any, milder, more liberal, and more beneficial to Ireland than union is, that form of dependance I would prefer and offer for the government of our colony. For it is only when the colony and the natives are united and loft in each other, that the Anglo-Irish will cease to be dependent. It is then that they will fuse and blend together with the empire at large, and become as independent as Scotland is, or Yorkshire or Cornwall.

It is with confiderable pain and disgust that I dwell upon those obstacles to the accomplishment of this generous plan, which appear to me as the most powerful and effective in the minds of our own colony, and of the Roman catholics of Ireland. For as to the motives of the United Irifhmen, it were abfurd in their oppofition to feek for any, but their love of anarchy and confufion, their project of pillage and revolution, and their devotedness to any cause and any power that

can protract the miferies and convulfions

of their country. To fearch for political objects in the bofoms of confpirators who have none but to prolong their crimes, and procrastinate their punishment; who feek in revolt revolt only, and in evil evil, is to put men's reafon to a harder task than is neceffary or practicable with fuccefs.

Certainly it would not be poffible for any great part of the British fettlers in Ireland to prefer their present state of anxiety and fuffering to the plan of union and incorporation that is held out to them, unless there lingered in their mind fome hope or longing after another iffue of their prefent difficulties and evils. It is the Jacobin of nature only, that delights in the continuation of the present wretchedness; but I am afraid there is a Jacobinif of policy, which induces fome men to bear with or prolong evils fufceptible of an earlier termination, in the hope of more advan

advantage to themselves, or greater triumph in the iffue. I confefs I fear that there are amongst our fettlers in Ireland fome unrelenting minds who expect and prefer another conclufion of the conteft, and very different from ours; the horrible principle which has been disclosed even in England, induces me very strongly to apprehend, that there is no obftacle in a part of the colony more hoftile and formidable to the projected UNION, than the hope of being enabled by the arms and treafure of the mother-country to obtain fuch decided and definitivé fuccefs in the civil war, as to enable their " Independent ParHament" to attaint and confifcate the remaining part of the property of Ireland not actually in the occupation of that colony.

I know this ungenerous and fanguinary fentiment is partial and limited indeed; and I trust the executive and paramount authority indefeasible in England, tho' no longer legally

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legally exifting in its legislature, will never fanction this atrocious and premeditated fcheme of infatiable avarice, and unneceffary revenge. For it is abfolutely impoffible to fuggeft upon what ground their private avarice can be recommended as a national and public feheme, or by what motives our colony will attempt to induce us to purchase for them through feas of guilt and blood, this cruel advantage, of treading out the native Irish, and becoming, in a very new and different fenfe," independent" of ourselves. I confefs I do not think they have fo ufed the nominal and fictitious independence they enjoyed, as that by any found and rational policy we could be authorized to concede a more real and effective feparation.

If the only obftacle to union in the bosom of our colony is this criminal and flagitious hope of deriving from our victories an unjust and miserable fuccefs of slavery and plunder,

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plunder, I am fearful that it is impoffible to affign, after every allowance for paffion and for prejudice, a better or a more pardonable plea for the refufal or the filence of the catholic. Revenge, and the hope of prey, are his undisguised motives; and he is only fo far less abfurd or less guilty than the colonift I have defcribed, as he believes himself to have a right, according to the doctrines of impreferiptibility, to poffefs the lands, which no time, no length of poffeffion can alienate, no acquiefcence transfer; and as he relies for his hope of fuccefs upon a government, which as it were from the very center and focus of robbery, adopts and affifts every fyftem, and every fpecies of plunder, every attack upon every poffeffion, every innovation of right and principle, and law and property.

I think neither of thefe hopes will be crowned with fuccefs, because the British

govern