The legislature of Ireland, like all legislatures, ought to frame its
laws to suit the people and the circumstances of the country, 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 are to be preserved too, and to be
led by reason, principle, sentiment, 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 mixture are very much disproportioned to each
other. Are we to govern this mixed body as if it were composed of
the most simple elements, comprehending the whole in one system of
benevolent legislation; or are we not rather to provide for the several
parts according to the various and diversified necessities of the
heterogeneous nature of the mass? Would not common reason and common
honesty dictate to us the policy of regulating the people in the several
descriptions of which they are composed, according to the natural ranks
and classes of an orderly civil society, under a common protecting
sovereign, and under a form of constitution favourable at once to
authority and to freedom; such as the British constitution boasts to be,
and such as it is, to those who enjoy it?