settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another; wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless, hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting. But we are in general, sir, so little acquainted with Indian details; the instruments of oppression under which the people suffer are so hard to be understood; and even the very names of the sufferers are so uncouth and strange to our ears, that it is very difficult for our sympathy to fix upon these objects. . . . All these circumstances are not, I confess, very favourable to the idea of our attempting to govern India at all. But there we are there we are placed by the Sovereign Disposer; and we must do the best we can in our situation. The situaon of man is the preceptor of his duty. All these things show the difficulty of the work we have on hand: but they show its necessity too. Our Indian government is in its best state a grievance. It is neces sary that the correctives should be uncommonly vigorous; and the work of men sanguine, warm, and even impassioned in the cause. But it is an arduous thing to plead against abuses of a power which originates from your own country, and affects those whom we are used to consider as strangers.-Speech on Mr. Fox's E. Ind. Bill. ENGLAND AND IRELAND. My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the wellbeing, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two kingdoms. For that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what I should call imperial, politics ought to have its residence here; and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to Great Britain in all matters of peace or war; in all those points to be guided by her: and, in a word, with her to live and to die. At bottom Ireland has no other choice, I mean no other rational choice. I think, indeed, that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone country in the world; the most wretched, the most distracted, and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable globe. Little do many people in Ireland consider how much of its prosperity has been owing to, and still depends upon, its intimate connection with this kingdom.Letter on Affairs of Ireland. ON THE RIVAL CLAIMS OF CATHOLICS God has appointed your station and mine. Let every man be as pious as he pleases; and in the way that he pleases; but it is agreeable neither to piety nor to policy to give exclusively all manner of civil privileges and advantages to a negative religion, such is the Protestant without a certain creed; and at the same time to deny those privileges to men, whom we know to agree to an iota in every one positive doctrine, which all of us who profess the religion authoritatively taught in England hold ourselves, according to our faculties, bound to believe. The Catholics of Ireland (as I have said) have the whole of our positive religion; our difference is only a negation of certain tenets of theirs. If we strip ourselves of that part of Catholicism, we abjure Christianity.—Letter on Affairs of Ireland. The Protestants of Ireland are not alone sufficiently the people to form a democracy; and they are too numerous to answer the ends and purposes of an aristocracy. Ad miration, that first source of obedience, can be only the claim or the imposture of a few. Letter to Sir H. Langrishe. Therefore my humble and decided opinion is, that all the three religions, prevalent more or less in various parts of these islands, ought . all, in subordination to the legal establishments, as they stand in the several countries, to be all countenanced, protected, and cherished; and that in Ireland particularly the Roman Catholic religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration; and should be, in its place, provided with all the means of making it a blessing to the people who profess it; that it ought to be cherished as a good (though not as the most preferable good, if a choice was now to be made), and not tolerated as an inevitable evil.—Letter to W. Smith. POSITION OF THE CATHOLIC CLERGY IN IRELAND. As to the Irish Catholic clergy, their |