And then the
penalties and incapacities which grew from that revocation are not so
grievous in their nature, nor so certain in their execution, nor so
ruinous by a great deal to the civil prosperity of the state, as those
which we have established for a perpetual law in our unhappy country. It
cannot be thought to arise from affectation, that I call it so. What
other name can be given to a country which contains so many hundred
thousands of human creatures reduced to a state of the most abject
servitude?
In putting this parallel, I take it for granted that we can stand for
this short time very clear of our party distinctions. If it were enough,
by the use of an odious and unpopular word, to determine the question,
it would be no longer a subject of rational disquisition; since that
very prejudice which gives these odious names, and which is the party
charged for doing so, and for the consequences of it, would then become
the judge also. But I flatter myself that not a few will be found who do
not think that the names of Protestant and Papist can make any change in
the nature of essential justice. Such men will not allow that to be
proper treatment to the one of these denominations which would be
cruelty to the other, and which converts its very crime into the
instrument of its defence: they will hardly persuade themselves that
what was bad policy in France can be good in Ireland, or that what was
intolerable injustice in an arbitrary monarch becomes, only by being
more extended and more violent, an equitable procedure in a country
professing to be governed by law.
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