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 publick 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 publick 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

P 3

prehended 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 publick 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 re

ciprocal

ciprocal 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 inay 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 protection.

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A LETTER

TO THE

RIGHT HON. EDMUND PERRY*.

My dear Sir,

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

I in course your

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 Catholick Subjects in Ireland. The Bill contained a Clause for exempting the Protestant Dissenters of Ireland from the Sacramental Test, which created a strong objection 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 Protestánt Dissenters of Ireland,

justify,

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 particu larly 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 regard 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.

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