\23Q 
 
 S-mS 
 
 
 ■g 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ON 
 
 THE SUBJECT 
 
 / OF 
 
 ■THE CATHOILICS, 
 
 TO 
 
 MY BROTHER ABRAHAM^ 
 
 WHO 
 
 LIVES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 BV PETER PLYMLEr, 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN FROM THE ELEVENTH ENGLISH 
 
 EDITION. 
 
 BALTIMORE 
 
 PRINTED FOR BERNARD DORNIN, and sold by him at 
 
 HIS ROMAN CATHOLIC LIBRARY, No. 30, BALTIMORE- 
 STREET, 
 
 1809. 
 
a, DOBBIN !c M JKPHY, PEINTBBS. 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ON THE SUBJECT OF 
 
 -.THE CATHOLICS. 
 
 LETTER L 
 
 DEAH ABRAHAM, 
 
 A WORTHIER and better man than yourself does not ex- 
 ist ; but I have always told you, from the time of our 
 boyhood, that you were a bit of a goose. Your parochial 
 affairs are governed with exemplary order and regularity ; 
 you are as powerful in the Vestry as Mr. Perceval will be 
 in the House of Commons — and I must say, with much 
 more reason ; nor do I know any church where the faces 
 and smock-frocks of the congregation are so clean, or their 
 eyes so uniformly directed to the preacher. There is 
 another point, upon which I will do you ample justice ; 
 and that is, that the eyes so directed towards you are wide 
 open : for the rustic has, in general, good principles, 
 though he cannot controulhis animal habits; and however 
 loud he rtiay snore, his face is perpetually turned to\iards 
 the fountain of orthodoxy. 
 
 Having done you this act of justice, I shall proceed^ 
 according to our ancient intimacy and familiarity, to ex- 
 plain to you my opinions about the Catholics, and to reply 
 to yours. 
 
 In the first place, my sweet Abraham, the Pope it not 
 landed — nor are there any curates sent out after him — nor 
 has he been hid at Saint Alban's by the Dowager Lady 
 Spencer — nor dined privately at Holland House — nor been 
 seen near Dropmore. If these fears exist (which I do not 
 believe) they exist only in the mind of the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, they emanate from his zeal for the protes- 
 tant interest : and though they reflect the highest honour 
 upon the delicate irritability of his faith, they must cer- 
 tainly be cojisidered as more ambiguous proofs of the sa^ 
 
 103376 
 
 fe 
 
nity and vigor of his understanding. By this time, how- 
 ever, the best informed clergy in the neighborhood of the 
 metropolis are convinced that the rumor is without foun- 
 dai'oii : and though the Pope is probably hovering about 
 our coast in a fishiag smack, it is most likely he will fall 
 a prey to the vigilance of our cruisers; and it is certain 
 he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil. 
 
 Exactly in the same manner, the story of the wooden 
 gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the Fo- 
 Yo-^n Office, turns out to be without the shadow of a loun- 
 dation : instead o' the angels, and archangels, mentioned 
 bv the informer, nothing was discovered but a wooden 
 image ol Lord Mulgrave going down to Chatham as a 
 head-piece for the Spanker gun-vessel : it was an exact 
 resemblance of his Lordship, in his military uniform ; and 
 therefore as little like a god as can well be imagined. 
 
 Having set your fears at rest, as to the extent of the 
 conspiracy formed against the Protestant religion, I will 
 now come to the argument itself. 
 
 You say, these men interpret the scriptures in an unor- 
 thodox manner ; and that they eat their god. — Very likely. 
 All this may seem very important to you, who live four- 
 teen miles from a market-town, and, from long residence 
 upon your hving, are become a kind of holy vegetable, 
 and, in a theological sense, it is highly important. But 
 I want soldiers and sailors for the State ; I want to make 
 a greater use than it now can do of a poor country full of 
 iiien ; I want to render the military service popular among 
 the Irish ; to check the power of France ; to make every 
 possible exertion for the safety of Europe, which in twenty 
 years time will be nothing but a mass of French slaves : 
 and then you and ten thousand other such boobies as you, 
 call out — " For God's sake, do not thi-k of raising ca- 
 <=' valry and infantry in Ireland ! — They interpret the 
 *' episile to Timothy in a different manner from what we 
 " do '.—They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they 
 *' call their God !" — I wish to my soul, they would eat 
 you, and such reasoners as you are. What ! when Turk, 
 Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all com- 
 bined against this country ; when men of every religious 
 f)ersuasion and no religious persuasion ; when the popu- 
 ation of half the globe is up in arms against us; are we 
 to stand examining our generals and armies as a bishop 
 examines a candidate for holy orders ? and to sufler no 
 one to bleed for England, who does not agree with you 
 
about the 2d of Timothy ? You talk about the Catholics I 
 If you and vour brotherhood have been able to persuade 
 the country into a continuation of this grossest of all ab- 
 surdities, you have ten times the power which the Catho- 
 lic clergy ever had in their best days. Lewis XIV. when 
 he revoked the Edict of Nantes, never thought of pre- 
 venting the Protestants from fighting his battles ; and 
 gained accordingly some of his most splendid victories by 
 the talen s of his Protestant generals. No power in En- 
 rope, but yourselves, has ever thought, for these hundred 
 years past, of asking whether a bayonet is Catholic, or 
 Presbyterian, or Lutheran ; but, whether it is sharp and 
 well lemjjered. A bigot delights in public ridicule ; for 
 he bcg'nu to think he is a martyr. I can promise you the 
 full enjoyment of this pleasure, from one extremity of 
 Europe to the other. 
 
 I am as disgusted with the theology* of the Roman Ca* 
 tholic religion as you can be : and no man who talks about 
 such theology shall ever tithe the product of the earth ; 
 nor shall he meddle with the ecclesiastical establishmeni: 
 in any shape ; — but what have I to do with theology, 
 when the object is to elect the mayor of a count\ 
 town, or to ap loint a colonel of a marching regiment r 
 Will a man discharge the solemn impertinences of the 
 one office with less zeal, or shrink from the bloody bold- 
 ness of the other with greater timidity f I am sorrv there 
 • should be such folly in the world, but I should be ten 
 times a greater fool than he is, if 1 refused to lead him 
 out against the enemies of the State, till he had made a 
 solenm protestation, that the crumpet was spiritless, and 
 the nuifiin nothing but an human muffin. Your whole 
 argument is wrong: the State has nothing whatever to 
 do with theological errors, which do not violate the com- 
 mon rules of morality, and militate against the fair pt)vvcr 
 of the ruler. It leaves all these errors to you, and to 
 such as you. You have every tenth porker in your i^arish 
 for refuting them ; and take care that you are vigilant and 
 logical in the task. 
 
