general of them, they did actually confirm the second and more limited, that which related to the security of the inhabitants of those five counties which were in arms when the treaty was made.

CHAPTER IV.

In the foregoing book we considered these laws in a very simple point of view, and in a very general one; merely as a system of hardship imposed on the body of the community; and from thence, and from some other arguments, inferred the general injustice of such a procedure. In this we shall be obliged to be more minute; and the matter will become more complex as we undertake to demonstrate the mischievous and impolitic consequences, which the particular mode of this oppressive system, and the instruments which it employs, operating, as we said, on this extensive object, produce on the national prosperity, quiet, and security.

The stock of materials by which any nation is rendered flourishing and prosperous, are its industry, its knowledge or skill, its morals, its execution of justice, its courage, and the national union in directing these powers to one point, and making them all centre in the public benefit. Other than these I do not know, and scarcely can conceive any means by which a community may flourish,

If we show that these penal laws of Ireland destroy not one only, but every one of these materials of public prosperity, it will not be difficult to perceive that Great Britain, whilst they subsist, never can draw from that country all the advantages to which the bounty of nature has entitled it.

To begin with the first great instrument of national happiness and strength, its industry; I must observe, that although these penal laws do indeed inflict many hardships on those who are obnoxious to them, yet their chief, their most extensive, and most certain operation is upon property. Those civil constitutions which promote industry, are such as facilitate the acquisition, secure the holding, enable the fixing, and suffer the alienation of property. Every law which obstructs it in any part of this distribution is, in proportion to the force and extent of the obstruction, a discourage ment to industry. For a law against property is a law against industry, the latter having always the former, and nothing else, for its object. Now, as to the acquisition of landed property, which is the foundation and VOL. II.-27

support of all the other kinds, the laws have disabled three-fourths of the inhabitants of Ireland from acquiring any estate of inheritance for life or years, or any charge whatsoever, on which two-thirds of the improved yearly value is not reserved for thirty years.

This confinement of landed property to one set of hands, and preventing its free circulation through the community, is a most leading article of ill policy; because it is one of the most capital discouragements to all that industry which may be employed on the lasting improvement of the soil, or is any way conversant about land. A tenure of thirty years is evidently no tenure upon which to build, to plant, to raise enclosures, to change the nature of the ground, to make any new experiment which might improve agriculture, or to do any thing more than what may answer the immediate and momentary calls of rent to the landlord, and leave subsistence to the tenant and his family. The desire of acquisition is always a passion of long views: confine a man to momentary possession, and you at once cut off that laudable avarice which every wise state has cherished as one of the first principles of its greatness. Allow a man but a temporary possession; lay it down as a maxim, that he never can have any other, and you immediately and infallibly turn him to temporary enjoyments; and these enjoyments are never the pleasures of labour and free industry, whose quality it is to famish the present hours, and squander all upon prospect and futurity; they are, on the contrary, those of a thoughtless, loitering, and dissipated life. The people must be inevitably disposed to such pernicious habits, merely from the short duration of their tenure which the law has allowed. But it is not enough that industry is checked by the confinement of its views; it is further discouraged by the limitation of its own direct object, profit. This is a regulation extremely worthy of our attention, as it is not a consequential, but a direct discouragement to melioration; as directly as if the law had said in express terms, "Thou shalt not improve."

But we have an additional argument to demonstrate the ill policy of denying the occupiers of land any solid property in it. Ireland is a country wholly unplanted. The farms have neither dwelling-houses, nor good offices; nor are the lands almost any where provided with fences and communications; in a word, in a very unimproved state. The landowner there never takes upon him, as it is usual in this kingdom, to supply all these conveniences, and to set down his tenant in what may be called a

