’In his speech he said:  It was impossible, when moral principles are instilled into the human mind, when people are regularly taught their duty to God and man, that abominable tenets can prevail to the subversion of subordination and society.  He would venture to assert, though the power of the sword was great, that the force of education was greater.  It was notorious that the writings of one man, Mr. Burke, had changed the opinions of the whole people of England against the French Revolution. ...  If proper books were circulated through the country, and if the public mind was prepared for the reception of their doctrines, it would be impossible to make the ignorance of the people an instrument of national ruin.

’There is, he contended, a fund of goodness in the Irish as well as in the English nature.  Did God give different minds to different countries?  No, the difference of mind arose from education.  It therefore became the duty of Parliament to improve as much as possible the public understanding—­for the misfortunes of Ireland were owing not to the heart, but the head:  the defect was not from nature, but from want of culture.

’During this session my father spoke again two or three times, on some questions of revenue regulations and excise laws:  of little consequence separately considered, but of importance in one respect, in their effect on the morality of the people.  He pointed out that nothing could with more certainty tend to increase the crime of perjury than the multiplying custom-house oaths, and what are termed oaths of office. ...  In Ireland the habits of the common people are already too lax with regard to truth.  The difference of religion, and the facilities of absolution, present difficulties so formidable to their moral improvement as to require all the counteracting powers of education, example, public opinion, and law. . . .  Multiplying oaths injures the revenue, by increasing incalculably the means of evading the very laws and penalties by which it is attempted to bind the subject.  Experience proves that this is a danger of no small account to the revenue; though trifling when compared with the importance of the general effect on national morality, and on the safety and tranquillity of the State, all which must ultimately rest, at all times and in all countries, upon religious sanctions.  “It was not,” my father observed, “by increasing pains and penalties, or by any severity of punishment, that the observance of laws can be secured; on the contrary, small but certain punishments, and few but punctually executed laws, are most likely to secure obedience, and to effect public prosperity."’

He writes to Darwin in March 1800:  ’The fatigue of the session was enormous.  I am a Unionist, but I vote and speak against the union now proposed to us—­as to my reasons, are they not published in the reports of our debates?  It is intended to force this measure down the throats of the Irish, though five-sixths of the nation are against it.  Now, though I think such union as would identify the nations, so as that Ireland should be as Yorkshire to Great Britain, would be an excellent thing:  yet I also think that the good people of Ireland ought to be persuaded of this truth, and not be dragooned into the submission.