If confusions should arise in that kingdom
from too steady an attachment to a proscriptive, monopolizing system,
and from the resolution of regarding the franchise, and in it the
security of the subject, as belonging rather to religious opinions than
to civil qualification and civil conduct, I doubt whether you might
quite certainly reckon on obtaining an aid of force from hence for the
support of that system. We might extend your distractions to this
country by taking part in them. England will be indisposed, I suspect,
to send an army for the conquest of Ireland. What was done in 1782 is a
decisive proof of her sentiments of justice and moderation. She will not
be fond of making another American war in Ireland. The principles of
such a war would but too much resemble the former one. The well-disposed
and the ill-disposed in England would (for different reasons perhaps)
be equally averse to such an enterprise. The confiscations, the public
auctions, the private grants, the plantations, the transplantations,
which formerly animated so many adventurers, even among sober citizens,
to such Irish expeditions, and which possibly might have animated some
of them to the American, can have no existence in the case that we
suppose.
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