 I love the church as well as you do, but j^ou totally mis- 
 take the nature of an establishment, when you contend 
 that it ought to be connected nvith the military and civil 
 career of every individual in the State. It is quite right 
 
 f 
 
 * The editor has taken the liberty of omitting' an irreverent passage of 
 
 Jhe authoi- on the sacrament of the Eucharist. 
 
that there should be one clergyman to every parish, inter- 
 preting the scriptures after a particular manner, ruled by a 
 regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of hay- 
 cocks and wheatsheafs. When I have laid this founda- 
 tion for a rational religion in the State — when I have plac- 
 ed ten thousand well educated men in different parts of the 
 kingdom to preach it up, and compelled every body to 
 pay them whether they hear them or not — I have taken 
 <uch measures as I know must always procure an immense 
 majority in favor of the established church : but I can go 
 no farther. I cannot set up a civil inquisition, and sayto 
 one, you shall not be a butcher, because you are not ortho- 
 dox ; and prohibit another from brewing, and a third from ad- 
 ministering the law, and a fourth from defending the coun- 
 try. If common justice did not prohibit me from such a. 
 conduct, common sense would. The advantage to be 
 gained by quitting the heresy, would make it shameful to 
 abandon it : and men who had once left the church, would 
 continue in such a state of alienation from a poi.iit of ho- 
 ?ior, and transmit that spirit to their latest posterity. — 
 This is just the effect your disqualifying laws have pro- 
 duced. They have fed Dr. Rees and Dr. Kippis ; crowd- 
 ed the congregation of the Old Jewry to suffocation, and 
 enabled every sublapsarian and superlapsarian and semi- 
 pelagian clergyman to build himself a neat brick chapel, 
 and live with some distant resemblance to the state of a 
 gentleman. 
 
 You say that the King's coronation oath will not allow 
 him to consent to any relaxation of the Catholic laws. — 
 Why not relax the Chatholic laws as well as the laws 
 against Protestant dissenters ? If one is contrary to his 
 oath, the other must be so too : for the spirit of the oath 
 is, to defend the church establishment, which the Quaker 
 and the Presbyterian differ from as much, or more than the 
 Catholic ; and yet his Majesty has repealed the corpora- 
 tion and test act in Ireland, and done more for the Catho- 
 lics of both kingdoms than had been done for them since 
 the reformation. In 1778, the ministers said nothing 
 about the royal conscience ; in 1793* no conscience ; in 
 1804 no conscience : the common feeling of humanity 
 and justice then seem to have had their fullest influence 
 upon the advisers of the crown : but in 1807— a year, I 
 
 * These feelings of humanity and justice were .it some periods a little 
 .quickened by the representatians of 4(1000 armed volunteers. 
 
suppose, eminently fruitful in moral and religious scruples 
 (as some years are fruitful in apples, some in hops) — it is 
 contended by the well paid John Bowles, and by Mr. Per- 
 ceval (who tried to be well paid) that that is now perjury 
 wjiich we had hitherto called policy and benevolence 1 
 Religious liberty has never made such a stride as under 
 the reign of his present Majesty ; nor is there any instance 
 in the annals of our history, where so many infamous and 
 damnable laws have been repealed, as those against the 
 Catholics, which have been put an end to by him : and 
 then, at the close of this noble and liberal policy, his ad- 
 visers discover that the very measures of concession and 
 indulgence, or (to use my own language) the measures of 
 Justice, which he has been pursuing through the whole of 
 his reign, are contrary to the oath he takes at its com- 
 mencement ! That oath binds his Majesty not to consent 
 to any measure contrary to the interest of the established 
 church ; but who is to judge of the tendency of each 
 particular measure ? Not the King alone ; it can never be 
 the intention of this law, that the King, who listens to the 
 advice of his parliament upon a road bill, should reject it 
 upon the most important of all measures : whatever be 
 his own private judgment of the tendency of any ecclesias- 
 tical bill, he complies most strictly with his oath, if he is 
 guided in that particular point by the advice of his parlia- 
 ment, who may be presumed to understand its tendency 
 better than the king or any other individual. You say, 
 if parliament had been unanimous in their opinion of the 
 absolute necessity for Lord Howick's bill, and the King 
 had thought it pernicious, he would have been perjured if 
 he had not rejected it. I say, on the contrary, his Majesty 
 would have acted in the most conscientious manner, and 
 have complied most scrupulously with his oath, if he 
 had. sacrificed his own opinion to the opinion of the great 
 council of the nation ; because the probability was, that 
 tsuch opinion was better than his own, and upon the same 
 principle in common life, you give up your opinion to 
 youi* physician, and to your lawyer and your builder. 
 
 You admit, this bill did not compel the King to elect 
 Catholic officers, but only gave him the option of doing 
 so if he pleased ; but you add, that the King was right in 
 not trusting such dangerous power tohimself orto his suc- 
 cessors. Now, you are either to suppose that the King for 
 the time being has a zeal for the Catholic establishment, or 
 tha,t he has not. If he has not, where is the danger of giv- 
 
8 
 
 ing such an option ? If you suppose that he may be influ- 
 enced b}^ such an admiration of the Catholic religion, 
 why did his present Majesty, in the years 1804, consent to 
 that bill which empowered the crown to station ten thou- 
 sand Catholic soldiers in any part of the kingdom, and 
 placed them absolutely at the disposal of the crown ? If 
 the King of England for the time being is a good Protes- 
 tant, there can be no danger in making the Catholic eligible 
 to any thing : if he is not, no power can possibly be so 
 dangerous as that conveyed by the bill last quoted ; 
 to which, in point of peril. Lord Howick's bill is a mere 
 joke. But the real fact is, one bill opened a door to his 
 Majesty's advisers for trick, jobbing, and intrigue ; the 
 other did not. 
 
 Besides, what folly to talk to me of an oath, which, un- 
 der all possible circumstances, is to prevent the relaxation 
 of the Catholic laws ! for such a solemn appeal to God sets 
 all conditions and contingencies at defiance. Suppose 
 Bonaparte were to retrieve the only very great blunder he 
 has made, and were to succeed, after repeated trials, in 
 making an impression upon Ireland, do you think we 
 should hear any thing of the impediment of a coronation 
 oath ? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an 
 hour such ministers, and such unheard of nonsense, if the 
 most distant prospect existed of conciliating the Catho- 
 lics by every species even of the most abject concession ? 
 And yet, if your argument is good for any thing, the co- 
 ronation oath ought to reject, at such a moment, every 
 tendency to conciliation, and to bind Ireland for ever to 
 the crown of France. 
 
