But a
government which has no interest to please the body
of the people, and can neither support them nor with
safety call for their support, nor is of power to sway
the domineering faction, can only exist by corruption; and taught by that monopolizing party which usurps the title and qualities of the public to consider the body of the people as out of the constitution, they will consider those who are in it in the light
in which they choose to consider themselves.
government which has no interest to please the body
of the people, and can neither support them nor with
safety call for their support, nor is of power to sway
the domineering faction, can only exist by corruption; and taught by that monopolizing party which usurps the title and qualities of the public to consider the body of the people as out of the constitution, they will consider those who are in it in the light
in which they choose to consider themselves.
Edmund Burke
?
?
LETTER.
MY DEAR SIR,-If I am not as early as I
ought to be in my acknowledgments for your
very kind letter, pray do me the justice to attribute
my failure to its natural and but too real cause, a
want of the most ordinary power of exertion, owing
to the impressions made upon an old and infirm constitution by private misfortune and by public calamity. It is true, I make occasional efforts to rouse myself to something better, -but I soon relapse into that state of languor which must be the habit of my
body and understanding to the end of my short and
cheerless existence in this world.
I am sincerely grateful for your kindness in connecting the interest you take in the sentiments of
an old friend with the able part you take in the
service of your country. It is an instance, among
many, of that happy temper which has always given
a character of amenity to your virtues and a goodnatured direction to your talents.
Your speech on the Catholic question I read with
much satisfaction. It is solid; it is convincing; it
is eloquent; and it ought, on the spot, to have produced that effect which its reason, and that contained in the other excellent speeches on the same
side of the question, cannot possibly fail (though
with less pleasant consequences) to produce hereafter. What a sad thing it is, that the grand in
? ? ? ? 378 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE
structor, Time, has not yet been able to teach the
grand lesson of his own value, and that, in every
question of moral and political prudence, it is the
choice of the moment which renders the measure
serviceable or useless, noxious or salutary!
In the Catholic question I considered only one
point: Was it, at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which tended to promote the
concord of the citizens? I have no difficulty in saying it was, - and as little in saying that the present
concord of the citizens was worth buying, at a critical season, by granting a few capacities, which probably no one man now living is likely to be served or hurt by. When any man tells you and me, that, if
these places were left in the discretion of a Protestant crown, and these memberships in the discretion
of Protestant electors or patrons, we should have a
Popish official system, and a Popish representation,
capable of overturning the Establishment, he only insults our understandings. When any man tells this
to Catholics, he insults their understandings, and he
galls their feelings. It is not the question of the
places and seats, it is the real hostile disposition and
the pretended fears, that leave stings in the minds
of the people. I really thought that in the total of
the late circumstances, with regard to persons, to
things, to principles, and to measures, was to be
found a conjuncture favorable to the introduction and
to the perpetuation of a general harmony, producing
a general strength, which to that hour Ireland was
never so happy as to enjoy. My sanguine hopes are
blasted, and I must consign my feelings on that terrible disappointment to the same patience in which
I have been obliged to bury the vexation I suffered
? ? ? ? ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 379
on the defeat of the other great, just, and honorable
causes in which I have had some share, and which
have given more of dignity than of peace and advantage to a long, laborious life. Though, perhaps, a
want of success might be urged as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken,
yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel
them too, as I see and feel them. I think I can
hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of
Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland, -or
of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as
they affect Asia, --or of Jacobinism, as they affect
all Europe and the state of human society itself.
The last is the greatest evil. But it readily combines
with the others, and flows from them. Whatever
breeds discontent at this time will produce that great
master-mischief most infallibly. Whatever tends to
persuade the people that the few, called by whatever
name you please, religious or political, are of opinion that their interest is not compatible with that of
the many, is a great point gained to Jacobinism.
Whatever tends to irritate the talents of a country,
which have at all times, and at these particularly,
a mighty influence on the public mind, is of infinite
service to that formidable cause. Unldss where
Heaven has mingled uncommon ingredients of virtue in the composition, - quos meliore luto finxit prcecordia Titan, --talents naturally gravitate to Jacobinism. Whatever ill-humors are afloat in the state, they will be sure to discharge themselves in a mingled torrent in the Cloaca Maximna of Jacobinism.
Therefore people ought well to look about them.
First, the physicians are to take care that they do
? ? ? ? 380 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE
nothing to irritate this epidemical distemper. It is
a foolish thing to have the better of the patient in
a dispute. The complaint or its cause ought to be
removed, and wise and lenient arts ought to precede
the measures of vigor. They ought to be the ultima,
not the prima, not the tota ratio of a wise government. God forbid, that, on a worthy occasion, authority should want the means of force, or the disposition to use it! But where a prudent and enlarged policy does not pr. -eede it, and attend it too, where
the hearts of the better sort of people do not go
with the hands of the soldiery, you may call your
Constitution what you will, in effect it will consist
of three parts, (orders, if you please,) cavalry, infantry, and artillery, - and of nothing else or better.
I agree with you in your dislike of the discourses
in Francis Street: but I like as little some of those
in College Green. I am even less pleased with the
temper that predominated in the latter, as better
things might have been expected in the regular
family mansion of public discretion than in a new
and hasty assembly of unexperienced men, congregated under circumstances of no small irritation.
After people have taken your tests, prescribed by
yourselves as proofs of their allegiance, to be marked
as enemies, traitors, or at best as suspected and dangerous persons, and that they are not to be believed
on their oaths, we are not to be surprised, if they
fall into a passion, and talk as men in a passion do,
intemperately and idly.
The worst of the matter is this: you are partly
leading, partly driving into Jacobinism that description of your people whose religious principles, church
polity, and habitual discipline might make them an
? ? ? ? ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 381
invincible dike against that inundation. This you
have a thousand mattocks and pickaxes lifted up to
demolish. You make a sad story of the Pope. 0
seri studiorumn! It will not be difficult to get many
called Catllolics to laugh at this fiundamental part of
their religion. Never doubt it. You have succeeded
in part, and you may succeed completely. But in the
present state of men's minds and affairs, do not flatter
yourselves that they will piously look to the head of
our Clhurch in the place of that Pope whom you make
them forswear, and out of all reverence to whom you
bully and rail and buffoon them. Perhaps you may
succeed in the same manner with all the other tenets
of doctrine and usages of discipline amongst the Catholics; but what security have you, that, in the temper and on the principles on which they have made this
change, they will stop at the exact sticking-places you
have marked in your articles? You have no security for anything, but that they will become what are called Franco-Jacobins, and reject the whole together. No convects now will be made in a considerable number from one of our sects to the other upon a
really religious principle. Controversy moves in another direction.
Next to religion, property is the great point of Jacobin attack. Here many of the debaters ili your
majority, and their writers, have given the Jacobins
all the assistance their hearts can wish. When the
Catholics desire places and seats, you tell them that
this is only a pretext, (though Protestants might
suppose it just possible for men to like good places
and snug boroughs for their own merits,) but that
their real view is, to strip Protestants of their property To my certain knowledge, till those Jacobin
? ? ? ? 382 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE
lectures were opened in the House of Commons, they
never dreamt of any such thing; but now the great
professors may stimulate them to inquire (on the new
principles) into the foundation of that property, and
of all property. If you treat men as robbers, why,
robbers, sooner or later, they will become.
A third point of Jacobin attack is on old traditionary constitutions. You are apprehensive for yours,
which leans from its perpendicular, and does not
stand firm on its theory. I like Parliamentary reforms as little as any man who has boroughs to sell
for money, or for peerages in Ireland. But it passes
my comprehension, in what manner it is that men
can be reconciled to the practical merits of a constitution, the theory of which is in litigation, by being practically excluded from any of its advantages. Let
us put ourselves in the place of these people, and try
an experiment of the effects of such a procedure on
our own minds. Unquestionably, we should be perfectly satisfied, when we were told that Houses of Parliament, instead of being places of refuge for popular liberty, were citadels for keeping us in order as a conquered people. These things play the Jacobin
game to a nicety.
