Nevertheless, allow me to say, with deference, that your indecision, in this case, does not for a moment cause me to waver in my own convictions, since I cannot but suspect that your doubts originate in an imperfect conception of the perils to which our religion and our country are exposed. Were these dangers of less appalling magnitude, I also should have strong scruples against this or any similar association. They are justifiable on no other ground than that of absolute necessity. They bring with them many incidental evils.—They lead into collision adverse parties, and produce impassioned controversies; they create evils which no man can be right in abetting, even indirectly, but with a view to ward off others which are more injurious to the public welfare. Besides which, no man of feeling would rashly hazard the obloquy which will be cast upon him by his opponents in this age of low-minded invective and scurrilous defamation. Nor is it a small evil to lose the favourable regards of upright and conscientious persons who take an opposite view of the exigencies and the duties of the times. For myself, I have no sickly ambition for this species of martyrdom. I sacrifice with painful reluctance the esteem of the wise and the good, from whom it is my misfortune, at any time, to be separated by conflicting opinions and irreconcileable interests. But there are occasions which call for higher duties than those of conciliation or friendship,—when private affections must be merged in a holy patriotism, and when the strength of our principles must be proved, not by the extinction of our finer sensibilities,—God forbid!—but by their yielding, with whatever bitterness of grief, to a commanding sense of DUTY. I am strongly impressed with the conviction, that such an occasion presents itself in “this day of _trouble_, and of _rebuke_, and of _blasphemy_.” Far from having my own apprehensions allayed by the numbers of those who are insensible to the pressure of great and imminent danger, my fears are awakened by nothing so much as by that very consideration; by no other fact am I so deeply convinced of the extreme necessity of supporting the Protestant Association, as one means, among others, of diffusing information, and thus arousing in our countrymen a spirit of determined resistance to Popery, corresponding with the power and the artifice of that unrelenting adversary. The policy of the Papists has ever been, to the last degree, subtle, profound, and unscrupulous,—varying with the changeful phases of society, and adapting itself with fiend-like sagacity to the peculiar character of individuals and of nations. But never did that policy show itself more triumphantly than in the late rapid march of Popery towards a paramount dominion in this kingdom; and in the skill, the cunning, the profound strategy by which it has covered its progress, lulling into false security the people of this betrayed and devoted country.