completely furnished farm. not do it, it is never done. shows how miserably and

If the tenant will This circumstance peculiarly impolitic it has been in Ireland to tie down the body of the tenantry to short and unprofitable tenures. A finished and furnished house will be taken for any term, however short: if the repair lies on the owner, the shorter the better. But no one will take one not only unfurnished, but half built, but upon a term which, on calculation, will answer with profit all his charges. It is on this principle that the Romans established their Emphyteusis or Fee-farm. For though they extended the ordinary term of their location only to nine years, yet they encouraged a more permanent letting to farm, with the condition of improvement as well as of annual payment on the part of the tenant, where the land had lain rough and neglected; and therefore invented this species of engrafted holding in the later times, when property came to be worse distributed by falling into a few hands. This denial of landed property to the gross of the people has this further evil effect in preventing the improvement of land; that it prevents any of the property acquired in trade to be re-gorged as it were upon the land. They must have observed very little, who have not remarked the bold and liberal spirit of improvement, which persons bred to trade have often exerted on their land purchases; that they usually come to them with a more abundant command of ready money than most landed men possess; and that they have in general a much better idea, by long habits of calculative dealings, of the propriety of expending in order to acquire. Besides, such men often bring their spirit of commerce into their estates with them, and make manufactures take a root where the mere landed gentry had perhaps no capital, perhaps no inclination, and most frequently not sufficient knowledge to effect any thing of the kind. By these means what beautiful and useful spots have there not been made about trading and manufacturing towns, and how has agriculture had reason to bless that happy alliance with commerce; and how miserable must that nation be, whose frame of polity has disjointed the landing and the trading interests.

influence consequent to such property, their allegiance to the crown of Great Britain was ever insecure; the public peace was ever liable to be broken; and protestants never could be a moment secure either of their properties or of their lives. Indulgence only made them arrogant, and power daring; confidence only excited and enabled them to exert their inherent treachery; and the times, which they generally selected for their most wicked and desperate rebellions, were those in which they enjoyed the greatest ease and the most perfect tranquillity.

Such are the arguments that are used, both publicly and privately, in every discussion upon this point. They are generally full of passion and of errour, and built upon facts which in themselves are most false. It cannot, I confess, be denied, that those miserable performances which go about under the names of Histories of Ireland, do indeed represent those events after this manner; and they would persuade us, contrary to the known order of nature, that indulgence and moderation in governours is the natural incitement in subjects to rebel. But there is an interiour History of Ireland, the genuine voice of its records and monuments, which speaks a very different language from these histories, from Temple and from Clarendon; these restore nature to its just rights, and policy to its proper order. For they even now shew to those who have been at the pains to examine them, and they may shew one day to all the world, that these rebellions were not produced by toleration, but by persecution; that they arose not from just and mild government but from the most unparalleled oppression. These records will be far from giving the least countenance to a doctrine so repugnant to humanity and good sense, as that the security of any establishment, civil or religious, can ever depend upon the misery of those who live under it, or that its danger can arise from their quiet and prosperity. God forbid that the history of this or any country should give such encouragement to the folly or vices of those who govern. it can be shown that the great rebellions of Ireland have arisen from attempts to reduce the natives to the state to which they are now reduced, it will show that an attempt to continue them in that state will rather be disadvantageous to the public peace than any kind of security to it. These things have in some measure began to appear already, and as far as regards the argument drawn from former rebellions it will fall readily to the ground. But, for my part, I think the real danger to

If

formidable to us, than to other protestant countries. To conquer that country for himself, is a wild chimera; to encourage revolt in favour of foreign princes, is an exploded idea in the politics of that court. Perhaps it would be full as dangerous to have the people under the conduct of factious pastors of their own, as under a foreign ecclesiastical court.

every state is to render its subjects justly discontented; nor is there in politics or science any more effectual secret for their security, than to establish in their people a firm opinion that no change can be for their advantage. It is true that bigotry and fanaticism may for a time draw great multitudes of people from a knowledge of their true and substantial interest. But upon this I have to remark three things; first, that such a temper can never become universal, or last for a long time. The principle of religion is seldom lasting; the majority of men are in no persuasion bigots; they are not willing to sacrifice, on every vain imagination that superstition or enthusiasm holds forth, or that even zeal and piety recommend, the certain possession of their temporal happiness. And if such a spirit has been at any time roused in a society, after it has had its paroxysm, it commonly subsides and is quiet, and is even the weaker for the violence of its first exertion; security and ease are its mortal enemies. But, secondly, if any thing can tend to revive and keep it up, it is to keep alive the passions of men by ill usage. This is enough to irritate even those who have not a spark of bigotry in their constitution to the most desperate enterprises; it certainly will inflame, darken, and render more dangerous the spirit of bigotry in those who are possessed by it. Lastly, By rooting out any sect, you are never secure against the effects of fanaticism; it may arise on the side of the most favoured opinions; and many are the instances wherein the established religion of a state has grown ferocious, and turned upon its keeper, and has often torn to pieces the civil establishment that had cherished it, and which it was designed to support; France-England-Hol

land.