Indeed, my dear Sir, there is not a single particular in the Francis-Street declamations, which has not,
to your and to my certain knowledge, been taught
by the jealous ascendants, sometimes by doctrine,
sometimes by example, always by provocation. Remember the whole of 1781 anlld 1782, in Parliament and out of Parliament; at this very day, and in the
worst acts and designs, observe the tenor of the objections with which the College-Green orators of the ascendency reproach the Catholics. You have ob
? ? ? ? ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 383
served, no doubt, how much they rely on the affair
of Jackson. Is it not pleasant to hear Catholics reproached for a supposed connection --with whom? -- with Protestant clergymen! with Protestant gentlemen! with Mr. Jackson! with Mr. Rowan, &c. , &c. ! But egomet mi ignosco. Conspiracies and treasons are
privileged pleasures, not to be profaned by the impure
and unhallowed touch of Papists. Indeed, all this
will do, perhaps, well enough, with detachments of
dismounted cavalry and fencibles from England. But
let us not say to Catholics, by way of argument, that
they are to be kept in a degraded state, because some
of them are no better than many of us Protestants.
The thing I most disliked in some of their speeches
(those, I mean, of the Catholics) was what is called
the spirit of liberality, so much and so diligently
taught by the ascendants, by which they are made to
abandon their own particular interests, and to merge
them in the general discontents of the country. It
gave me no pleasure to hear of the dissolution of
the committee. There were in it a majority, to my
knowledge, of very sober, well-intentioned men; and
there were none in it but such who, if not continually goaded and irritated, might be made useful to the tranquillity of the country. It is right always
to have a few of every description, through whom
you may quietly operate on the many, both for the
interests of the description, and for the general interest.
Excuse me, my dear friend, if I have a little tried
your patience. You have brought this trouble on
yourself, by your thinking of a man forgot, and who
has no objection to be forgot, by the world. These
things we discussed together four or five and thirty
? ? ? ? t84 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE.
years ago. We were then, and at bottom ever since,
of the same opinion on the justice and policy of the
whole and of every part of the penal system. You
and I, and everybody, must now and then ply and
bend to the occasion, and take what can be got. But
very sure I am, that, whilst there remains in the law
any principle whatever which can furnish to certain
politicians an excuse for raising an opinion of their
own importance, as necessary to keep their fellowsubjects in order, the obnoxious people will be fretted,
harassed, insulted, provoked to discontent and disorder, and practically excluded from the partial advantages from which the letter of the law does not exclude them. Adieu! my dear Sir,
And believe me very truly yours,
EDMUND BURKE.
BEACONSFIELD, May 26, 1795.
? ? ? ? A
LETTER
TO
RIOHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
ON
PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. '79 3. VOL. VI. 25
? ? ? ? LETTER.
M Y DEAR SON, -We are all again assembled
in town, to finish the last, but the most laborious, of the tasks which have been imposed upon me
during my Parliamentary service. ' We are as well
as at our time of life we can expect to be. We have,
indeed, some moments of anxiety about you. You
are engaged in an undertaking similar in its principle to mine. You are engaged in the relief of an oppressed people. In that service you must necessarily excite the same sort of passions in those who have
exercised, and who wish to continue that oppression,
that I have had to struggle with in this long labor.
As your father has done, you must make enemies of
many of the rich, of the proud,. and of the powerful.
I and you began in the same way. I must confess,
that, if our place was of our choice, I could wish it
had been your lot to begin the career of your life
with an endeavor to render some more moderate and
less invidious service to the public. But being engaged in a great and critical work, I have not the
least hesitation about your having hitherto done your
duty as becomes you. If I had not an assurance
not to be shaken from the character of your mind, I
should be satisfied on that point by the cry that is
raised against you. If you had behaved, as they call
it, discreetly, that is, faintly and treacherously, in
the execution of your trust, you would have had, for
? ? ? ? 388 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
a while, the good word of all sorts of men, even of
many of those whose cause you had betrayed, - and
whilst your favor lasted, you might have coined that
false reputation into a true and solid interest to yourself. This you are well apprised of; and you do not
refuse to travel that beaten road friom an ignorance,
but from a contempt, of the objects it leads to.
When you choose an arduous and slippery path,
God forbid that any weak feelings of my declining
age, which calls for soothings and supports, and
which can have none but from you, should make me
wish that you should abandon what you are about,
or should trifle with it! In this house we submit,
though with troubled minds, to that order which has
connected all great duties with toils and with perils,
which has conducted the road to glory througlh the
regions of obloquy and reproach, and which will never suffer the disparaging alliance of spurious, false,
and fugitive praise with genuine and permanent reputation. We know that the Power which has settled
that order, and subjected you to it by placing you in
the situation you are in, is able to bring you out of
it with credit and with safety. His will be done!
All must come right. You may open the way with
pain and under reproach: others will pursue it with
ease and with applause.
I am sorry to find that pride and passion, and that
sort of zeal for religion which never shows any wonderful heat but when it afflicts and mortifies our
neighbor, will not let the ruling description perceive that the privilege for which your clients contend is very nearly as much for the benefit of those who refuse it as those who ask it. I am not to examine into the charges that are daily made on the ad
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 389
ministration of Ireland. I am not qualified to say
how much in them is cold truth, and how much rhetorical exaggeration. Allowing some foundation to the complaint, it is to no purpose that these people
allege that their government is a job in its administration. I am sure it is a job in its constitution; nor
is it possible a scheme of polity, which, in total exclusion of the body of the community, confines (with little or no regard to their rank or condition in life)
to a certain set of favored citizens the rights which
formerly belonged to the whole, should not, by the
operation of the same selfish and narrow principles,
teach the persons who administer in that government
to prefer their own particular, but well-understood,.
private interest to the false and ill-calculated private
interest of the monopolizing company they belong to.
Eminent characters, to be sure, overrule places and
circumstances. I have nothing to say to that virtue
which shoots up in full force by the native vigor of
the seminal principle, in spite of the adverse soil and
climate that it grows in. But speaking of things in
their ordinary course, in a country of monopoly there
can be no patriotism. There may be a party spirit,
but public spirit there can be none. As to a spirit
of liberty, still less can it exist, or anything like it.
A liberty made up of penalties! a liberty made up
of incapacities! a liberty made up of exclusion and
proscription, continued for ages, of four fifths, perhaps, of the inhabitants of all ranks and fortunes!
In what does such liberty differ from the description
of the most shocking kind of servitude?
But it will be said, in that country some people
are free. Why, this is the very description of despotism. Partial freedom is privilege and prerogative,
? ? ? ? 390 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
and not liberty. Liberty, such as deserves the name,
is an honest, equitable, diffusive, and impartial principle. It is a great and enlarged virtue, and not a sordid, selfish, and illiberal vice. It is the portion
of the mass of the citizens, and not the haughty
license of some potent individual or some predominant faction.
If anything ought to be despotic in a country, it is
its government; because there is no cause of constant operation to make its yoke unequal. But the dominion of a party must continually, steadily, and
by its very essence, lean upon the prostrate description. A constitution formed so as to enable a party to overrule its very government, and to overpower
the people too, answers the purposes neither of government nor of freedom. It compels that power which ought, and often would be disposed, equally
to protect the subjects, to fail in its trust, to counteract its purposes, and to become no better tlian the instrument of the wrongs of a faction. Some degree
of inlfluence must exist in all governments.
But a
government which has no interest to please the body
of the people, and can neither support them nor with
safety call for their support, nor is of power to sway
the domineering faction, can only exist by corruption; and taught by that monopolizing party which usurps the title and qualities of the public to consider the body of the people as out of the constitution, they will consider those who are in it in the light
in which they choose to consider themselves. The
whole relation of government and of freedom will be
a battle or a traffic.
This system, in its real nature, and under its proper
appellations, is odious and unnatural, especially when
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 391
a constitution is admitted which not only, as all constitutions do profess, has a regard to the good of the
multitude, but in its theory makes profession of their
power also. But of late this scheme of theirs has been
new-christened, - honesturn nomen imponitur vitio. A
word has been lately struck in the mint of the Castle
of Dublin; thence it was conveyed to the Tholsel, or
City-Hall, whero, having passed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon
became current in Parliament, and was carried back
by the Speaker of the House of Commons in great
pomp, as an offering of homage from whence it came.