 I found in your letter the usual remark about fire, fag- 
 got, and bloody Mary. Are you aware, my dear Priest, 
 that there were as many persons put to death for religious 
 opinions under the mild Elizabeth, as under the bloody 
 Mary ? The reign of the former was, to be sure, ten times 
 as long ; but I only mention the fact, merely to shew you 
 that something depends upon the age in which men live, 
 as well as on their religious opinions. Three hundred 
 years ago, men burnt and hanged each other for these opi- 
 nions. Time has softened Catholic as well as Protestant. 
 They both required it : though each perceives only his 
 own improvement, and is blind to that of the other. We 
 are all the creatures of circumstances. I know not a kin- 
 der and better man than j^ourself ; but you (if you had 
 lived in those times) would certainly have roasted your 
 
9 
 
 Catholic : and I promise you, if the first exciter of this 
 religious mob had been as powerful then as he is now, you 
 would soon have been elevated to the mitre. I do not go 
 the length of saying, that the world has suffered as much 
 from Protestant as from Catholic persecution ; far from 
 it : but you should remember, that the Catholics had all 
 the power, when the idea first started up in the world, that 
 there could be two modes of faith, and that it was much 
 more natural they should attempt to crush this diversity of 
 opinion by great and cruel efforts, than that the Protes- 
 tants should rage against those who differed from them, 
 when the very basis of their system was complete freedom 
 in all spiritual matters. 
 
 I cannot extend my letter any further at present, but 
 you shall soon hear from me again. You tell me, 1 am a 
 party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my 
 country in the hands of a pert London joker and a second 
 rate lawyer. Of the first, no other good is known than 
 that he makes pretty Latin verses ; the second seems to me 
 to have the head of a country parson and the tongue of 
 an Old Bailey lawyer. 
 
 If I could see good measures pursued, I care not a far- 
 thing who is in power ; but I have a passionate love for 
 common justice and for common sense, and I abhor and 
 despise every man who builds up his political fortune upon 
 their ruin. 
 
 God bless you, reverend Abraham, and defend you 
 from the Pope, and all of us from that administration, who 
 seek power by opposing a measure, which Burke, Pitt, 
 and Fox, all considered as absolutely necessary to the ex~ 
 istence of the country. 
 
 LETTEPt II. 
 
 Dear Abraham^ 
 
 The Catholic not respect an oath : why not ? Whcit 
 Upon earth has kept him out of Parliament, or excluded 
 him from all the offices whence he is excluded, but his re- 
 spect for oaths ? There is no lavv whicli prohibits a Catho» 
 lie to sit in Parliament, There could be no such law j 
 ^ B 
 
10 
 
 because it is impossible to find out what passes in the inte- 
 rior of any •i:!a^n's mind. Suppose it were in contempla- 
 tion to exclude all men from certain offices, who con- 
 tended for the legality of taking tythes, the only mode of 
 discovering that fervent love of decimation which 1 know 
 you to possess would be to tender you an oath " against that 
 '* damn 'ble doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man 
 " to take, abstract, appropriate, subduct, or lead awa}' 
 " the tenth calf, sheep, lamh, ox, pigeon, duck," &c. &c. 
 &c. and every othe- animal that -ever existed, which of 
 course the lawj^ers would take care to enumerate. Now 
 this oath I am sure you would rather die than take ; and 
 so the Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he 
 Vi'iW not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of 
 his religion ! The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths 
 which oppress him ; your answer is, that he does not re- 
 spect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths ? 
 The oaths keep him out of Parliament ; why then he re- 
 spects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws 
 are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obli- 
 gations as you are : But no eel in the wcll-sauded fist of a 
 cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted 
 and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is com- 
 pelled by the gripe of reason to admit any thing in favor 
 of a dissenter. 
 
 I will not dispute with jou whether the Pope be or be 
 not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. I hope it is not so ; 
 because I am afraid it will induce his Majesty's Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer to introduce several severe bills against 
 popery, if that is the case ; and though he will have the 
 decency to appoint a previous committee of enquiry as to 
 the fact, the committee will be garbled and the report in- 
 flammatory. Leaving this to be settled as he pleases to 
 settle it, 1 wish to inform you, that, previously to the bill 
 last passed in favor of the Catholics, at the suggestion of 
 Mr. Pitt, and for his satisfaction, the opinions of six of 
 the most celebrated of the foreign Catholic universities 
 were taken as to the right of the Pope to interfere in the 
 temporal concerns of any country. The answer cannot 
 possibly leave the shadow of a. doubt, even in the mind of 
 Baron Maseres ; and Dr. Rennel would be compelled to 
 admit it, if three Bishops lay dead at the very moment the 
 question were put to him. To this answer might be added 
 also the solemn declaration and signature of all the Catiic- 
 Hcs in Great Britain. 
 
11 
 
 I should perfectly agree with you, if the Catholics ad- 
 mitted such a dangerous dispensing power in the hands of 
 the Pope ; but they all deny it, and laugh at it, and are 
 ready to abjure it in the most decided manner you can de- 
 vise. They obey the Pope as the spiritual head of their 
 church ; but are you really so foolish as to be imposed 
 upon by mere names ? What matters it the seven thou- 
 sandth part of a farthing who is the spiritual head of any 
 church ? Is not Mr. Wilberforce at the head of the church 
 of Clapham ? Is not Dr. Lets<:)m ac the head of the Q,iiaker 
 church ? Is not the General Assembly at the iiead of the 
 church of Scotland ? How is the government disturbed by 
 these many-headed churches ? or in what way is the power 
 of the Crown augmented by this almost nominal dignity ? 
 
 The King appoints a fast day once a year ; and he makes 
 the Bishops : and if the government would take half the 
 pains to keep the Catholics out of the arms of France that 
 it does to widen Temple-Bar, or improve Snow-Hill, the 
 King would get into his hands the appointments of the 
 
 titular Bishops of Ireland. Both Mr. C 's sisters enjoy 
 
 pensions more than sufficient to place the two greatest dig- 
 nitaries of the Irish Catholic church entirely at the dispo- 
 sal of tlic crown. Every body who knows Ireland, knows 
 perfectly well, that nothing would be easier, with the ex- 
 penditure of a little money, than to preserve enough of 
 the ostensible appointment in the hands of the Pope to 
 satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomi- 
 nation remained with the Crown. But, as I have before 
 said, the moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, 
 the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, com- 
 mon prudence, and to common sense, and to act with the 
 barbarity of tyrauts and the fatuity of ideots. 
 
 Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the 
 Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies 
 of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly in 
 numbers, wealth, and intelligence, who, if himly united 
 with this country, would set at defiance the power of 
 France, and if once wrested from their alliance with Eng- 
 land, would in three years render its existence as an inde- 
 pendent nation absolutely impossible. You speak of dan- 
 ger to the establishment : I request to know when the 
 establishment was ever so much in danger as when Hoche 
 was in Bantry Bay, and whether all the books of Bossuet, 
 or the arts of the Jesuits, were half so terrible ? Mr. Per- 
 <ieval ^nd his parsons forget all this, in their horror les4 
 
' 12 
 
 twelve or fourteen old women may be concerted to holy 
 water and Catholic theology. They never see, that, while 
 they are saving these venerable ladies from perdition, Ire- 
 land may be lost, England broken down, and the Protes- 
 tant church with all its Deans, Prebends, Percevals and 
 Rennels, be swept into the vortex of oblivion. 
 
 Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me again the 
 name of Dr. Duigenan. I have been in every corner of 
 Ireland, and have studied its present strength and condi- 
 tion with no common labour. Be assured Ireland does 
 not contain at this moment less than five millions of peo- 
 ple. There were returned in the year 1791 to the hearth 
 tax 701,000 houses, and there is no kind of question that 
 there were about 50,000 houses omitted in that retjirn. — 
 Taking, however, only the number returned for the tax, 
 and allowing the average of six to a house (a very small 
 average for a potatoe fed people) this brings the popula- 
 tion to 4,200,000 people in the year 1791 ; and it can be 
 shewn from the clearest evidence, and Mr. Newenham in 
 his book shews it, that Ireland foir the last fifty years, has 
 increased in its population at the rate of 50 or 60,000 per 
 annum ; which leaves the present population of Ireland at 
 about five millions, after every possible deduction for eX" 
 isting ch^camsiances^ just and necessary wars, 7nonstrous 
 and wmatural rebellions, and all other sources of human 
 destruction. Of this population, two out of ten are Pro~ 
 testants ; and the half of the Protestant population are 
 Dissenters, and as inimical to the church as the Catholics 
 themselves. In this state of things, thumb-screws and 
 "whipping — admirable engines of policy, as they must be 
 considered to be — will not ultimately avail. The Catho- 
 lics will hang over you ; they will watch for the moment ; 
 and compel you hereafter to give them ten times as much, 
 against yoijr will, as they would now be contented with, 
 if it was voluntarily surrendered. Remember what hap- 
 pened in the American war : when Ireland compelled you 
 tq give her every thing she asked, and to renounce, in the 
 most explicit manner, your claim of sovereignty over her. 
 God Almighty grant the folly of these present men may not 
 bring on such another crisis of public affairs ! 
 
 What are your dangers which threaten the establish- 
 ment ? — Reduce this declamation to a point, and let us 
 understand what you mean. The most ample allowance 
 does not calculate that there would be more than twenty 
 pembers who were iiojpan Catholics in one houge, and 
 
13 
 
 ten in the other, if the Catholic emancipation were carried 
 into eflfect. Do you mean, that these thirty members 
 would bring in a bill to take away the tithes from the Pro- 
 testant, and to pay them to the Catholic clergy ? Do you 
 mean, that a Catholic general would march his army into 
 the House of Commons, and purge it of Mr. Perceval and 
 Dr. Duigenan ? or, that the theological writers would 
 become all of a sudden more acute and more learned, if 
 the present civil incapacities were removed ? Do you fear 
 for your tithes, or your doctrines, or your person, or the 
 English consitution? Every fear, taken separately, is so 
 glaringly absurd, that no man has the folly or the bold- 
 ness to state it. Every one conceals his ignorance, or his 
 baseness, in a stupid general panic, which, when called on, 
 be is utterly incapable of explaining. Whatever you 
 think of the Catholics, there they are— you cannot get 
 rid of them ; your alternative is, to give them a lawful 
 place for stating their grievances, or an unlawful one : if 
 you do not admit them to the House of Commons, they 
 will hold their parliament in Potatoe-place, Dublin, and 
 be ten times as violent and inflammatory as they would be. 
 in Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea of 
 security, as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in 
 Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics as the fair and 
 proper organ of their party. I should have thought it the 
 height of good fortune that such a wish existed on their 
 part, and the very essense of madness and ignorance to 
 reject it. Can you murder the Catholics ? Can you ne- 
 glect them ? They are too numerous fur both these ex- 
 pedients. What remains to be done is obvious to every 
 human being : — but to that man who, instead of being a 
 methodist preacher, is, for the curse of us and our chil- 
 dren, and for the ruin of Troy, and the misery of good 
 old Priam and his sons, become a legislator and a poli- 
 tician. 
 
 A distinction, I perceive, is taken, by one of the most 
 feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution 
 and the deprivation of political power ; whereas there is 
 no more distinction between these two things, than there 
 is between him who makes the distinction and a booby. 
 If I strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic, and 
 give him twenty stripes — I persecute : if I say, every- 
 body in the town where you live shall be a candidate for 
 lucrative and honourable offices but you, wiio are a Ca- 
 tholic~I do not persecute J— -What barbarous oonsense is 
 
u 
 
 this ! as if degradation was not as great an evil as bodily 
 pain, or as severe poverty : as if I could not be as great a 
 tj'rant by saying, you shall not enjoy — as by saying, you 
 shall suffer. The English, I believe, are as truly religi- 
 ous as any nation in Europe ; T know no greater blessing : 
 but it carries with it this evil in its train, that any villain 
 who will bawl out ^' the church is in danger /" may get a 
 place and a good pension ; and that any administration 
 who will do the same thing, may bring a set of men into 
 power who, at a moment of stationary and passive piety, 
 would be hooted b}' the very boys in the streets. But.it 
 is not all religion ; it is, in great part, that narrow and ex- 
 clusive spirit which delights to keep the common blessings 
 of sun and air and freedom from other human beings. — 
 *' Your religion has always been degraded ; you are in 
 *' the dust, and I will take care you never rise again. I 
 *' should enjoy less the possession of any earthly good, 
 ** by every additional person to whom it was extended." 
 You may not be aware of it yourself, most reverend Abra- 
 ham, but you deny their freedom to the Catholics upon 
 the same principle that Sarah your wife refuses to give the 
 receipt for a ham or a gooseberry dumplin : she values 
 her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain fla- 
 vour, but because they remind her that her neighbours 
 want them : — a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful 
 in a priest ; venial when it withholds the blessings of a 
 ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of 
 religipus freedom. 
 
 You spend a great deal of ink about the character of 
 the present prime-minister. Grant you all that you 
 write ; I say, I fear he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line 
 of policy destructive to the true interest of his country : 
 and then you tell me, he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval, and 
 kind to the master Percevals ! These, undoubtedly are 
 the first qualifications to be looked to in a time of the most 
 serious public danger ; but somehow or another, if public 
 and private virtues must always be incompatible, I should 
 prefer that he destroyed the domestic happiness of wood 
 or Cockrell, owed for the Veal of the preceding year, 
 whipped his boys, and saved his country. 
 
