amentable and odious: I shall think that
anything done under it ought not to pass into precedent, or to be
adopted by choice, or to produce any of those shocking retaliations
which never suffer dissensions to subside. Least of all would I fix the
transitory spirit of civil fury by perpetuating and methodizing it in
tyrannic government. If it were permitted to argue with power, might one
not ask these gentlemen whether it would not be more natural, instead of
wantonly mooting these questions concerning their property, as if it
were an exercise in law, to found it on the solid rock of
prescription,--the soundest, the most general, and the most recognized
title between man and man that is known in municipal or in public
jurisprudence?--a title in which not arbitrary institutions, but the
eternal order of things, gives judgment; a title which is not the
creature, but the master, of positive law; a title which, though not
fixed in its term, is rooted in its principle in the law of Nature
itself, and is indeed the original ground of all known property: for all
property in soil will always be traced back to that source, and will
rest there. The miserable natives of Ireland, who ninety-nine in an
hundred are tormented with quite other cares, and are bowed down to
labor for the bread of the hour, are not, as gentlemen pretend, plodding
with antiquaries for titles of centuries ago to the estates of the great
lords and squires for whom they labor. But if they were thinking of the
titles which gentlemen labor to beat into their heads, where can they
bottom their own claims, but in a presumption and a proof that these
lands had at some time been possessed by their ancestors? These
gentlemen (for they have lawyers amongst them) know as well as I that in
England we have had always a prescription or limitation, as all nations
have, against each other. The crown was excepted; but that exception is
destroyed, and we have lately established a sixty years' possession as
against the crown. All titles terminate in prescription,--in which
(differently from Time in the fabulous instances) the son devours the
father, and the last prescription eats up all the former.

* * * * *

A

LETTER

ON

THE AFFAIRS OF IRELAND.

1797.

Dear Sir,--In the reduced state of body and in the dejected state of
mind in which I find myself at this very advanced period of my life, it
is a great consolation to me to kn