The basis of Protestant Union, and the material of all public declarations against further concession should be an unshaken and inviable attachment t… - Henry Addington

I have said, and said most truly, that if the country was well governed, and its affairs ably conducted, I cared little in whose hands the Administration was placed. To a very few I have been more explicit, by declaring my strong and increasing repugnance to office, arising from various causes...and my fixed determination never to return to it, except under the positive obligation of public duty, and that, after the experience of the last four years, I could not admit the existence of such an obligation, unless I was to be placed in a situation of perfect and unqualified responsibility: in other words, to use a recent expression of the Speaker, that I would not be a Noun adjective to any Government.

Had he to choose between the re-enactment of the popery laws and Catholic emancipation, coupled with parliamentary reform, as the means of restoring tranquillity to Ireland, he should give the preference to the former; but it was because he objected to both those measures that he gave his cordial support to the contemplated union.

Until it is proved that some great practical evil is justly attributable to the present structure of that House, and that it would admit of a remedy which would not be productive of some evil of equal or greater magnitude, my objections to a general reform will remain unshaken. Still I am compelled to feel that this ground is no longer tenable; and that an attempt must be made to satisfy the more temperate and conscientious reformers, without endangering the established institutions of the country.