 The late administration did not do right; they did 
 not build their measure upon the solid basis of facts. — 
 They should have caused several Catholics to have been 
 dissected after death, by surgeons of either rehgion ; and 
 Lhe report to have been published with accompanying- 
 
15 
 
 plates. If the viscera and other organs of life had been 
 found to be the same as in Protestant bodies ; if the pro- 
 visions of nerves, arteries, cerebrum and cerebellum, had 
 been the same as we are provided with, or as the dissen- 
 ters are now known to possess ; then, indeed, they might 
 have met Mr. Perceval upon a proud eminence, and con- 
 vinced the country at lai'ge of the strong probability that 
 the Catholics are really human creatures, endowed with 
 the feelings of men, and entitled to all their rights. But 
 instead of this wise and prudent measure. Lord Howick, 
 with his usual precipitation, brings forward a bill in their 
 favor, without offering the slightest proof to the country 
 that they were any thing more than horses and oxen. The 
 person who shews the lama at the corner of Piccadilly 
 has the precaution to write up — Allowed by Sir Joseph. 
 Banks to be a real quadruped : so his lordship might have 
 said — Allowed 'ibij the Bench of Bishops to be real human 
 creatures. I could write you twenty letters upon this sub- 
 ject ; but I am tired, and so I suppose are you. Our 
 friendship is now of forty years standing : you know me 
 to be a truly religious man ; but I shudder to see religion 
 treated like a cockade, or a pint of beer, and made the 
 instrument of a party. I love the King, but I love the 
 people as well as the King ; and if I am sorry to see his 
 old age molested, I am much more sorry to see four mil- 
 lions of Catholics baffled in their just expectations. If [ 
 love Lord Greenville and Lord Howick, it is because they 
 love their country : if I abhor ****** it is because I 
 know there is but one man among them who is not laugh- 
 ing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, 
 and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for 
 the light and frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfor- 
 tune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this 
 political Killigrew, just before the breaking-up of the last 
 administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place ; 
 and if they had survived twenty-four hours longer, he 
 would have been now declaiming against the cry of No 
 Popery ! instead of inflaming it. With this practical 
 comment on the baseness of human nature, I bid you 
 adieu ! 
 
16 
 
 LETTER Iir. 
 
 All tbat 1 have so often told you, Mr. Abraham Plym- 
 ley, is now come to pass. The Scythians, in whom you 
 and the neighbouring country gentlemen placed such con- 
 fidence, are smitten hip and thigh ; their Benningsen put 
 to open shame ; their magazines of train-oil intercepted, 
 and we are waking from oufr disgraceful drunkenness to all 
 the horrors of Mr. Perceval and Mr. Canning. We shall 
 3)ow see if a nation is to be saved by school-boy jokes and 
 doggrell rhymes, b}' affronting petulance, and by the tones 
 and gesticulations of Mr. Pitt. But these are not all the 
 auxiliaries on which we have to depend ; to these his col- 
 league will add the strictest attention to the smaller parts 
 of ecclesiastical government, to hassocks, to psalters, and 
 to surplices ; in the last agonies of England, he will bring 
 in a bill to regulate Easter offerings ; and he will adjust 
 the stipends of curates,* when the flag of France is un- 
 furled on the hills of Kent. Whatever can be done by 
 very mistaken notions of the piety of a christian, and by 
 very wretched imitation of the eloquence of Mr. Pitt, 
 will be done by these two gentlemen. After all, if they 
 both really were what they both either wish to be, or wish 
 to be thought ; if the one were an enlightened christian, 
 who drew from the gospel the toleration, the charity, and 
 the sweetness which it contains ; and if the other really 
 possessed an}^ portion of the great understanding of his 
 Nisus who guarded him from the weapons of the Whigs, I 
 should still doubt if they could save us. But I am sure 
 we are not to be saved by religious hatred, and by religi- 
 ous trifling : by any psalmody, however sweet ; or by 
 any persecution, however sharp: 1 am certain the sounds 
 of Mr. Pitt's voice, and the measure of his tones, and the 
 movement of his arms, will do nothing for us ; when these 
 tones, and movements, and voice bring us always decla- 
 mation without sense or knowledge, and ridicule without 
 good humour, or conciliation. Oh, Mr. Plymley, Mr. 
 
 * The Reverend tlie Chancellor of the Exchequer, has since this was 
 vrltten found time in the heat of the session to write a book on the sti- 
 pends of curatf^s. 
 
17 
 
 Plymley, this never will do. Mrs. Abraham Plymley, my 
 sister, will be led away captive by an amorous Gaul ; 
 and Joel Plymley, your first-born, will be a French 
 drummer. 
 
 Out of sight, out of mind, seems to be a proverb which 
 applies to enemies as well as friends. Because the French 
 army was no longer seen from the cliffs of Dover ; because 
 the sound of cannon was no longer heard by the de- 
 bauched London bathers on the Sussex coast ; because 
 the Morning Post no longer fixed the invasion sometimes 
 for Monday, sometimes for Tuesday, sometimes (posi- 
 tively for the last time of invading) on Saturday ; because 
 all these causes of terror were suspended, you conceived 
 the power of Bonaparte to be at an end, and were setting 
 off for Paris, with Lord Hawkesbury the conqueror. — 
 This is precisely the method in which the English have 
 acted during the -whole of the revolutionary war. If 
 Austria or Prussia armed, doctors of divinity immedi- 
 ately printed those passages out of Habakkuk, in which 
 the destruction of the Usurper by General Mack, and the 
 Duke of Brunswick, are so clearly predicted. If Bona- 
 parte halted, there was a mutiny, or a dysentery. If any 
 one of his generals were eaten up by the light troops of 
 Kussia, and picked (as their manner is) to the bone, tlie 
 sanguine spirit of this country displayed itself in all its 
 glory. What scenes of infamy did the Society for the 
 Suppression of Vice lay open to our astonished eyes : 
 tradesmen's daughters dancing ; pots of beer carried out 
 between the first and second lesson ; and dark and distant 
 Tumours of indecent prints. Clouds of Mr. Canning's 
 cousins arrived by the waggons ; all the contractors left 
 their cards with Mr. Rose ; and every plunderer of the 
 public crawled out of his hole, like slugs, and grubs, ^nd 
 worms, after a shower of rain. 
 