The word is ascendency. It is not absolutely new.
But the sense in which I have hitherto seen it used
was to signify an influence obtained over the minds
of some other person by love and reverence, or by
superior management and dexterity. It had, therefore, to this its promotion no more than a moral, not
a civil or political use. But I admit it is capable of
being so applied; and if the Lord Mayor of Dublin,
and the Speaker of the Irish Parliament, who recommend the preservation of the Protestant ascendency,
mean to employ the word in that sense, - that is, if
they understand by it the preservation of the influence of that description of gentlemen over the Catholics by means of an authority derived from their wisdom and virtue, and from an opinion they raise in that people of a pious regard and affection for their
freedom and happiness, - it is impossible not to commend their adoption of so apt a term into the family
of politics. It may be truly said to enrich the language. Even if the Lord Mayor and Speaker mean
to insinuate that this influence is to be obtained and
held by flattering their people, by managing them, by
? ? ? ? 392 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
skilfully adapting themselves to the humors and passions of those whom they would govern, he must be
a very untoward critic who would cavil even at this
use of the word, though such cajoleries would perhaps be more prudently practised than professed.
These are all meanings laudable, or at least tolerable. But when we look a little more narrowly,'and
compare it with the plan to which it owes its present
technical application, I find it has strayed far from
its original sense. It goes much further than the
privilege allowed by Horace. It is more than parce
detortum. This Protestant ascendency means nothing less than an influence obtained by virtue, by
love, or even by artifice and seduction, -- full as little an influence derived from the means by which
ministers have obtained an influence which might
be called, without straining, an ascendency, in public assemblies in England, that is, by a liberal distribution of places and pensions, and other graces of government. This last is wide indeed of the signification of the word. New ascendency is the old
mastership. It is neither more nor less than the resolution of one set of people in Ireland to consider
themselves as the sole citizens in the commonwealth,
and to keep a dominion over the rest by reducing
them to absolute slavery under a military power,
and, thus fortified in their power, to divide the public estate, which is the result of general contribution,
as a military booty, solely amongst themselves.
The poor word ascendency, so soft and melodious
in its sound, so lenitive and emollient in its first
usage, is now employed to cover to the world the
most rigid, and perhaps not the most wise, of all
plans of policy. The word is large enough in its
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENC Y IN IRELAND. 393
comprehension. I cannot conceive what mode of
oppression in civil life, or what mode of religious
persecution, may not come within the methods of
preserving an ascendency. In plain old English, as
they apply it, it signifies pride and dominion on the
one part of the relation, and on the other subserviency and contempt, --and it signifies nothing else. The old words are as fit to be set to music as the
new; but use has long since affixed to them their
true signification, and they sound, as the other will,
harshly and odiously to the moral and intelligent
ears of mankind.
This ascendency, by being a Protestant ascendency,
does not better it from the combination of a not&
or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. If Protestant ascendency means the proscription from citizenship of by far the major part of the people of any country, then Protestant ascendency is a bad thing,
and it ought to have no existence. But there is a
deeper evil. By the use that is so frequently made
of the term, and the policy which is engrafted on
it, the name Protestant becomes nothing more or
better than the name of a persecuting faction, with
a relation of some sort of theological hostility to others, but without any sort of ascertained tenets of its
own upon the ground of which it persecutes other
men: for the patrons of this Protestant ascendency
neither do nor can, by anything positive, define or
describe what they mean by the word Protestant.
It is defined, as Cowley defines wit, not by what it
is, but by what it is not. It is not the Christian
religion as professed in the churches holding com --
munion with Rome, the majority of Christians: that
is all which, in the latitude of the term, is know. n
? ? ? ? 394 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
about its signification. This makes such persecu
tors tell times worse than any of that description
that hitherto have been known in the world. The
old persecutors, whether Pagan or Christian, whether
Arian or Orthodox, whether Catholics, Anglicans, or
Calvinists, actually were, or at least had the decorum
to pretend to be, strong dogmatists. They pretended
t! hat their religious maxims were clear and ascertained, and so useful that they were bound, for
the eternal benefit of mankind, to defend or diffuse
them, though by any sacrifices of the temporal good
of those who were the objects of their system of experiment.
The bottom of this theory of persecution is false.
It is not permitted to us to sacrifice the temporal
good of any body of men to our own ideas of the
truth and falsehood of any religious opinions. By
making men miserable in this life, they counteract
one of the great ends of charity, which is, in as much
as in us lies, to make men happy in every period
of their existence, and most in what most depends
upon us. But give to these old persecutors their
mistaken principle, in their reasoning they are consistent, and in their tempers they may be even kind:and good-natured. But whenever a faction would render millions of mankind miserable, some millions. of the race coexistent with themselves, and many
millions in their succession, without knowing or so
much as pretending to ascertain the doctrines of. their own school, (in which there is much of the lash
and nothing of the lesson,) the errors which the
persons in such a faction fall into are not those that
are natural to human imbecility, nor is the least mix-. ture of mistaken kindness to mankind an ingredient
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 395
in the severities they inflict. The whole is nothing
but pure and perfect malice. It is, indeed, a perfection in that kind belonging to beings of ain higher
order than man, and to them we ought to leave it.
This kind of persecutors without zeal, without
charity, know well enough that religion, to pass by
all questions of the truth or falsehood of any of its
particular systems, (a matter I abandon to the tlieologians on all sides,) is a source of great comfort to
us mortals, in this our short, but tedious journey
tllrotugh the world. They know, that, to enjoy this
consolation, men must believe their religion upon
some principle or other, whether of education, habit,
theory, or authority. When men are drivenl from
any of those principles on which they have received
religion, without embracing with the same assurance
and cordiality some other system, a dreadful void is
left in their minds, and a terrible shock is given to
tllheir morals. They lose their guide, their comfort,
their hope. None but the most cruel and hardhearted of men, who had banished all natural tenderness from their minds, such as those beings of iron, the atheists, could bring themselves to any
persecution like this. Strange it is, but so it is, that
men, driven by force from their habits in one mode
of rcligion, have, by contrary habits, under the same
force, often quietly settled in another. They suborn
their reason to declare in favor of their necessity.
Man and his conscience cannot always be at war. If
thi first races have not been able to make a pacification between the conscience and the convenience,
their descendants come generally to submit to the
violence of the laws, withou:lt violence to their minds.
As things stood formerly, they possessed a positive
? ? ? ? 396 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
scheme of direction and of consolation. In this men
may acquiesce. The harsh methods in use with the
old class of persecutors were to make converts, not
apostates only. If they perversely hated other sects
and factions, they loved their own inordinately. But
in this Protestant persecution there is anything but
benevolence at work. What do the Irish statutes?
They do not make a conformity to the established
religion, and to its doctrines and practices, the condition of getting out of servitude. No such thing. Let three millions of people but abandon all that they
and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred,
and to forswear it publicly in terms the most degrad*ing, scurrilous, and indecent for men of integrity and virtue, and to abuse the whole of their former
lives, and to slander the education they have received,
and nothing more is required of them. There is no
system of folly, or impiety, or blasphemy, or atheism,
into which they may not throw themselves, and which
they may not profess openly, and as a system, consistently with the enjoyment of all the privileges of a free citizen in the happiest constitution in the
world.
Some of the unhappy assertors of this strange
scheme say they are not persecutors on account of
religion. In the first place, they say what is not
true. For what else do they disfranchise the people?
If the man gets rid of a religion through which their
malice operates, he gets rid of all their penalties and
incapacities at once. They never afterwards inquire
about him. I speak here of their pretexts, and not of
the true spii'it of the transaction, in which religious
bigotry, I apprehend, has little share. Every man
has his taste; but I think, if I were so miserable and
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 397
undone as to be guilty of premeditated and continued
violence towards any set of men; I had rather that
my conduct was supposed to arise from wild conceits
concerning their religious advantages than from low
and ungenerous motives relative to my own selfish
interest. I had rather be thought insane in my
charity than rational in my malice. This much, my
dear son, I have to say of this Protestant persecution,
- that is, a persecution of religion itself.
