the Constitution
itself.

There is another advantage in taking up this business singly and by an
arrangement for the single object. It is that you may proceed by
_degrees_. We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most
powerful law of Nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All
we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change
shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may
be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation. Everything
is provided for as it arrives. This mode will, on the one hand, prevent
the _unfixing old interests at once_: a thing which is apt to breed a
black and sullen discontent in those who are at once dispossessed of all
their influence and consideration. This gradual course, on the other
side, will prevent men long under depression from being intoxicated with
a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious
insolence. But, wishing, as I do, the change to be gradual and cautious,
I would, in my first steps, lean rather to the side of enlargement than
restriction.

It is one excellence of our Constitution, that all our rights of
provincial election regard rather property than person. It is another,
that the rights which approach more nearly to the personal are most of
them corporate, and suppose a restrained and strict education of seven
years in some useful occupation. In both cases the practice may have
slid from the principle. The standard of qualification in both cases may
be so low, or not so judiciously chosen, as in some degree to frustrate
the end. But all this is for your prudence in the case before you. You
may rise a step or two the qualification of the Catholic voters. But if
you were to-morrow to put the Catholic freeholder on the footing of the
most favored forty-shilling Protestant Dissenter, you know, that, such
is the actual state of Ireland, this would not make a sensible
alteration in almost any _one_ election in the kingdom. The effect in
their favor, even defensively, would be infinitely slow. But it would be
healing; it would be satisfactory and protecting. The stigma would be
removed. By admitting settled, permanent substance in lieu of the
numbers, you would avoid the great danger of our time, that of setting
up number against property. The numbers ought never to be neglected,
because (besides what is due to them as men) collectively, though not
individually, they have g