 If my voice could have been heard at the late changes, 
 I should have said, " gently, patience; stop a little ; the 
 time is not yet come ; the mud of Poland will harden, and 
 the bowels of the French grenadiers will recover their 
 tone. When honesty, good sense, and liberality have ex- 
 tricated you out of your present embarrassment, then dis- 
 miss them as a matter of course ; but you cannot spare 
 them just now : don't be in too great an hurry, or there 
 will be no monarch to flatter, and no country to pillage ; 
 only submit for a little time to be respected abroad ; over- 
 look the painful absence of the tax-eathcrer for a fcvv 
 C 
 
18 
 
 years ; bear up nobly under the increase of freedom and 
 of liberal policy for a little time, and I promise you, at 
 the expiration of that period, you shall be plundered, in- 
 suited, disgraced, and restrained to your heart's content. 
 Do not iniagire I have any intention of putting scurrility 
 and canting hypocrisy permanently out of place, or of 
 jfii'ing up with courage and sense those offices which na- 
 turally devolve upon decorous imbecility and flexible 
 cunning : give us only a little time to keep olTthe hussars 
 of France, and then the jobbers and jesters shall return to 
 their birthright, and public virtue be called by its old name 
 of fanaticism."* Such is the advice I would have offered 
 to my inlatuated countrymen ; but it rained very hrrd in 
 Novcruber. Brother Abraham, and the bowels of oui ene- 
 mies were loosened, and we put our trust in white fluxes 
 and wet mud ; and there is nothing now to oppose to the 
 conqueror of the world, but a small table wit, and tijt sal- 
 low Surveyor of the Meltings. 
 
 You ask me, if I think it possible for this country to 
 survive the recent misfortunes of Europe ? — I answer you, 
 without '.he slightest degree of hesitation : that if Bona- 
 parte lives, and a great deal is not immediately done for 
 the conciliation of the Catholics, it does seem to me abso- 
 liiteiy impossible but that we must perish ; and take this 
 with yon. that we shall perish without exciting the slight- 
 est feeling of present or future compassion, but fall amidst 
 the hootings and revilings of Europe, as a nation of block- 
 heads, Methodists, and old women. If there were any 
 great scenery , any heroic feelings, any blaze of ancient 
 virtue, any exalted death, any termination of England 
 th3' would be ever remembered, ever honoured in that 
 western world, where liberty is now retiring, conquest 
 would be more tolerable, and ruin more sweet ; but it is 
 doubly m; >erable to become slaves abroad, because we 
 v/ould be tyrants at home ; to persecute, when we are con- 
 tending against persecution ; and to nerish, becaufe we 
 have raised up worse enemies within, from our own bigot- 
 
 * Tlus is Mr. Canning-'s term for the detection of public abuses j a 
 term invented by him, and adopted by that simious parasite who is always 
 grn-.ning' at his heels. Nature descends down to infinite smallness. Mr. 
 Cantnng' has his parasites ; and if you take a large buzzing- blue-bottle 
 fly, and look at it in a microscope, you may see twenty or thirty little 
 Ufjly insects crawling abovit it, which doubtles think their fly to be tl\e 
 bluest, grandest, merriest, most important animal in the universe, imil 
 are conrinced the world would be at an end if it ceased to buz. 
 
19 
 
 ry, than we are exposed to without from the unprincipled 
 ambiaon of France. It is, indeed, a most silly and afflict- 
 ino- spectacle to rage at such a moment against our own 
 kindred, ad our own blood ; to tell them rhey cannot be - 
 honorable in war, because they are conscientious in reli- 
 gion ; to stipulate (at the very moment when we should 
 buy their hearts and swords at any price) that they must 
 hold up the right hand in prayer, and not the left ; and 
 adore one common God, by turning to the east, rather 
 than to the west. 
 
 What is it the Catholics ask of you ? Do not exclude us 
 from the honours and emoluments of the State, because 
 we worship God in one way, and you worship him in ano- 
 ther, — in a period of the' deepest peace, and the fattest 
 prosperity, this would be a fair request ; it should be 
 granted, if Lord Hawkesbury had reached Paris, if Mr. 
 Canning's interpreter had threatened the Senate in an 
 opening speech, or Mr. Perceval explained to them the 
 improvements he meant to introduc into the C..''iolic reli- 
 gion ; but to deny the Irish this justice now, in the pre- 
 sent state of Ekirope, and in the summer months, just as the 
 season for destroying kingdoms is coming on, is (beloved 
 Abraham), whatever you may think of it, little short of 
 positive insanity. 
 
 Here is a frigate attacked by a corsair of immense 
 strength and size ; rigging cut, masts in uanger of coming 
 by the board, four foot water in the hok , men dropping 
 off very fast ; in this dreadful situation, how do thiok the 
 captain acts (whose name shajl be Peixeval) ? He calls all 
 hands upon deck ; talks to them of king, countev, glory, 
 sweethearts, gin, French prison, wooden shoes, (*ld Eng- 
 land, and hearts of oak: they give three cheers, rush to 
 their guns, and after a tremendous contiict, succeed in 
 beating off the enemy. Not a syllable of all this ; this is 
 n»t the manner in which the honourable Commander goes 
 to work : the first thing he does is to secure twenty or 
 thirty of his prime sailors who happen to be Catholics, to 
 clap them in irons, and set over them a guard of as many 
 Protestants ; having taken this admirable method of defend- 
 ing himself against his infidel opponents, he goesupon deck, 
 reminds the sailors, in a very bitter harangue, that they are 
 of different religions ; exhorts the Episcopal gunner not 
 to trust to the Presbyterian quarter-master ; issues posi- 
 tive orders that the Catholics should be fired at upon the 
 first appearance of discontent 5 rushes through blood and 
 
20 
 
 brains, examining his men in the Catechism and thirty- 
 nine Articles, and positively forbids every one to spunge 
 or ram, who has not taken the sacrament according to 
 the church of England. Was it right to take out a Cap- 
 tain made of excellent British stuff, and to put in such a 
 man as this ? Is not he more like a parson, or a talking 
 lawyer, than a thorough-bred seamen ? And built as she 
 is of heart of oak, and admirably manned, is it possible 
 with such a Captain to save this ship from going to the 
 bottom ? , 
 
 You have an argument, I perceive, in common with 
 many others against the Catholics, that their demands 
 couiplied with would only lead to farther exactions, and 
 that it is better to resist them now, before any thing is 
 conceded, than hereafter, when it is found that all con- 
 cessions are in vain. I wish the Chancellor of the Exche- 
 quer, who uses this reasoning to exclude others from their 
 just rights, had tried its efficacy, not by his understand- 
 ing, but by (what are full of much better things) his pock- 
 ets. Suppose the person to whom he applied for the 
 Meltings had withstood every plea of wife and fourteen 
 children, no business and good character, and refused him 
 this paltry, little office, because he might hereafter at- 
 tempt to get hold of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancas- 
 ter for Ufe. Would not Mr. Perceval have contended 
 eagerlj- against the injustice of refusing moderate requests, 
 * because immoderate ones may hereafter be made ? Would ' 
 he not have said (and said truly) leave such exorbitant . 
 attempts as these to the geyeral indignation of the Com- 
 mons, who will take care to defeat them when they do 
 occur ; but do not refuse me the Irons and the Meltings 
 Tiow, because I may totally lose sight of all moderation 
 hereafter. Leave hereafter to the spirit and the wisdom of 
 hereafter ; and do not be niggardly now, from the appre- 
 hension that men as wise as you should be profuse in times 
 to come. 
 
