In the present
state of the world you can afford to do neither the one nor the
other. Having stated this, I shall leave you to be ruined,
Puffendorf in hand (as Mr. Secretary Canning says), and to lose
Ireland, just as you have found out what proportion the aggrieved
people should bear to the whole population before their calamities
meet with redress. As for your parallel cases, I am no more afraid
of deciding upon them than I am upon their prototype. If ever any
one heresy should so far spread itself over the principality of
Wales that the Established Church were left in a minority of one to
four; if you had subjected these heretics to very severe civil
privations; if the consequence of such privations were a universal
state of disaffection among that caseous and wrathful people; and if
at the same time you were at war with all the world, how can you
doubt for a moment that I would instantly restore them to a state of
the most complete civil liberty? What matters it under what name
you put the same case? Common sense is not changed by appellations.
I have said how I would act to Ireland, and I would act so to all
the world.
I admit that, to a certain degree, the Government will lose the
affections of the Orangemen by emancipating the Catholics; much
less, however, at present, than three years past.
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