board, and ballast with your people." And fo muft every man fay who wishes well to his country: now, you cannot ballaft with your people till you have destroyed the abuses, till you have defstroyed the monopoly, that forward and frightful abuse which bears on its front the flaming cause of all our civil distractions! yet destroy it and the danger feems to increase. What! ballaft with the people? give them the power of the state? and let the deftruction of the domineering principle lead to proteftant annihilation?

Behold the horrid dilemma, the legitimate offfpring of a crooked policy!-theoretical diftinction; partial afcendancy; general fubjugation; external influence; infecurity; rebellion! away with the horrors of a profcriptive establishment! as the laws are equal to all, fo fhould the right to make those laws be equal to the whole* ;-To give the people their natural and rightful weight, yet ftill to maintain the proteftant fuperiority, you muft embrace a wide and liberal policy-you muft facrifice your phantom of independence on the altar of reason, and fecure in return (for it is now within your grafp) the body of fubftantial freedom. You must look at the question of union in all its bearings, and open your mind to the conviction of your true fituation-high founding phrafes and magnificent epithets may flatter a

The Author does not here inculcate the wild doctrine of univerfal fuffrage, but that the right of reprefentation should be open to all fects.

portion

portion of the people, but they do not conftitute liberty; the partial rights of that portion prove the dependence of the people, and the neceffary influence of Britain proves the dependence of that portion. The country that depends upon another at one time for money to support her government, at another time for fleets and armies to protect her ftate, and at all times for the effential influence of commercial regulation, is not a free country; but if we add to this, that the country fo defcribed is divided in itfelf-that the government is diftinct from the people, and the people from the government-that there is no binding principle between the governors and governed, but on the contrary, that the principle of the government is, and muft be, to taboo the people-when these facts are notorious, and felt by the land, who but muft exclaim, what a horrible system of policy, and what a fhocking picture of conftitutional freedom! Your ftate abfolutely refting and depending for its existence on a foreign power, and your people bound by laws to which they do not confent, and therefore abfolutely in the power of your ftate!

"Things cannot remain as they are"-there is a weight in the land which oppreffes the people, and which they will, from the feelings of nature, perpetually endeavour to throw off: with this convulfive principle in your body politic, how can that body, or its members, hope for tranqui lity or fecurity?—It is an eternal bar to both, and can you reft upon force?-No-force may prevail for

for a feafon, but where the tenure is held by compulfion, the legal right is abandoned, and poffeffion will be regained by fuperior power.

"C

Things cannot remain as they are"-You muft give "a conftitution to the people, and a people to the conftitution"-The hard and forbidding front of an excluding policy is the frightful parent of difcontent, faction, rebellion; and its perpetuity is the perpetuity of thofe horrors which have (as Mr. Fofter fays) given Ireland a name among the nations!Embrace a wide and liberal policy-we have furvived the deluge; we have refted upon the Ararat of hope; we have wandered in the wilderness ;-the political Pisgah is before us, and we have only to afcend and gain the promised land! But if we are a perverfe and crooked generation, we fhall be fcattered into corners, and our folly fhall become a jeft among the nations of the earth!-Embrace a wide and liberal policy-You have a conftitution without power, and a people without liberty; facrifice the fhadow for the poffeffion of the fubftance; Incorporate with Britain, and let Union be the bond of National Good and Imperial Integrity.

FINIS

DUBLIN:

PRINTED FOR J. Moore, no. 45, COLLEGE-GREEN.