 You forget. Brother Abraham, that it is a vast art 
 (where quarrels cannot be avoided) to turn the public 
 opinion in your favour, and to the prejudice of your ene- 
 my ; a vast privilege to feel that you are in the right, and 
 to make him feel that he is in the wrong ; a privilege 
 which makes you more than a man, and your antagonist 
 less ; and often secures victory, by convincing him who 
 contends, that he must submit to injustice, if he submits 
 to defeat. Open every rank in the army aod the navy to 
 
21 
 
 the Catholic ; let him purchase at the same price as the 
 Protestant (if either Catholic or Protestant can purchase 
 such refined pleasures) the privilege of hearing Lord 
 Castlereagh speak for three hours ; keep his clergy from 
 starving, soften some of the most odious powers of the 
 tjthing-man, and you will for ever lay this formidable 
 question to rest. But if I am wrong, and you must quar- 
 rel at last, quarrel upon just, rather than unjust grounds; 
 divide the Catholic, and unite the Protestant ; be just, and 
 your own exertions will be more formidable, and their ex- 
 ertions less formidable ; be just, and you will take away 
 from their party all the best and wisest understandings of 
 both persuasions, and knit them firmly to your own cause. 
 " Thrice is he armed, who has his quarrel just ;" and ten 
 times as much may he be taxed. In the beginning of any 
 war, however destitute of common sense, every mob will 
 roar, and every Lord of the Bedchamber address ; but if , 
 you are engaged in a war that is to last for years, and to 
 require important sacrifices, take care to make the justice 
 of your case so clear and so obvious, that it cannot be mis- 
 taken by the most illiterate country gentleman who rides 
 the earth. Nothing, in fact, can be so grossly absurd as 
 the argument which says, I will deny justice to you now, 
 because I suspect future injustice from you. At this rate 
 you may lock a man up in your stable, and refuse to let 
 him out because you suspect that he has an intention, at 
 tome future period, of robbing your hen-roost. You may 
 horsewhip him at Lady-day, because you believe he will 
 affront you at Midsummer. You may commit a greater 
 evil, to guard agamst a less, which is merely contingent, 
 and may never happen. You may do what you have done 
 a century ago in Ireland, made the Catholics worse than 
 Helots, because you suspected that they might hereaftfer 
 aspire to be more than fellow citizens ; rendering their 
 sufferings certain from your jealousy, while yours were 
 only doubtful from their ambition ; an ambition sure to 
 be excited by the very measures which were taken to pre- 
 vent it. 
 
 The physical strength of the Catholics will not be 
 greater because you give them a share of political power. 
 You may by these means turn rebels into friends ; but I 
 do not see how you make rebels more formidable. If they 
 taste of the honey of lawful power, they will love the hive 
 from whence they procure it ; if they will struggle with us 
 Jikemc'j in the same state for civil influence, we are safe. 
 
22 
 
 All that I dread is, the physical strength of four millions of 
 men combined with an invading French army. If you 
 are to quarrel at last with this enormous population, still 
 put it off as long as you can ; you must gain and cannot 
 lose by the delay. The state of Europe cannot be worse ; 
 the conviction which the catholics entertain of your ty- 
 ranny and injustice cannot be more alarming, nor the opi- 
 nions of your own people more divided. Time, which 
 produces such effect upon brass and marble, may inspire 
 one minister with modesty, and another with compassion ; 
 every circumstance may be better ; some certainly will be 
 so, none can be worse ; and, after all, the evil may never 
 happen. 
 
 You have got hold, I perceive, of all the vulgar English 
 stories respecting the hereditary transmission of forfeited 
 property, and seriously believe that every Catholic beg- 
 gar wears the titles of his father's land next his skin, and is 
 only waiting for better times to cut the throat of the Pro- 
 testant possessor, and get drunk in the hall of his ances- 
 tors. There is one irresistable answer to this mistake, and 
 that is, that the forfeited lands are purchased indiscrimi- 
 nately by Catholic and Protestant, and that the Catholic 
 purchaser never objects to such a title. Now the land (so 
 purchased by a Catholic) is either his own family estate, 
 or it is not. If it is, you suppose him so desirous of com-v 
 ino- into possession, that he lesorts to the double method 
 of rebellion and purchase ; if it is not his own family 
 estate of which he becomes the purchaser, you suppose 
 him first to purchase, then to rebel, in order to defeat the 
 purchase. These things may happen in Ireland ; but it is 
 totally impossible they can happen any where else. In 
 fact, what land can any man, of any sect, purchase in Ire- 
 land, but forfeited property ? In all other oppressed coun- 
 tries which I have ever heard of, the rapacity of the con- 
 queror was bounded by the territorial limits in which the 
 objects of his avarice were contained ; but Ireland has 
 been actually confiscated twice over, as a cat is twice 
 killed by a wicked parish-boy. 
 
 I admit there is a vast luxury in selecting a particular 
 set of christians, and in worrying them as a boy worries a 
 puppy dog ; it is an amusement in which all the young 
 English are brought up from their earliest days. I like 
 the idea of saying to men who use a different hassock from 
 me, that till they change their hassock, they shall never 
 be Colonels, Aldermen, or Parliament-men. While I am 
 
23 
 
 gratifying my personal insolence respecting religious forms, 
 I'fondle myself into an idea that I am religious, and that I 
 am doing my duty in the most exemplary (as I certainly am 
 in the most eas}') vvay. But then, my good Abraham, this 
 sport, admirable as it is, is become, with respect to the Ca- 
 tholics, a little dangerous ; and if we are not extremely care- 
 ful in taking the amusement, we shall tumble into the holy 
 water, and be drowned. As it seems necessary to your 
 idea of an established church, to have somebody to worry 
 and torment, suppose we were to select for this purpose 
 William Wilberforce, Esq. and the patent christians of 
 Clapham. We shall by this expedient enjoy the same op- 
 portunity for cruelty and injustice, without being exposed 
 to the same risks : we will compel them to abjure vital 
 clergj'men by a public test ; to deny that the said Wil- 
 liam Wilberforce has any power of working miracles, 
 touching for barrenness, or any other infirmity, or that he 
 is endowed with any preternatural gift whatever. We 
 will swear them to the doctrine of good works, compel 
 them to preach common sense, and to hear it ; to frequent 
 Bishops, Deans, and other high Churchmen ; and to ap- 
 pear (once in the quarter at the least) at some Melodrama, 
 Opera, Pantomime, or other light scenical representation : 
 in short, we will gratify the love of insolence and power ; 
 we will enjoy the old orthodox sport of witnessing the im- 
 potent anger of men compelled to submit to civil degra- 
 dation, or to sacrifice their notions of truth to ours. And 
 all this we may do without the slightest risk, because their 
 numbers are (as yet) not very considerable. Cruelly and 
 injustice must, of course, exist ; but why connect them 
 with danger ? Why torture a bull-dog, when you can get 
 a frog or a rabbit ? I am sure my proposal will meet with 
 the most universal approbation. Do not be apprehensive 
 o/any opposition from ministers. If it is a case of hatred, 
 we are sure that one man will defend it by the gospel ; if 
 it abridges human freedom, we know that another will 
 find precedents for it in the revolution. 
 