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the
world arises from words. People soon forget the
meaning, but the impression and the passion remain.
The word'Protestant is the charm that locks up in
the dungeon of servitude three millions of your people. It is not amiss to consider this spell of potency, this abracadabra, that is hung about the necks of the
unhappy, not to heal, but to communicate disease.
We sometimes hear of a Protestant religion, frequently of a Protestant interest. We hear of the latter the most frequently, because it has a positive meaning.
The other has none. We hear of it the most frequently, because it has a word in the phrase which,
well or ill understood, has animated to persecution
and oppression at all times infinitely more than all the
dogmas in dispute between religious factions. These
are, indeed, well formed to perplex and torment the
intellect, but not half so well calculated to inflame
the passions and animosities of men.
I do readily admit that a great deal of the wars,
seditions, and troubles of the world did formerly turn
upon the contention between interests that went by
the names of Protestant and Catholic. But I imagined that at this time no one was weak enough to believe, or impudent enough to pretend, that ques
? ? ? ? 398 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
tions of Popish and Protestant opinions or interest are
the things by which men are at present menaced with
crusades by foreign invasion, or with seditions which
shake the foundations of the state at home. It is
long since all this combination of things has vanished
from the view of intelligent observers. The existence
of quite another system of opinions and interests is
now plain to the grossest sense. Are these the questions that raise a flame in the minds of men at this
day? If ever the Church and the Constitution of
England should fall in these islands, (and they will
fall together,) it is not Presbyterian discipline nor
Popish hierarchy that will rise upon their ruins. It
will not be the Church of Rome nor the Church of
Scotland, not the Church of Luther nor the Church
of Calvin. On the contrary, all these churches are
menaced, and menaced alike. It is the new fanatical religion, now in the heat of its first ferment, of
the Rigllts of Man, which rejects all establishments,
all discipline, all ecclesiastical, and in truth all civil
order, which will triumph, and which will lay prostrate your Church, which will destroy your distinctions, and which will put all your properties to auction, and disperse you over the earth. If the present establishment should fall, it is this religion which will
triumph in Ireland and in England, as it has triumphed in France. This religion, which laughs at
creeds and dogmas and confessions of faith, may be
fomented equally amongst all descriptions and all
sects, -- amongst nominal Catholics, and amongst
nominal Churchmen, and amongst those Dissenters
who know little and care less about a presbytery, or
any of its discipline, or any of its doctrine. Again, t
this new, this growing, this exterminatory system, all
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 399 these churches have a common concern to defend themselves. How the enthusiasts of this rising sect rejoice to see you of the old churches play their game, and stir and rake the cinders of animosities sunk in their ashes, in order to keep up the execution of
their plan for your common ruin!
I suppress all that is in my mind about the blindness of those of our clergy who will shut their eyes
to a thing which glares in such manifest day. If
some wretches amongst an indigent and disorderly
part of the populace raise a riot about tithes, there
are of these gentlemen ready to cry out that this is
an overt act of a treasonable conspiracy. Here the
bulls, and the pardons, and the crusade, and the Pope,
and the thunders of the Vatican are everywhere at
work. There is a plot to bring in a foreign power to
destroy the Church. Alas! it is not about popes,
but about potatoes, that the minds of this unhappy
people are agitated. It is not from the spirit of zeal,
but the spirit of whiskey, that these wretches act. Is
it, then, not conceived possible that a poor clown can
be unwilling, after paying three pounds rent to a gentleman in a brown coat, to pay fourteen shillings to one in a black coat, for his acre of potatoes, and tumultuously to desire some modification of the charge, without being supposed to have no other motive than
a frantic zeal for being thus double-taxed to another
set of landholders and another set of priests? Have
men no self-interest, no avarice, no repugnance to
public imposts? Have they no sturdy and restive
minds, no undisciplined habits? Is there nothing
in the whole mob of irregular passions, which might
precipitate some of the common people, in some
places, to quarrel with a legal, because they feel it
? ? ? ? 400 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
to be a burdensome imposition? According to these
gentlemenf, no offence can be committed by Papists
but from zeal to their religion. To make room for
the vices of Papists, they clear the house of all the
vices of men. - Some of the common people (not one,
however, in ten thousand) commit disorders. Well!
punish them as you do, and as you ought to punish
them, for their violence against the just property of
each individual clergyman, as each individual suffers.
Support the injured rector, or the injured impropriator, in the enjoyment of the estate of which (whether
on the best plan or not) the laws have put him in
possession. Let the crime and the punishment stand
upon their own bottom. But now we ought all of
us, clergymen most particularly, to avoid assigning
another cause of quarrel, in order to infuse a new
source of bitterness into a dispute which personal
feelings on both sides will of themselves make bitter
enough, and thereby involve in it by religious descriptions men who have individually no share whatsoever in those irregular acts. Let us not make the malignant fictions of our own imaginations, heated
with factious controversies, reasons for keeping men
that are neither guilty nor justly suspected of crime
in a servitude equally dishonorable and unsafe to religion and to the state. When men are constantly
accused, but know themselves not to be guilty, they
must naturally abhor their accusers. There is no
character, when malignantly taken up and deliberately pursued, which more naturally excites indignation and abhorrence in mankind, especially in that part of mankind which suffers from it.
I do not pretend to take pride in an extravagant
attachment to any sect. Some gentlemen in Ireland
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENC i' IN IRELAND. 401
affect that sort of glory. It is to their taste. Their
piety, I take it for granted, justifies the ferv6r of their
zeal, and may palliate the excess of it. Being myself no more than a common layman, commonly informed ill controversies, leading only a very common life, and having only a common citizen's interest in
the Church or in the State, yet to you I will say, in
justice to my owll sentiments, that not one of those
zealots for a Protestant interest wishes more sinlcerely
than I do, perhaps not half so sincerely, for the support of the Established Church in both these kingdoms. It is a great link towards holding fast the connection of religion with the State, and for keeping these two islands, in their present critical independence of constitution, in a close connection of opinion and affection. I wish it well, as the religion
of the greater number of the primary land-proprietors of the kingdom, with whom all establishments
of Church and State, for strong political reasons,
ought in my opinion to be firmly connected. I
wish it well, because it is more closely combined
than any other of the church systems with the crown,
which is the stay of the mixed Constitution, - because it is, as things now stand, the sole connecting
political principle between the constitutions of the
two independent kingdoms. I have another and
infinitely a stronger reason for wishing it well: it
is, that in the present time I consider it as one of
the main pillars of the Christian religion itself. Thle
body and substance of every religion I regard much
more than any of the forms and dogmas of the particular sects. Its fall would leave a great void, which
nothing else, of which I can form any distinct idea,
migllt fill. I respect the Catholic hierarchy and the
VOL. VI. 26
? ? ? ? 402 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
Presbyterian republic; but I know that the hope or
the fear of establislling either of them is, in these
kingdoms, equally climerical, even if I preferred one
or the other of them to the Establishment, which certainly I do not.
These are some of my reasons for wishing the sup
port of the Church of Ireland as by law established,
These reasons are founded as well on the absolute
as on the relative situation of that kingdom. But
is it because I love the Church, and the King, and
the privileges of Parliamlent, that I am to be ready for
aly violence, or any injiustice, or any absurdity, in the
means of supporting any of these powers, or all of
them together? Instead of prating about Protestant
ascendencies, Protestanlt Parliaments ought, in my
opinion, to think at last of becoming patriot Parliaments.
The legislature of Ireland, like all legislatures,
ougllt to frame its laws to suit the people and the
circumstances of the counltry, and not any longer
to make it their whole business to force the nature,
the temper, and the inveterate habits of a nation to
a conformity to speculative systems concerning any
kind of laws. Ireland has an established government, and a religion legally established, which are
to be preserved. It has a people who tre to be pre.
served too, and to be led by reason, principle, senti
ment, and interest to acquiesce in that government.
