Gentlemen, it is possible you may not know that the people of that persuasion in Ireland amount to at least sixteen or seventeen hundred thousand souls. I do not at all exaggerate the number. A nation to be _persecuted_! Whilst we were masters of the sea, embodied with America and in alliance with half the powers of the continent, we might, perhaps, in that remote corner of Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But there is a revolution in our affairs which makes it prudent for us to be just.[29] During the last decade of his life, Burke wrote a series of letters upon the Catholic question and upon Irish affairs, in which, of course, this question figured largely. In 1792 came _A Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, M.P._, upon the propriety of admitting Catholics to the elective franchise. Here we find him taking a pragmatic view of liberality toward Catholics. He reasoned as follows regarding the restoration of the franchise: If such means can with any probability be shown, from circumstances, rather to add strength to our mixed ecclesiastical and secular constitution, than to weaken it; surely they are means infinitely to be preferred to penalties, incapacities, and proscriptions continued from generation to generation.[30] In this instance the consideration of magnitude took a more extended form: How much more, certainly, ought they [the disqualifying laws] to give way, when, as in our case, they affect, not here and there, in some particular point or in their consequence, but universally, collectively and directly, the fundamental franchises of a people, equal to the whole inhabitants of several respectable kingdoms and states, equal to the subjects of the kings of Sardinia or of Denmark; equal to those of the United Netherlands, and more than are to be found in all the states of Switzerland. This way of proscribing men by whole nations, as it were, from all the benefits of the constitution to which they were born, I never can believe to be politic or expedient, much less necessary for the existence of any state or church in the world.[31]