nst the French Revolution. ... If proper books were circulated
through the country, and if the public mind was prepared for the
reception of their doctrines, it would be impossible to make the
ignorance of the people an instrument of national ruin.

'There is, he contended, a fund of goodness in the Irish as well as
in the English nature. Did God give different minds to different
countries? No, the difference of mind arose from education. It
therefore became the duty of Parliament to improve as much as
possible the public understanding--for the misfortunes of Ireland
were owing not to the heart, but the head: the defect was not from
nature, but from want of culture.

'During this session my father spoke again two or three times, on
some questions of revenue regulations and excise laws: of little
consequence separately considered, but of importance in one respect,
in their effect on the morality of the people. He pointed out that
nothing could with more certainty tend to increase the crime of
perjury than the multiplying custom-house oaths, and what are termed
oaths of office. ... In Ireland the habits of the common people are
already too lax with regard to truth. The difference of religion,
and the facilities of absolution, present difficulties so formidable
to their moral improvement as to require all the counteracting
powers of education, example, public opinion, and law. . . .
Multiplying oaths injures the revenue, by increasing incalculably
the means of evading the very laws and penalties by which it is
attempted to bind the subject. Experience proves that this is a
danger of no small account to the revenue; though trifling when
compared with the importance of the general effect on national
morality, and on the safety and tranquillity of the State, all which
must ultimately rest, at all times and in all countries, upon
religious sanctions. "It was not," my father observed, "by
increasing pains and penalties, or by any severity of punishment,
that the observance of laws can be secured; on the contrary, small
but certain punishments, and few but punctually executed laws, are
most likely to secure obedience, and to effect public prosperity."'

He writes to Darwin in March 1800: 'The fatigue of the session was
enormous. I am a Unionist, but I vote and speak against the union
now proposed to us--as to my reasons, are they not published in the
reports of our debates? It is intended to force this measure down
the throa