Ireland is a country under peculiar circumstances.
The people of Ireland are a very mixed people; and
the quantities of the several ingredients in the mix
ture are very much disproportioned to each other.
MY DEAR SIR,-If I am not as early as I
ought to be in my acknowledgments for your
very kind letter, pray do me the justice to attribute
my failure to its natural and but too real cause, a
want of the most ordinary power of exertion, owing
to the impressions made upon an old and infirm constitution by private misfortune and by public calamity. It is true, I make occasional efforts to rouse myself to something better, -but I soon relapse into that state of languor which must be the habit of my
body and understanding to the end of my short and
cheerless existence in this world.
I am sincerely grateful for your kindness in connecting the interest you take in the sentiments of
an old friend with the able part you take in the
service of your country. It is an instance, among
many, of that happy temper which has always given
a character of amenity to your virtues and a goodnatured direction to your talents.
Your speech on the Catholic question I read with
much satisfaction. It is solid; it is convincing; it
is eloquent; and it ought, on the spot, to have produced that effect which its reason, and that contained in the other excellent speeches on the same
side of the question, cannot possibly fail (though
with less pleasant consequences) to produce hereafter. What a sad thing it is, that the grand in
? ? ? ? 378 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE
structor, Time, has not yet been able to teach the
grand lesson of his own value, and that, in every
question of moral and political prudence, it is the
choice of the moment which renders the measure
serviceable or useless, noxious or salutary!
In the Catholic question I considered only one
point: Was it, at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which tended to promote the
concord of the citizens? I have no difficulty in saying it was, - and as little in saying that the present
concord of the citizens was worth buying, at a critical season, by granting a few capacities, which probably no one man now living is likely to be served or hurt by. When any man tells you and me, that, if
these places were left in the discretion of a Protestant crown, and these memberships in the discretion
of Protestant electors or patrons, we should have a
Popish official system, and a Popish representation,
capable of overturning the Establishment, he only insults our understandings. When any man tells this
to Catholics, he insults their understandings, and he
galls their feelings. It is not the question of the
places and seats, it is the real hostile disposition and
the pretended fears, that leave stings in the minds
of the people. I really thought that in the total of
the late circumstances, with regard to persons, to
things, to principles, and to measures, was to be
found a conjuncture favorable to the introduction and
to the perpetuation of a general harmony, producing
a general strength, which to that hour Ireland was
never so happy as to enjoy. My sanguine hopes are
blasted, and I must consign my feelings on that terrible disappointment to the same patience in which
I have been obliged to bury the vexation I suffered
? ? ? ? ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 379
on the defeat of the other great, just, and honorable
causes in which I have had some share, and which
have given more of dignity than of peace and advantage to a long, laborious life. Though, perhaps, a
want of success might be urged as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken,
yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel
them too, as I see and feel them. I think I can
hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of
Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland, -or
of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as
they affect Asia, --or of Jacobinism, as they affect
all Europe and the state of human society itself.
The last is the greatest evil. But it readily combines
with the others, and flows from them. Whatever
breeds discontent at this time will produce that great
master-mischief most infallibly. Whatever tends to
persuade the people that the few, called by whatever
name you please, religious or political, are of opinion that their interest is not compatible with that of
the many, is a great point gained to Jacobinism.
Whatever tends to irritate the talents of a country,
which have at all times, and at these particularly,
a mighty influence on the public mind, is of infinite
service to that formidable cause. Unldss where
Heaven has mingled uncommon ingredients of virtue in the composition, - quos meliore luto finxit prcecordia Titan, --talents naturally gravitate to Jacobinism. Whatever ill-humors are afloat in the state, they will be sure to discharge themselves in a mingled torrent in the Cloaca Maximna of Jacobinism.
Therefore people ought well to look about them.
First, the physicians are to take care that they do
? ? ? ? 380 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE
nothing to irritate this epidemical distemper. It is
a foolish thing to have the better of the patient in
a dispute. The complaint or its cause ought to be
removed, and wise and lenient arts ought to precede
the measures of vigor. They ought to be the ultima,
not the prima, not the tota ratio of a wise government. God forbid, that, on a worthy occasion, authority should want the means of force, or the disposition to use it! But where a prudent and enlarged policy does not pr. -eede it, and attend it too, where
the hearts of the better sort of people do not go
with the hands of the soldiery, you may call your
Constitution what you will, in effect it will consist
of three parts, (orders, if you please,) cavalry, infantry, and artillery, - and of nothing else or better.
I agree with you in your dislike of the discourses
in Francis Street: but I like as little some of those
in College Green. I am even less pleased with the
temper that predominated in the latter, as better
things might have been expected in the regular
family mansion of public discretion than in a new
and hasty assembly of unexperienced men, congregated under circumstances of no small irritation.
After people have taken your tests, prescribed by
yourselves as proofs of their allegiance, to be marked
as enemies, traitors, or at best as suspected and dangerous persons, and that they are not to be believed
on their oaths, we are not to be surprised, if they
fall into a passion, and talk as men in a passion do,
intemperately and idly.
The worst of the matter is this: you are partly
leading, partly driving into Jacobinism that description of your people whose religious principles, church
polity, and habitual discipline might make them an
? ? ? ? ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 381
invincible dike against that inundation. This you
have a thousand mattocks and pickaxes lifted up to
demolish. You make a sad story of the Pope. 0
seri studiorumn! It will not be difficult to get many
called Catllolics to laugh at this fiundamental part of
their religion. Never doubt it. You have succeeded
in part, and you may succeed completely. But in the
present state of men's minds and affairs, do not flatter
yourselves that they will piously look to the head of
our Clhurch in the place of that Pope whom you make
them forswear, and out of all reverence to whom you
bully and rail and buffoon them. Perhaps you may
succeed in the same manner with all the other tenets
of doctrine and usages of discipline amongst the Catholics; but what security have you, that, in the temper and on the principles on which they have made this
change, they will stop at the exact sticking-places you
have marked in your articles? You have no security for anything, but that they will become what are called Franco-Jacobins, and reject the whole together. No convects now will be made in a considerable number from one of our sects to the other upon a
really religious principle. Controversy moves in another direction.
Next to religion, property is the great point of Jacobin attack. Here many of the debaters ili your
majority, and their writers, have given the Jacobins
all the assistance their hearts can wish. When the
Catholics desire places and seats, you tell them that
this is only a pretext, (though Protestants might
suppose it just possible for men to like good places
and snug boroughs for their own merits,) but that
their real view is, to strip Protestants of their property To my certain knowledge, till those Jacobin
? ? ? ? 382 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE
lectures were opened in the House of Commons, they
never dreamt of any such thing; but now the great
professors may stimulate them to inquire (on the new
principles) into the foundation of that property, and
of all property. If you treat men as robbers, why,
robbers, sooner or later, they will become.
A third point of Jacobin attack is on old traditionary constitutions. You are apprehensive for yours,
which leans from its perpendicular, and does not
stand firm on its theory. I like Parliamentary reforms as little as any man who has boroughs to sell
for money, or for peerages in Ireland. But it passes
my comprehension, in what manner it is that men
can be reconciled to the practical merits of a constitution, the theory of which is in litigation, by being practically excluded from any of its advantages. Let
us put ourselves in the place of these people, and try
an experiment of the effects of such a procedure on
our own minds. Unquestionably, we should be perfectly satisfied, when we were told that Houses of Parliament, instead of being places of refuge for popular liberty, were citadels for keeping us in order as a conquered people. These things play the Jacobin
game to a nicety.
