for a moment, I can suppose them to be met with any thing else than the manly and enlightened energy of a firm government, supported by the united efforts of all virtuous men, if ever their proceedings should become so considerable as to demand its notice. I really think that such associa tions should be crushed in their very commencement.

Setting, therefore, this case out of the question, it becomes an object of very serious consideration, whether, because wicked men of various descriptions are engaged in seditious courses, the rational, sober, and valuable part of one descrip tion should not be indulged in their sober and rational ex pectations? You, who have looked deeply into the spirit of the Popery laws, must be perfectly sensible, that a great part of the present mischief, which we abhor in common, (if it at all exists,) has arisen from them. Their declared object was

A small error of fact as to the abjuration oath; but of no importance in the argument.

to reduce the Catholics of Ireland to a miserable populace, without property, without estimation, without education. The professed object was to deprive the few men who, in spite of those laws, might hold or obtain any property amongst them, of all sort of influence or authority over the rest. They divided the nation into two distinct bodies, without common interest, sympathy, or connexion. One of these bodies was to possess all the franchises, all the property, all the education: the other was to be composed of drawers of water and cutters of turf for them. Are we to be astonished, when, by the efforts of so much violence in conquest, and so much policy in regulation, continued without intermission for nearly an hundred years, we had reduced them to a mob; that whenever they came to act at all, many of them would act exactly like a mob, without temper, measure, or foresight? Surely it might be just now a matter of temperate discussion, whether you ought not to apply a remedy to the real cause of the evil. If the disorder you speak of be real and considerable, you ought to raise an aristocratic interest; that is, an interest of property and education amongst them; and to strengthen, by every prudent means, the authority and influence of men of that description. It will deserve your best thoughts, to examine whether this can be done without giving such persons the means of demonstrating to the rest, that something more is to be got by their temperate conduct, than can be expected from the wild and senseless projects of those who do not belong to their body, who have no interest in their well being, and only wish to make them the dupes of their turbulent ambition.

If the absurd persons you mention find no way of providing for liberty, but by overturning this happy constitu tion, and introducing a frantic democracy, let us take care how we prevent better people from any rational expectations of partaking in the benefit of that constitution as it stands. The maxims you establish cut the matter short. They have no sort of connexion with the good or the ill behaviour of the persons who seek relief, or with the proper or improper means by which they seek it. They form a perpetual bar to all pleas, and to all expectations.

You begin by asserting, that "the Catholics ought to enjoy