a great variety of
temperaments, upon which prudence may give full scope to its exertions.
For you know that the decisions of prudence (contrary to the system of
the insane reasoners) differ from those of judicature; and that almost
all the former are determined on the more or the less, the earlier or
the later, and on a balance of advantage and inconvenience, of good and
evil.

In all considerations which turn upon the question of vesting or
continuing the state solely and exclusively in some one description of
citizens, prudent legislators will consider how far _the general form
and principles of their commonwealth render it fit to be cast into an
oligarchical shape, or to remain always in it_. We know that the
government of Ireland (the same as the British) is not in its
constitution _wholly_ aristocratical; and as it is not such in its form,
so neither is it in its spirit. If it had been inveterately
aristocratical, exclusions might be more patiently submitted to. The lot
of one plebeian would be the lot of all; and an habitual reverence and
admiration of certain families might make the people content to see
government wholly in hands to whom it seemed naturally to belong. But
our Constitution has _a plebeian member_, which forms an essential
integrant part of it. A plebeian oligarchy is a monster; and no people,
not absolutely domestic or predial slaves, will long endure it. 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_. Admiration, that first source of obedience, can be
only the claim or the imposture of the few. I hold it to be absolutely
impossible for two millions of plebeians, composing certainly a very
clear and decided majority in that class, to become so far in love with
six or seven hundred thousand of their fellow-citizens (to all outward
appearance plebeians like themselves, and many of them tradesmen,
servants, and otherwise inferior to some of them) as to see with
satisfaction, or even with patience, an exclusive power vested in them,
by which _constitutionally_ they become the absolute masters, and, by
the _manners_ derived from their circumstances, must be capable of
exercising upon them, daily and hourly, an insulting and vexatious
superiority. Neither are the majority of the Irish indemnified (as in
some aristocracies) for this state of humiliating vassalage (often
inverting t