Indeed, my dear Sir, there is not a single particular in the Francis-Street declamations, which has not,
to your and to my certain knowledge, been taught
by the jealous ascendants, sometimes by doctrine,
sometimes by example, always by provocation. Remember the whole of 1781 anlld 1782, in Parliament and out of Parliament; at this very day, and in the
worst acts and designs, observe the tenor of the objections with which the College-Green orators of the ascendency reproach the Catholics. You have ob
? ? ? ? ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 383
served, no doubt, how much they rely on the affair
of Jackson. Is it not pleasant to hear Catholics reproached for a supposed connection --with whom? -- with Protestant clergymen! with Protestant gentlemen! with Mr. Jackson! with Mr. Rowan, &c. , &c. ! But egomet mi ignosco. Conspiracies and treasons are
privileged pleasures, not to be profaned by the impure
and unhallowed touch of Papists. Indeed, all this
will do, perhaps, well enough, with detachments of
dismounted cavalry and fencibles from England. But
let us not say to Catholics, by way of argument, that
they are to be kept in a degraded state, because some
of them are no better than many of us Protestants.
The thing I most disliked in some of their speeches
(those, I mean, of the Catholics) was what is called
the spirit of liberality, so much and so diligently
taught by the ascendants, by which they are made to
abandon their own particular interests, and to merge
them in the general discontents of the country. It
gave me no pleasure to hear of the dissolution of
the committee. There were in it a majority, to my
knowledge, of very sober, well-intentioned men; and
there were none in it but such who, if not continually goaded and irritated, might be made useful to the tranquillity of the country. It is right always
to have a few of every description, through whom
you may quietly operate on the many, both for the
interests of the description, and for the general interest.
Excuse me, my dear friend, if I have a little tried
your patience. You have brought this trouble on
yourself, by your thinking of a man forgot, and who
has no objection to be forgot, by the world. These
things we discussed together four or five and thirty
? ? ? ? t84 SECOND LETTER TO SIR H. LANGRISHE.
years ago. We were then, and at bottom ever since,
of the same opinion on the justice and policy of the
whole and of every part of the penal system. You
and I, and everybody, must now and then ply and
bend to the occasion, and take what can be got. But
very sure I am, that, whilst there remains in the law
any principle whatever which can furnish to certain
politicians an excuse for raising an opinion of their
own importance, as necessary to keep their fellowsubjects in order, the obnoxious people will be fretted,
harassed, insulted, provoked to discontent and disorder, and practically excluded from the partial advantages from which the letter of the law does not exclude them. Adieu! my dear Sir,
And believe me very truly yours,
EDMUND BURKE.
BEACONSFIELD, May 26, 1795.
? ? ? ? A
LETTER
TO
RIOHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
ON
PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. '79 3. VOL. VI. 25
? ? ? ? LETTER.
M Y DEAR SON, -We are all again assembled
in town, to finish the last, but the most laborious, of the tasks which have been imposed upon me
during my Parliamentary service. ' We are as well
as at our time of life we can expect to be. We have,
indeed, some moments of anxiety about you. You
are engaged in an undertaking similar in its principle to mine. You are engaged in the relief of an oppressed people. In that service you must necessarily excite the same sort of passions in those who have
exercised, and who wish to continue that oppression,
that I have had to struggle with in this long labor.
As your father has done, you must make enemies of
many of the rich, of the proud,. and of the powerful.
I and you began in the same way. I must confess,
that, if our place was of our choice, I could wish it
had been your lot to begin the career of your life
with an endeavor to render some more moderate and
less invidious service to the public. But being engaged in a great and critical work, I have not the
least hesitation about your having hitherto done your
duty as becomes you. If I had not an assurance
not to be shaken from the character of your mind, I
should be satisfied on that point by the cry that is
raised against you. If you had behaved, as they call
it, discreetly, that is, faintly and treacherously, in
the execution of your trust, you would have had, for
? ? ? ? 388 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
a while, the good word of all sorts of men, even of
many of those whose cause you had betrayed, - and
whilst your favor lasted, you might have coined that
false reputation into a true and solid interest to yourself. This you are well apprised of; and you do not
refuse to travel that beaten road friom an ignorance,
but from a contempt, of the objects it leads to.
When you choose an arduous and slippery path,
God forbid that any weak feelings of my declining
age, which calls for soothings and supports, and
which can have none but from you, should make me
wish that you should abandon what you are about,
or should trifle with it! In this house we submit,
though with troubled minds, to that order which has
connected all great duties with toils and with perils,
which has conducted the road to glory througlh the
regions of obloquy and reproach, and which will never suffer the disparaging alliance of spurious, false,
and fugitive praise with genuine and permanent reputation. We know that the Power which has settled
that order, and subjected you to it by placing you in
the situation you are in, is able to bring you out of
it with credit and with safety. His will be done!
All must come right. You may open the way with
pain and under reproach: others will pursue it with
ease and with applause.
I am sorry to find that pride and passion, and that
sort of zeal for religion which never shows any wonderful heat but when it afflicts and mortifies our
neighbor, will not let the ruling description perceive that the privilege for which your clients contend is very nearly as much for the benefit of those who refuse it as those who ask it. I am not to examine into the charges that are daily made on the ad
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 389
ministration of Ireland. I am not qualified to say
how much in them is cold truth, and how much rhetorical exaggeration. Allowing some foundation to the complaint, it is to no purpose that these people
allege that their government is a job in its administration. I am sure it is a job in its constitution; nor
is it possible a scheme of polity, which, in total exclusion of the body of the community, confines (with little or no regard to their rank or condition in life)
to a certain set of favored citizens the rights which
formerly belonged to the whole, should not, by the
operation of the same selfish and narrow principles,
teach the persons who administer in that government
to prefer their own particular, but well-understood,.
private interest to the false and ill-calculated private
interest of the monopolizing company they belong to.
Eminent characters, to be sure, overrule places and
circumstances. I have nothing to say to that virtue
which shoots up in full force by the native vigor of
the seminal principle, in spite of the adverse soil and
climate that it grows in. But speaking of things in
their ordinary course, in a country of monopoly there
can be no patriotism. There may be a party spirit,
but public spirit there can be none. As to a spirit
of liberty, still less can it exist, or anything like it.
A liberty made up of penalties! a liberty made up
of incapacities! a liberty made up of exclusion and
proscription, continued for ages, of four fifths, perhaps, of the inhabitants of all ranks and fortunes!
In what does such liberty differ from the description
of the most shocking kind of servitude?
But it will be said, in that country some people
are free. Why, this is the very description of despotism. Partial freedom is privilege and prerogative,
? ? ? ? 390 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
and not liberty. Liberty, such as deserves the name,
is an honest, equitable, diffusive, and impartial principle. It is a great and enlarged virtue, and not a sordid, selfish, and illiberal vice. It is the portion
of the mass of the citizens, and not the haughty
license of some potent individual or some predominant faction.
If anything ought to be despotic in a country, it is
its government; because there is no cause of constant operation to make its yoke unequal. But the dominion of a party must continually, steadily, and
by its very essence, lean upon the prostrate description. A constitution formed so as to enable a party to overrule its very government, and to overpower
the people too, answers the purposes neither of government nor of freedom. It compels that power which ought, and often would be disposed, equally
to protect the subjects, to fail in its trust, to counteract its purposes, and to become no better tlian the instrument of the wrongs of a faction. Some degree
of inlfluence must exist in all governments.
But a
government which has no interest to please the body
of the people, and can neither support them nor with
safety call for their support, nor is of power to sway
the domineering faction, can only exist by corruption; and taught by that monopolizing party which usurps the title and qualities of the public to consider the body of the people as out of the constitution, they will consider those who are in it in the light
in which they choose to consider themselves. The
whole relation of government and of freedom will be
a battle or a traffic.
This system, in its real nature, and under its proper
appellations, is odious and unnatural, especially when
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 391
a constitution is admitted which not only, as all constitutions do profess, has a regard to the good of the
multitude, but in its theory makes profession of their
power also. But of late this scheme of theirs has been
new-christened, - honesturn nomen imponitur vitio. A
word has been lately struck in the mint of the Castle
of Dublin; thence it was conveyed to the Tholsel, or
City-Hall, whero, having passed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon
became current in Parliament, and was carried back
by the Speaker of the House of Commons in great
pomp, as an offering of homage from whence it came.
The word is ascendency. It is not absolutely new.
