If she had been more disposed
(than, I thank God for it, she was) to listen to the suggestions of
passion than to the dictates of prudence, she might have urged the
principles, the maxims, the policy, the practice of the Revolution,
against the demands of the leading description in Ireland, with full as
much plausibility and full as good a grace as any amongst them can
possibly do against the supplications of so vast and extensive a
description of their own people.
A good deal, too, if the spirit of domination and exclusion had
prevailed in England, might have been excepted against some of the means
then employed in Ireland, whilst her claims were in agitation. They
were at least as much out of ordinary course as those which are now
objected against admitting your people to any of the benefits of an
English Constitution. Most certainly, neither with you nor here was any
one ignorant of what was at that time said, written, and done. But on
all sides we separated the means from the end: and we separated the
cause of the moderate and rational from the ill-intentioned and
seditious, which on such occasions are so frequently apt to march
together.
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