This argument ad verecundiam has as much force as any such have. But I think it fares

but very

These bills met no opposition either in the Irish parliament or in the English council, except from private agents, who were little attended to; and they passed into laws with the highest and most general applauses, as all such things are in the beginning, not as a system of persecution, but as master-pieces of the most subtle and refined politics. And, to say the truth, these laws at first view have rather an appearance of a plan of vexatious litigation and crooked law-chicanery, than of a direct and sanguinary attack upon the rights of private conscience; because they did not affect life, at least with regard to the laity; and making the catholic opinions rather the subject of civil regulations than of criminal prosecutions, to those who are not lawyers, and read these laws, they only appear to be a species of jargon. For the execution of criminal law has always a certain appearance of violence. Being exercised directly on the persons of the supposed offenders, and commonly executed in the face of the public, such executions are apt to excite sentiments of pity for the sufferers, and indignation against those who are employed in such cruelties; being seen as single acts of cruelty, rather than as ill general principles of government: but the operation of the laws in question being such as common feeling brings home to every man's bosom, they operate in a sort of comparative silence and obscurity; and though their cruelty is exceedingly great, it is never seen in a single exertion, and always escapes commiseration, being scarce known, except to those who view them in a general, which is always a cold and phlegmatic light. The first of these laws being made with so general a satisfaction, as the chief governours found that such things were extremely acceptable to the leading people in that country, they were willing enough to gratify them with the ruin of their fellow

indifferently with those who make use of it; for they would get but little to be proved abettors of tyranny, at the expence of putting me to an inconvenient acknowledgement. For if I were to confess that there are any circumstances in which it would be better to establish

such a religion

* * *

*

With regard to the pope's interest. This foreign chief of their religion cannot be more

citizens; they were not sorry to divert their attention from other inquiries, and to keep them fixed to this, as if this had been the only real object of their national politics; and for many years there was no speech from the throne, which did not, with great appearance of seriousness, recommend the passing of such laws; and scarce a session went over without in effect passing some of them; until they have by degrees grown to be the most considerable head in the Irish statute book. At the same time, giving a temporary and occasional mitigation to the severity of some

of the harshest of those laws, they appeared some sort the protectors of those, whom they were in reality destroying by the establishment of general constitutions against them. At length, however, the policy of this expedient is worn out; the passions of men are cooled; those laws begin to disclose themselves, and to produce effects very different from those which were promised in making them; for crooked counsels are ever unwise; and nothing can be more absurd and dangerous than to tamper with the natural foundations of society, in hopes of keeping it up by certain contrivances.

MY DEAR SIR,

YOUR letter is, to myself, infinitely obliging; with regard to you, I can find no fault with it, except that of a tone of humility and disqualification, which neither your rank, nor the place you are in, nor the profession you belong to, nor your very extraordinary learning and talents will, in propriety, demand, or perhaps admit. These dispositions will be still less proper, if you should feel them in the extent your modesty leads you to express them. You have certainly given by far too strong a proof of self-diffidence, by asking the opinion of a man circumstanced as I am, on the important subject of your letter. You are far more capable of forming just conceptions upon it than I can be. However, since you are pleased to command me to lay before you my thoughts, as materials upon which your better judgment may operate, I shall obey you: and submit them, with great deference, to your melioration or rejection.

But first permit me to put myself in the right. I owe you an answer to your former letter. It did not desire one; but it deserved it. If not for an answer, it called for an acknowledgment. It was a new favour; and indeed I should be worse than insensible, if I did not consider the honours you have heaped upon me, with no sparing hand, with becom

Then a member of the Irish parliament; now one of the barons of the court of exchequer in Ireland.