But the sense in which I have hitherto seen it used
was to signify an influence obtained over the minds
of some other person by love and reverence, or by
superior management and dexterity. It had, therefore, to this its promotion no more than a moral, not
a civil or political use. But I admit it is capable of
being so applied; and if the Lord Mayor of Dublin,
and the Speaker of the Irish Parliament, who recommend the preservation of the Protestant ascendency,
mean to employ the word in that sense, - that is, if
they understand by it the preservation of the influence of that description of gentlemen over the Catholics by means of an authority derived from their wisdom and virtue, and from an opinion they raise in that people of a pious regard and affection for their
freedom and happiness, - it is impossible not to commend their adoption of so apt a term into the family
of politics. It may be truly said to enrich the language. Even if the Lord Mayor and Speaker mean
to insinuate that this influence is to be obtained and
held by flattering their people, by managing them, by
? ? ? ? 392 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
skilfully adapting themselves to the humors and passions of those whom they would govern, he must be
a very untoward critic who would cavil even at this
use of the word, though such cajoleries would perhaps be more prudently practised than professed.
These are all meanings laudable, or at least tolerable. But when we look a little more narrowly,'and
compare it with the plan to which it owes its present
technical application, I find it has strayed far from
its original sense. It goes much further than the
privilege allowed by Horace. It is more than parce
detortum. This Protestant ascendency means nothing less than an influence obtained by virtue, by
love, or even by artifice and seduction, -- full as little an influence derived from the means by which
ministers have obtained an influence which might
be called, without straining, an ascendency, in public assemblies in England, that is, by a liberal distribution of places and pensions, and other graces of government. This last is wide indeed of the signification of the word. New ascendency is the old
mastership. It is neither more nor less than the resolution of one set of people in Ireland to consider
themselves as the sole citizens in the commonwealth,
and to keep a dominion over the rest by reducing
them to absolute slavery under a military power,
and, thus fortified in their power, to divide the public estate, which is the result of general contribution,
as a military booty, solely amongst themselves.
The poor word ascendency, so soft and melodious
in its sound, so lenitive and emollient in its first
usage, is now employed to cover to the world the
most rigid, and perhaps not the most wise, of all
plans of policy. The word is large enough in its
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENC Y IN IRELAND. 393
comprehension. I cannot conceive what mode of
oppression in civil life, or what mode of religious
persecution, may not come within the methods of
preserving an ascendency. In plain old English, as
they apply it, it signifies pride and dominion on the
one part of the relation, and on the other subserviency and contempt, --and it signifies nothing else. The old words are as fit to be set to music as the
new; but use has long since affixed to them their
true signification, and they sound, as the other will,
harshly and odiously to the moral and intelligent
ears of mankind.
This ascendency, by being a Protestant ascendency,
does not better it from the combination of a not&
or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. If Protestant ascendency means the proscription from citizenship of by far the major part of the people of any country, then Protestant ascendency is a bad thing,
and it ought to have no existence. But there is a
deeper evil. By the use that is so frequently made
of the term, and the policy which is engrafted on
it, the name Protestant becomes nothing more or
better than the name of a persecuting faction, with
a relation of some sort of theological hostility to others, but without any sort of ascertained tenets of its
own upon the ground of which it persecutes other
men: for the patrons of this Protestant ascendency
neither do nor can, by anything positive, define or
describe what they mean by the word Protestant.
It is defined, as Cowley defines wit, not by what it
is, but by what it is not. It is not the Christian
religion as professed in the churches holding com --
munion with Rome, the majority of Christians: that
is all which, in the latitude of the term, is know. n
? ? ? ? 394 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
about its signification. This makes such persecu
tors tell times worse than any of that description
that hitherto have been known in the world. The
old persecutors, whether Pagan or Christian, whether
Arian or Orthodox, whether Catholics, Anglicans, or
Calvinists, actually were, or at least had the decorum
to pretend to be, strong dogmatists. They pretended
t! hat their religious maxims were clear and ascertained, and so useful that they were bound, for
the eternal benefit of mankind, to defend or diffuse
them, though by any sacrifices of the temporal good
of those who were the objects of their system of experiment.
The bottom of this theory of persecution is false.
It is not permitted to us to sacrifice the temporal
good of any body of men to our own ideas of the
truth and falsehood of any religious opinions. By
making men miserable in this life, they counteract
one of the great ends of charity, which is, in as much
as in us lies, to make men happy in every period
of their existence, and most in what most depends
upon us. But give to these old persecutors their
mistaken principle, in their reasoning they are consistent, and in their tempers they may be even kind:and good-natured. But whenever a faction would render millions of mankind miserable, some millions. of the race coexistent with themselves, and many
millions in their succession, without knowing or so
much as pretending to ascertain the doctrines of. their own school, (in which there is much of the lash
and nothing of the lesson,) the errors which the
persons in such a faction fall into are not those that
are natural to human imbecility, nor is the least mix-. ture of mistaken kindness to mankind an ingredient
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 395
in the severities they inflict. The whole is nothing
but pure and perfect malice. It is, indeed, a perfection in that kind belonging to beings of ain higher
order than man, and to them we ought to leave it.
This kind of persecutors without zeal, without
charity, know well enough that religion, to pass by
all questions of the truth or falsehood of any of its
particular systems, (a matter I abandon to the tlieologians on all sides,) is a source of great comfort to
us mortals, in this our short, but tedious journey
tllrotugh the world. They know, that, to enjoy this
consolation, men must believe their religion upon
some principle or other, whether of education, habit,
theory, or authority. When men are drivenl from
any of those principles on which they have received
religion, without embracing with the same assurance
and cordiality some other system, a dreadful void is
left in their minds, and a terrible shock is given to
tllheir morals. They lose their guide, their comfort,
their hope. None but the most cruel and hardhearted of men, who had banished all natural tenderness from their minds, such as those beings of iron, the atheists, could bring themselves to any
persecution like this. Strange it is, but so it is, that
men, driven by force from their habits in one mode
of rcligion, have, by contrary habits, under the same
force, often quietly settled in another. They suborn
their reason to declare in favor of their necessity.
Man and his conscience cannot always be at war. If
thi first races have not been able to make a pacification between the conscience and the convenience,
their descendants come generally to submit to the
violence of the laws, withou:lt violence to their minds.
As things stood formerly, they possessed a positive
? ? ? ? 396 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
scheme of direction and of consolation. In this men
may acquiesce. The harsh methods in use with the
old class of persecutors were to make converts, not
apostates only. If they perversely hated other sects
and factions, they loved their own inordinately. But
in this Protestant persecution there is anything but
benevolence at work. What do the Irish statutes?
They do not make a conformity to the established
religion, and to its doctrines and practices, the condition of getting out of servitude. No such thing. Let three millions of people but abandon all that they
and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred,
and to forswear it publicly in terms the most degrad*ing, scurrilous, and indecent for men of integrity and virtue, and to abuse the whole of their former
lives, and to slander the education they have received,
and nothing more is required of them. There is no
system of folly, or impiety, or blasphemy, or atheism,
into which they may not throw themselves, and which
they may not profess openly, and as a system, consistently with the enjoyment of all the privileges of a free citizen in the happiest constitution in the
world.
Some of the unhappy assertors of this strange
scheme say they are not persecutors on account of
religion. In the first place, they say what is not
true. For what else do they disfranchise the people?
If the man gets rid of a religion through which their
malice operates, he gets rid of all their penalties and
incapacities at once. They never afterwards inquire
about him. I speak here of their pretexts, and not of
the true spii'it of the transaction, in which religious
bigotry, I apprehend, has little share. Every man
has his taste; but I think, if I were so miserable and
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 397
undone as to be guilty of premeditated and continued
violence towards any set of men; I had rather that
my conduct was supposed to arise from wild conceits
concerning their religious advantages than from low
and ungenerous motives relative to my own selfish
interest. I had rather be thought insane in my
charity than rational in my malice. This much, my
dear son, I have to say of this Protestant persecution,
- that is, a persecution of religion itself.
