As to other points of discussion, when these grand fundamentals of your grants and charters are once settled and ratifi ed by clear parliamentary authority, as the ground for peace and forgiveness on our side, and for a manly and liberal obedience on yours, treaty and a spirit of reconciliation will easily and securely adjust whatever may remain. Of this we give you our word, that so far as we are at present concerned, and if by any event we should become more concerned hereafter, you may rest assured, upon the pledges of honour not forfeited, faith not violated, and uniformity of character and profession not yet broken, we at least, on these grounds, will never fail you.

Respecting your wisdom, and valuing your safety, we do not call upon you to trust your existence to your enemies. We do not advise you to an unconditional submission. With satisfaction we assure you, that almost all, in both houses (however unhappily they have been deluded, so as not to give any immediate effect to their opinion) disclaim that idea. You can have no friends, in whom you cannot rationally confide. But parliament is your friend from the moment in which, removing its confidence from those who have constantly deceived its good intentions, it adopts the sentiments of those who have made sacrifices (inferior indeed to yours) but have, however, sacrificed enough to demonstrate the sincerity of their regard and value for your liberty and prosperity.

Arguments may be used to weaken your confidence in that public security; because, from some unpleasant appearances, there is a suspicion that parliament itself is somewhat fallen from its independent spirit. How far this supposition may be founded in fact, we are unwilling to determine. But we are well assured, from experience, that even if all were true that is contended for, and in the extent too in which it is argued, yet as long as the solid and well disposed forms of this constitution remain, there ever is within parliament itself a power of renovating its principles, and effecting a self-reformation, which no other plan of government has ever contained. This constitution has therefore admitted innumerable improvements, either for the correction of the original scheme, or for removing corruptions, or for bringing its principles better to suit those changes which have successively happened in the circumstances of the nation, or in the manners of the people.

We feel that the growth of the colonies is such a change of circumstances; and that our present dispute is an exigency as pressing as any which ever demanded a revision of our government. Public troubles have often called upon this country to look into its constitution. It has ever been bettered by such [ 16 ]

VOL. V.

a revision. If our happy and luxuriant increase of dominion, and our diffused population, has outgrown the limits of a constitution made for a contracted object, we ought to bless God, who has furnished us with this noble occasion for displaying our skill and beneficence in enlarging the scale of rational happiness, and of making the politic generosity of this kingdom as extensive as its fortune. If we set about this great work on both sides, with the same conciliatory turn of mind, we may now, as in former times, owe even to our mutual mistakes, contentions, and animosities, the lasting concord, freedom, happiness, and glory of this empire.

Gentlemen, the distance between us, with other obstructions, has caused much misrepresentation of our mutual sentiments. We, therefore, to obviate them as well as we are able, take this method of assuring you of our thorough detestation of the whole war; and particularly the mercenary and savage war carried on, or attempted, against you; our thorough abhorrence of all addresses adverse to you, whether public or private; our assurances of an invariable affection towards you; our constant regard to your privileges and liberties; and our opinion of the solid security you ought to enjoy for them, under the paternal care and nurture of a protecting parliament.

Though many of us have earnestly wished that the authority of that august and venerable body, so necessary, in many respects, to the union of the whole, should be rather limited by its own equity and discretion, than by any bounds described by positive laws and public compacts; and though we felt the extreme difficulty, by any theoretical limitations, of qualifying that authority, so as to preserve one part and deny another; and though you (as we gratefully acknowledge) had acquiesced most cheerfully under that prudent reserve of the constitution, at that happy moment, when neither you nor we apprehended a further return of the exercise of invidious powers, we are now as fully persuaded, as you can be, by the malice, inconstancy, and perverse inquietude of many men, and by the incessant endeavours of an arbitrary faction, now too powerful, that our common necessities do require a full explanation and ratified security for your liberties and our quiet.

Although his majesty's condescension in committing the direction of his affairs into the hands of the known friends of his family, and of the liberties of all his people, would, we admit, be a great means of giving repose to your minds, as it must give infinite facility to reconciliation, yet we assure you, that we think, with such a security as we recommend, adopted from necessity and not choice, even by the unhappy authors

and instruments of the public misfortunes, that the terms of reconciliation, if once accepted by parliament, would not be broken. We also pledge ourselves to you, that we should give even to those unhappy persons an hearty support in effectuating the peace of the empire; and every opposition in an attempt to cast it again into disorder.