ing gratitude. But your letter arrived to me at a time, when the closing of my long and last business in life, a business extremely complex, and full of difficulties and vexations of all sorts, occupied me in a manner which those who have not seen the interiour as well as exteriour of it, cannot easily imagine. I confess that in the crisis of that rude conflict, I neglected many things that well deserved my best attention: none that deserved it better, or have caused me more regret in the neglect, than your letter. The instant that business was over, and the house had passed its judgment on the conduct of the managers, I lost no time to execute what for years I had resolved on: it was to quit my public station, and to seek that tranquillity in my very advanced age, to which, after a very tempestuous life, I thought myself entitled. But God has thought fit (and I unfeignedly acknowledge his justice) to dispose of things otherwise. So heavy a calamity has fallen upon me, as to disable me for business, and to disqualify me for repose. The existence I have, I do not know that I can call life. Accordingly I do not meddle with any one measure of government, though, for what reasons I know not, you seem to suppose me deeply in the secret of affairs. I only know, so far as your side of the water is concerned, that your present excellent lord lieutenant (the best man in every relation, that I have ever been acquainted with) has perfectly pure

intentions with regard to Ireland; and of course, that he wishes cordially well to those, who form the great mass of its inhabitants; and who, as they are well or ill managed, must form an important part of its strength or weakness. If, with regard to that great object, he has carried over any ready-made system, I assure you it is perfectly unknown to me: I am very much retired from the world, and live in much ignorance. This, I hope, will form my humble apology, if I should err in the notions I entertain of the question which is soon to become the subject of your deliberations. At the same time accept it as an apology for my neglects.

You need make no apology for your attachment to the religious description you belong to. It proves (as in you it is sincere) your attachment to the great points in which the leading divisions are agreed, when the lesser, in which they differ, are so dear to you. I shall never call any religious opinions, which appear important to serious and pious minds, things of no consideration. Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference, which is, at least, half infidelity. As long as men hold charity and justice to be essential integral parts of religion, there can be little danger from a strong attachment to particular tenets in faith. This I am perfectly sure is your case; but I am not equally sure, that either zeal for the tenets of faith, or the smallest degree of charity or justice, have much influenced the gentlemen who, under pretexts of zeal, have resisted the enfranchisement of their country. My dear son, who was a person of discernment, as well as clear and acute in his expressions, said in a letter of his, which I have seen, "that in order to grace their cause and to draw some respect to their persons, they pretend to be bigots." But here I take it we have not much to do with the theological tenets, on the one side of the question or the other. The point itself is practically decided, That religion is owned by the state. Except in a settled maintenance, it is protected. A great deal of the rubbish, which as a nuisance long obstructed the way, is removed. One impediment remained longer, as a matter to justify the procription of the body of our country, after the rest had been abandoned as untenable ground. But the business of the pope (that mixed person of politics and religion) has long ceased to be a bugbear: for some time past he has ceased to be even a colourable pretext. This was well known, when the catholics of these kingdoms, for our amusement, were obliged on oath to disclaim

him in his political capacity; which implied an allowance for them to recognize him in some sort of ecclesiastical superiority. It was a compromise of the old dispute.

For my part, I confess, I wish that we had been less eager in this point. I don't think indeed that much mischief will happen from it, if things are otherwise properly managed. Too nice an inquisition ought not to be made into opinions that are dying away of themselves. Had we lived an hundred and fifty years ago, I should have been as earnest and anxious as any body for this sort of abjuration: but living at the time in which I live, and obliged to speculate forward instead of backward, I must fairly say, I could well endure the existence of every sort of collateral aid, which opinion might, in the now state of things, afford to authority. I must see much more danger than in my life I have seen, or than others will venture seriously to affirm that they see, in the pope aforesaid, (though a foreign power, and with his long tail of etceteras,) before I should be active in weakening any hold, which government might think it prudent to resort to, in the management of that large part of the king's subjects. I do not choose to direct all my precautions to the part where the danger does not press; and to leave myself open and unguarded, where I am not only really, but visibly attacked.

My whole politics, at present, centre in one point; and to this the merit or demerit of every measure (with me) is referable; that is, what will most promote or depress the cause of jacobinism. What is jacobinism? It is an attempt (hitherto but too successful) to eradicate prejudice out of the minds of men, for the purpose of putting all power and authority into the hands of the persons capable of occasionally enlightening the minds of the people. For this purpose the jacobins have resolved to destroy the whole frame and fabric of the old societies of the world, and to regenerate them after their fashion. To obtain an army for this purpose, they every where engage the poor, by holding out to them as a bribe the spoils of the rich. This I take to be a fair description of the principles and leading maxims of the enlightened of our day, who are commonly called jacobins.

As the grand prejudice, and that which holds all the other prejudices together, the first, last, and middle object of their hostility is religion. With that they are at inexpiable war. They make no distinction of sects. A Christian, as such, is to them an enemy. What then is left to a real Christian, (Christian as