,--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. But, more sensible of this great truth,
than perhaps any other man, I have never conceived, or can conceive,
that the connection is strengthened by making the major part of the
inhabitants of your country believe that their ease, and their
satisfaction, and their equalization with the rest of their
fellow-subjects of Ireland are things adverse to the principles of that
connection,--or that their subjection to a small monopolizing junto,
composed of one of the smallest of their own internal factions, is the
very condition upon which the harmony of the two kingdoms essentially
depends. I was sorry to hear that this principle, or something not
unlike it, was publicly and fully avowed by persons of great rank and
authority in the House of Lords in Ireland.

As to a participation on the part of the Catholics in the privileges and
capacities which are withheld, without meaning wholly to depreciate
their importance, if I had the honor of being an Irish Catholic, I
should be content to expect satisfaction upon that subject with
patience, until the minds of my adversaries, few, but powerful, were
come to a proper temper: because, if the Catholics did enjoy, without
fraud, chicane, or partiality, some fair portion of those advantages
which the law, even as now the law is, leaves open to them, and if the
rod were not shaken over them at every turn, their present condition
would be tolerable; as compared with their former condition, it would be
happy. But the most favorable laws can do very little towards the
happiness of a people, when the disposition of the ruling power is
adverse to them. Men do not live upon blotted paper. The favorable or
the hostile mind of the ruling power is of far more importance to
mankind, for good or evil, than the black-letter of any statute. Late
acts of Parliament, whilst they fixed at least a temporary bar to the
hopes and progress of the larger description of