When that happy hour shall arrive, let us in all affection recommend to you the wisdom of continuing, as in former times, or even in a more ample measure, the support of your government, and even to give to your administration some degree of reciprocal interest in your freedom. We earnestly wish you not to furnish your enemies here, or elsewhere, with any sort of pretexts for reviving quarrels, by too reserved and severe, or penurious an exercise of those sacred rights, which no pretended abuse in the exercise ought to impair, nor, by overstraining the principles of freedom, to make them less compatible with those haughty sentiments in others, which the very same principles may be apt to breed in minds not tempered with the utmost equity and justice.

The well wishers of the liberty and union of this empire salute you, and recommend you most heartily to the divine pro

tection.

A LETTER

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND PERRY.*

MY DEAR SIR,

I RECEIVED, in due course, your two very interesting and judicious letters, which gave me many new lights, and excited me to fresh activity in the important subject they related to. However, from that time, I have not been perfectly free from doubt and uneasiness. I used a liberty with those letters, which perhaps nothing can thoroughly justify, and which certainly nothing but the delicacy of the crisis, the clearness of my intentions, and your great good nature can at all excuse. I might conceal this from you; but I think it better to lay the whole matter before you, and submit myself to your mercy; assuring you, at the same time, that if you are so kind as to continue your confidence on this, or to renew it upon any other occasion, I shall never be tempted again to make so bold and unauthorized an use of the trust you place in me. I will state to you the history of the business since my last; and then you will see how far I am excusable by the circumstances.

On the 3d of July, I received a letter from the attorney general, dated the day before, in which, in a very open and obliging manner, he desires my thoughts of the Irish toleration bill, and particularly of the dissenters' clause. I gave them to him, by the return of the post, at large; but as the time pressed, I kept no copy of the letter; the general drift was strongly to recommend the whole; and principally to obviate the objections to the part that related to the dissenters, with re

*This letter is addressed to Mr. Perry (afterwards Lord Perry) then speaker of the house of commons of Ireland. It appears there had been much correspondence between that gentleman and Mr. Burke, on the subject of heads of a bill (which had passed the Irish house of commons in the summer of the year 1778, and had been transmitted by the Irish privy council of England) for the relief of His Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects in Ireland. The bill contained a clause for exempting the protestant dissenters of Ireland from the sacramental test, which created a strong objec tion to the whole measure, on the part of the English government. Mr. Burke employed his most strenuous efforts to remove the prejudice which the king's ministers entertained against the clause, but the bill was ultimately returned without it, and in that shape passed the Irish parliament. (17th and 18th Geo. III. cap. 49.) In the subsequent session, however, a separate act was passed for the relief of the protestant dissenters of Ireland.

gard both to the general propriety, and to the temporary policy at this juncture. I took likewise a good deal of pains to state the difference which had always subsisted with regard to the treatment of the protestant dissenters in Ireland and in England; and what I conceived the reason of that difference to be. About the same time I was called to town for a day; and I took an opportunity, in Westminster hall, of urging the same points, with all the force I was master of, to the solicitor general. I attempted to see the chancellor, for the same purpose; but was not fortunate enough to meet him at home. Soon after my return hither, on Tuesday, I received a very polite, and I may say friendly letter from him, wishing me (on supposition that I had continued in town) to dine with him at that day, in order to talk over the business of the toleration act then before him. Unluckily I had company with me, and was not able to leave them until Thursday; when I went to town, and called at his house, but missed him. However, in answer to his letter, I had before, and instantly on the receipt of it, written to him at large; and urged such topics, both with regard to the catholics and dissenters, as I imagined were the most likely to be prevalent with him. This letter I followed to town on Thursday. On my arrival I was much alarmed with a report, that the ministry had thoughts of rejecting the whole bill. Mr. M'Namara seemed apprehensive that it was a determined measure; and there seemed to be but too much reason for his fears. Not having met the chancellor at home, either on my first visit or my second, after receiving his letter, and fearful that the cabinet should come to some unpleasant resolution, I went to the treasury on Friday. There I saw Sir G. Cooper. I possessed him of the danger of a partial, and the inevitable mischief of the total rejection of the bill. I reminded him of the understood compact between parties, upon which the whole scheme of the toleration, originating in the English bill, was formed; of the fair part, which the whigs had acted in a business, which, though first started by them, was supposed equally acceptable to all sides; and the risk of which they took upon themselves when others declined it. To this I added such matter as I thought most fit to engage government, as government; not to sport with a singular opportunity, which of fered, for the union of every description of men amongst us in support of the common interest of the whole; and I ended by desiring to see Lord North upon the subject. Sir Grey Cooper showed a very right sense of the matter; and, in a few minutes after our conversation, I went down from the treasury chambers to Lord North's house. I had a great deal of discourse