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the
world arises from words. People soon forget the
meaning, but the impression and the passion remain.
The word'Protestant is the charm that locks up in
the dungeon of servitude three millions of your people. It is not amiss to consider this spell of potency, this abracadabra, that is hung about the necks of the
unhappy, not to heal, but to communicate disease.
We sometimes hear of a Protestant religion, frequently of a Protestant interest. We hear of the latter the most frequently, because it has a positive meaning.
The other has none. We hear of it the most frequently, because it has a word in the phrase which,
well or ill understood, has animated to persecution
and oppression at all times infinitely more than all the
dogmas in dispute between religious factions. These
are, indeed, well formed to perplex and torment the
intellect, but not half so well calculated to inflame
the passions and animosities of men.
I do readily admit that a great deal of the wars,
seditions, and troubles of the world did formerly turn
upon the contention between interests that went by
the names of Protestant and Catholic. But I imagined that at this time no one was weak enough to believe, or impudent enough to pretend, that ques
? ? ? ? 398 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
tions of Popish and Protestant opinions or interest are
the things by which men are at present menaced with
crusades by foreign invasion, or with seditions which
shake the foundations of the state at home. It is
long since all this combination of things has vanished
from the view of intelligent observers. The existence
of quite another system of opinions and interests is
now plain to the grossest sense. Are these the questions that raise a flame in the minds of men at this
day? If ever the Church and the Constitution of
England should fall in these islands, (and they will
fall together,) it is not Presbyterian discipline nor
Popish hierarchy that will rise upon their ruins. It
will not be the Church of Rome nor the Church of
Scotland, not the Church of Luther nor the Church
of Calvin. On the contrary, all these churches are
menaced, and menaced alike. It is the new fanatical religion, now in the heat of its first ferment, of
the Rigllts of Man, which rejects all establishments,
all discipline, all ecclesiastical, and in truth all civil
order, which will triumph, and which will lay prostrate your Church, which will destroy your distinctions, and which will put all your properties to auction, and disperse you over the earth. If the present establishment should fall, it is this religion which will
triumph in Ireland and in England, as it has triumphed in France. This religion, which laughs at
creeds and dogmas and confessions of faith, may be
fomented equally amongst all descriptions and all
sects, -- amongst nominal Catholics, and amongst
nominal Churchmen, and amongst those Dissenters
who know little and care less about a presbytery, or
any of its discipline, or any of its doctrine. Again, t
this new, this growing, this exterminatory system, all
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND. 399 these churches have a common concern to defend themselves. How the enthusiasts of this rising sect rejoice to see you of the old churches play their game, and stir and rake the cinders of animosities sunk in their ashes, in order to keep up the execution of
their plan for your common ruin!
I suppress all that is in my mind about the blindness of those of our clergy who will shut their eyes
to a thing which glares in such manifest day. If
some wretches amongst an indigent and disorderly
part of the populace raise a riot about tithes, there
are of these gentlemen ready to cry out that this is
an overt act of a treasonable conspiracy. Here the
bulls, and the pardons, and the crusade, and the Pope,
and the thunders of the Vatican are everywhere at
work. There is a plot to bring in a foreign power to
destroy the Church. Alas! it is not about popes,
but about potatoes, that the minds of this unhappy
people are agitated. It is not from the spirit of zeal,
but the spirit of whiskey, that these wretches act. Is
it, then, not conceived possible that a poor clown can
be unwilling, after paying three pounds rent to a gentleman in a brown coat, to pay fourteen shillings to one in a black coat, for his acre of potatoes, and tumultuously to desire some modification of the charge, without being supposed to have no other motive than
a frantic zeal for being thus double-taxed to another
set of landholders and another set of priests? Have
men no self-interest, no avarice, no repugnance to
public imposts? Have they no sturdy and restive
minds, no undisciplined habits? Is there nothing
in the whole mob of irregular passions, which might
precipitate some of the common people, in some
places, to quarrel with a legal, because they feel it
? ? ? ? 400 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
to be a burdensome imposition? According to these
gentlemenf, no offence can be committed by Papists
but from zeal to their religion. To make room for
the vices of Papists, they clear the house of all the
vices of men. - Some of the common people (not one,
however, in ten thousand) commit disorders. Well!
punish them as you do, and as you ought to punish
them, for their violence against the just property of
each individual clergyman, as each individual suffers.
Support the injured rector, or the injured impropriator, in the enjoyment of the estate of which (whether
on the best plan or not) the laws have put him in
possession. Let the crime and the punishment stand
upon their own bottom. But now we ought all of
us, clergymen most particularly, to avoid assigning
another cause of quarrel, in order to infuse a new
source of bitterness into a dispute which personal
feelings on both sides will of themselves make bitter
enough, and thereby involve in it by religious descriptions men who have individually no share whatsoever in those irregular acts. Let us not make the malignant fictions of our own imaginations, heated
with factious controversies, reasons for keeping men
that are neither guilty nor justly suspected of crime
in a servitude equally dishonorable and unsafe to religion and to the state. When men are constantly
accused, but know themselves not to be guilty, they
must naturally abhor their accusers. There is no
character, when malignantly taken up and deliberately pursued, which more naturally excites indignation and abhorrence in mankind, especially in that part of mankind which suffers from it.
I do not pretend to take pride in an extravagant
attachment to any sect. Some gentlemen in Ireland
? ? ? ? ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENC i' IN IRELAND. 401
affect that sort of glory. It is to their taste. Their
piety, I take it for granted, justifies the ferv6r of their
zeal, and may palliate the excess of it. Being myself no more than a common layman, commonly informed ill controversies, leading only a very common life, and having only a common citizen's interest in
the Church or in the State, yet to you I will say, in
justice to my owll sentiments, that not one of those
zealots for a Protestant interest wishes more sinlcerely
than I do, perhaps not half so sincerely, for the support of the Established Church in both these kingdoms. It is a great link towards holding fast the connection of religion with the State, and for keeping these two islands, in their present critical independence of constitution, in a close connection of opinion and affection. I wish it well, as the religion
of the greater number of the primary land-proprietors of the kingdom, with whom all establishments
of Church and State, for strong political reasons,
ought in my opinion to be firmly connected. I
wish it well, because it is more closely combined
than any other of the church systems with the crown,
which is the stay of the mixed Constitution, - because it is, as things now stand, the sole connecting
political principle between the constitutions of the
two independent kingdoms. I have another and
infinitely a stronger reason for wishing it well: it
is, that in the present time I consider it as one of
the main pillars of the Christian religion itself. Thle
body and substance of every religion I regard much
more than any of the forms and dogmas of the particular sects. Its fall would leave a great void, which
nothing else, of which I can form any distinct idea,
migllt fill. I respect the Catholic hierarchy and the
VOL. VI. 26
? ? ? ? 402 LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ. ,
Presbyterian republic; but I know that the hope or
the fear of establislling either of them is, in these
kingdoms, equally climerical, even if I preferred one
or the other of them to the Establishment, which certainly I do not.
These are some of my reasons for wishing the sup
port of the Church of Ireland as by law established,
These reasons are founded as well on the absolute
as on the relative situation of that kingdom. But
is it because I love the Church, and the King, and
the privileges of Parliamlent, that I am to be ready for
aly violence, or any injiustice, or any absurdity, in the
means of supporting any of these powers, or all of
them together? Instead of prating about Protestant
ascendencies, Protestanlt Parliaments ought, in my
opinion, to think at last of becoming patriot Parliaments.
The legislature of Ireland, like all legislatures,
ougllt to frame its laws to suit the people and the
circumstances of the counltry, and not any longer
to make it their whole business to force the nature,
the temper, and the inveterate habits of a nation to
a conformity to speculative systems concerning any
kind of laws. Ireland has an established government, and a religion legally established, which are
to be preserved. It has a people who tre to be pre.
served too, and to be led by reason, principle, senti
ment, and interest to acquiesce in that government.
Ireland is a country under peculiar circumstances.
The people of Ireland are a very mixed people; and
the quantities of the several ingredients in the mix
ture are very much disproportioned to each other.
