LETTER.
Dear Sir,—I am much flattered by your very obliging letter, and the rather because it promises an opening to our future correspondence. This may be my only indemnification for very great losses. One of the most odious parts of the proposed Absentee Tax is its tendency to separate friends, and to make as ugly breaches in private society as it must make in the unity of the great political body. I am sure that much of the satisfaction of some circles in London will be lost by it. Do you think that our friend Mrs. Vesey will suffer her husband to vote for a tax that is to destroy the evenings at Bolton Row? I trust we shall have other supporters of the same sex, equally powerful, and equally deserving to be so, who will not abandon the common cause of their own liberties and our satisfactions. We shall be barbarized on both sides of the water, if we do not see one another now and then. We shall sink into surly, brutish Johns, and you will degenerate into wild Irish. It is impossible that we should be the wiser or the more agreeable, certainly we shall not love one another the better, for this forced separation, which our ministers, who have already done so much for the dissolution of every other sort of good connection, are now meditating for the further improvement of this too well united empire. Their next step will be to encourage all the colonies, about thirty separate governments, to keep their people from all intercourse with each other and with the mother country. A gentleman of New York or Barbadoes will be as much gazed at as a strange animal from Nova Zembla or Otaheite; and those rogues, the travellers, will tell us what stories they please about poor old Ireland.
In all seriousness, (though I am a great deal more than half serious in what I have been saying,) I look upon this projected tax in a very evil light; I think it is not advisable; I am sure it is not necessary; and as it is not a mere matter of finance, but involves a political question of much, importance, I consider the principle and precedent as far worse than the thing itself. You are too kind in imagining I can suggest anything new upon the subject. The objections to it are very glaring, and must strike the eyes of all those who have not their reasons for shutting them against evident truth. I have no feelings or opinions on this subject which I do not partake with all the sensible and informed people that I meet with. At first I could scarcely meet with any one who could believe that this scheme originated from the English government. They considered it not only as absurd, but as something monstrous and unnatural. In the first instance, it strikes at the power of this country; in the end, at the union of the whole empire. I do not mean to express, most certainly I do not entertain in my mind, anything invidious concerning the superintending authority of Great Britain. But if it be true that the several bodies which make up this complicated mass are to be preserved as one empire, an authority sufficient to preserve that unity, and by its equal weight and pressure to consolidate the various parts that compose it, must reside somewhere: that somewhere can only be in England. Possibly any one member, distinctly taken, might decide in favor of that residence within itself; but certainly no member would give its voice for any other except this. So that I look upon the residence of the supreme power to be settled here: not by force, or tyranny, or even by mere long usage, but by the very nature of things, and the joint consent of the whole body.
If all this be admitted, then without question this country must have the sole right to the imperial legislation: by which I mean that law which regulates the polity and economy of the several parts, as they relate to one another and to the whole. But if any of the parts, which (not for oppression, but for order) are placed in a subordinate situation, will assume to themselves the power of hindering or checking the resort of their municipal subjects to the centre, or even to any other part of the empire, they arrogate to themselves the imperial rights, which do not, which cannot, belong to them, and, so far as in them lies, destroy the happy arrangement of the entire empire.
A free communication by discretionary residence is necessary to all the other purposes of communication. For what purpose are the Irish and Plantation laws sent hither, but as means of preserving this sovereign constitution? Whether such a constitution was originally right or wrong this is not the time of day to dispute. If any evils arise from it, let us not strip it of what may be useful in it. By taking the English Privy Council into your legislature, you obtain a new, a further, and possibly a more liberal consideration of all your acts. If a local legislature shall by oblique means tend to deprive any of the people of this benefit, and shall make it penal to them to follow into England the laws which may affect them, then the English Privy Council will have to decide upon your acts without those lights that may enable them to judge upon what grounds you made them, or how far they ought to be modified, received, or rejected.
To what end is the ultimate appeal in judicature lodged in this kingdom, if men may be disabled from following their suits here, and may be taxed into an absolute denied of justice? You observe, my dear Sir, that I do not assert that in all cases two shillings will necessarily cut off this means of correcting legislative and judicial mistakes, and thus amount to a denial of justice. I might, indeed, state cases in which this very quantum of tax would be fully sufficient to defeat this right. But I argue not on the case, but on the principle, and I am sure the principle implies it. They who may restrain may prohibit; they who may impose two shillings may impose ten shillings in the pound; and those who may condition the tax to six months' annual absence may carry that condition to six weeks, or even to six days, and thereby totally defeat the wise means which have been provided for extensive and impartial justice, and for orderly, well-poised, and well-connected government.
What is taxing the resort to and residence in any place, but declaring that your connection with that place is a grievance? Is not such an Irish tax as is now proposed a virtual declaration that England is a foreign country, and a renunciation on your part of the principle of common naturalization, which runs through this whole empire?
Do you, or does any Irish gentleman, think it a mean privilege, that, the moment he sets his foot upon this ground, he is to all intents and purposes an Englishman? You will not be pleased with a law which by its operation tends to disqualify you from a seat in this Parliament; and if your own virtue or fortune, or if that of your children, should carry you or them to it, should you like to be excluded from the possibility of a peerage in this kingdom? If in Ireland we lay it down as a maxim, that a residence in Great Britain is a political evil, and to be discouraged by penal taxes, you must necessarily reject all the privileges and benefits which are connected with such a residence.
I can easily conceive that a citizen of Dublin, who looks no further than his counter, may think that Ireland will be repaid for such a loss by any small diminution of taxes, or any increase in the circulation of money that may be laid out in the purchase of claret or groceries in his corporation. In such a man an error of that kind, as it would be natural, would be excusable. But I cannot think that any educated man, any man who looks with an enlightened eye on the interest of Ireland, can believe that it is not highly for the advantage of Ireland, that this Parliament, which, whether right or wrong, whether we will or not, will make some laws to bind Ireland, should always have in it some persons who by connection, by property, or by early prepossessions and affections, are attached to the welfare of that country. I am so clear upon this point, not only from the clear reason of the thing, but from the constant course of my observation, by now having sat eight sessions in Parliament, that I declare it to you as my sincere opinion, that (if you must do either the one or the other) it would be wiser by far, and far better for Ireland, that some new privileges should attend the estates of Irishmen, members of the two Houses here, than that their characters should be stained by penal impositions, and their properties loaded by unequal and unheard-of modes of taxation. I do really trust, that, when the matter comes a little to be considered, a majority of our gentlemen will never consent to establish such a principle of disqualification against themselves and their posterity, and, for the sake of gratifying the schemes of a transitory administration of the cockpit or the castle, or in compliance with the lightest part of the most vulgar and transient popularity, fix so irreparable an injury on the permanent interest of their country.