than Helots, because you suspected that they might hereafter aspire
to be more than fellow citizens; rendering their sufferings certain
from your jealousy, while yours were only doubtful from their
ambition; an ambition sure to be excited by the very measures which
were taken to prevent it.

The physical strength of the Catholics will not be greater because
you give them a share of political power. You may by these means
turn rebels into friends; but I do not see how you make rebels more
formidable. If they taste of the honey of lawful power, they will
love the hive from whence they procure it; if they will struggle
with us like men in the same state for civil influence, we are safe.
All that I dread is the physical strength of four millions of men
combined with an invading French army. If you are to quarrel at
last with this enormous population, still put it off as long as you
can; you must gain, and cannot lose, by the delay. The state of
Europe cannot be worse; the conviction which the Catholics entertain
of your tyranny and injustice cannot be more alarming, nor the
opinions of your own people more divided. Time, which produces such
effect upon brass and marble, may inspire one Minister with modesty
and another with compassion; every circumstance may be better; some
certainly will be so, none can be worse; and after all the evil may
never happen.

You have got hold, I perceive, of all the vulgar English stories
respecting the hereditary transmission of forfeited property, and
seriously believe that every Catholic beggar wears the terriers of
his father's land next his skin, and is only waiting for better
times to cut the throat of the Protestant possessor, and get drunk
in the hall of his ancestors. There is one irresistible answer to