 In the name of heaven, what are we to gain by suffer- 
 ing Ireland to be rode by that faction which now predomi- 
 nates over it ? Why are we to endanger our own Church 
 and State, not for 500,000 Episcopalians, but for ten or 
 twelve great Orange families, who have been sucking the 
 blood of that country for these hundred years last past ? 
 
2i 
 
 and the folly of the Orange men* in playing this game 
 themselves, is almost as absurd as our in playing it for 
 them. They ought to have the sense to see that their bu- 
 siness now is to keep quietlv the lands and beeves of vjrhich 
 the fathers of the Catholics were robbed in days of yore ; 
 they must give to their descendants the sop of political 
 power : by contending with them for names, they will lose 
 realities, and be compelled to beg their potatoes in a fo- 
 reign land, abhorred equally by the English, who have 
 witnessed their oppression ; and by the Catholic Irishj 
 who have smarted under them. 
 
 LETTER IV 
 
 Then comes Mr, Isaac Hawkins Brown (the gentleman 
 who dancedf so badly at the Court of Naples) and asks, if 
 it is not an anomaly to educate men in another religion 
 than your own ? It certainly is our duty to get rid of er- 
 ror, and above all of religious error ; but this is not to be 
 done per saltuni, or the measure will miscarry like the 
 Queen. It may be y.try easy to dance away the royal 
 embryo of a great kingdom ; but Mr. Hawkins Brown 
 must look before he leaps, when his object is to crush an 
 opposite sect in religion ; false steps aid the one effect, as 
 much as they are fatal to the other : it will require not only 
 the lapse of Mr. Hawkins Brown, but the lapse of. cen- 
 turies, before they can eradicate the Catholic religion ; 
 four millions of Catholics are better than four millions of 
 wild beasts ; two hundred priests educated by our ovvfi 
 
 • This remark begins to be sensibly felt In Ireland ; Ulc Protestants 
 iin Ireland are fast coming over to the Catholic cause, 
 
 •}• In the third year of his present Majestj , and in '.he oOtli of his owa 
 age, Mr. Jsaac Hawkins Brown, then upon his travels, danced one even, 
 ing at the Court of Naples, His dress v/as a volcano silk, with lava, but- 
 tons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) l.-. had studied dancing 
 under St. Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his mo- 
 <ie\, is not known ; but Mr, Brown danced witii such Inconceivable ala- 
 crity and vigour, that he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of 
 laughter, which terminated in a miscaiTiage, and chang^ed the dynasty oT 
 "the Neapolitan throne. 
 
25 
 
 government, are better than the same number educated by 
 the man who means to destroy us. 
 
 The whole sum now appropriated by government to 
 the religious education of four millions of chris ians is 
 <£ 13,000 ; a sum about one hundred limes as large being 
 a; propriated in the same country to about one eighth part 
 of this number of Protestants. When it was proposed to 
 raise this grant from 06 8 ,000 to 13,000, its [.resent amount, 
 this sum was o' jected to by that most indulgent of chris- 
 tians, Mr. Spencer Perceval, as enormous ; he himself 
 having secured for his own eating and drinking, and the 
 eating and drinking of the Master and Miss Percevals, the 
 reversionary sum of <£2l,000 a year of the public money, 
 and having just failed in a desperate and rapacious attempt 
 to secure to himself for life the revenues of the Duchy 
 of Lancaster : and the best of it is, that this minister, 
 after abusing his predecessors for their impious bounty to 
 the Catholics, has found himself compelled, from the ap- 
 prehension of ii). mediate danger, to grant the sum in 
 question ; thus dissolving his pearl* in vinegar, and de- 
 stroying all the value of the gift, by the virulence and re- 
 luctance with which it was granted. 
 
 I bear from some persons in Parliament;, and from 
 others in the sixpenny societies for debate, a great deal 
 about unalterable laws passed at the tlevolutioa. When 
 I hear any man taik of an unalterable law, the only effect 
 it produces upon me, is to convince me that he is an unal- 
 terable fool. A law passed when there v\as Germany, 
 Spam, r ussia, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, and Turkey ; 
 when there was a disputed succession ; when four or five 
 hundred acres were won and lost atten ten years hard 
 fighting ; when armies were connnancied by the sons of 
 Kings, and campaigns passed in an interchange of civil 
 letters and ripe fruit ; and for these la s, w'ien the whole 
 state of the world is completely changed, we are now, ac- 
 cording to m} Lord Hawkesbury, to ho d ourselves ready 
 to perish. It is no mean mis.ortune, in tiuivS like these, 
 to be forced to say any thi. g about such n}en ai> Lord 
 Hawkesbury, and to be re, :inded that we are goverm d by 
 them ; but as 1 am driven to i , I must take the liberty of 
 observing, that the wisdom and liberalit o!" my Lord 
 Ha kcsbury are of that complexion which always shrinks 
 
 * Perfectly ready at the same time to follow the other half of Cleopa- 
 tra's example, and to swaiigw the solution himself. 
 
 D 
 
26 
 
 from the present exercise of these virtues, b}'' praisinrg the 
 splendid examples of hem in ages past. If he had lived 
 at such periods, he would have opposed the Revolution by 
 praisin^r the Reformation, and the Keformation by speak- 
 ing handsomely of the Crusades. He gratifies his natu-^ 
 ral antipathy to great and courageous measures, by play* 
 ing off the w sdom and courage which have ceased to in- 
 fluence human affairs, against that wisdom and courage 
 which living men would employ for present happiness. — 
 Besides, it happens unfortunately for the Warden of the 
 Cinque Ports, that to the principal incapacities under 
 which the Irish suffer, they were subjected after that great 
 and glorious Revolution, to which we are indebted for so 
 many blessings, and his Lordship for the termination of 
 so many periods. The Catholics were not excluded from 
 the Irish House of Commons, or mil tary commands, be- 
 fore the 3d and 4th of William and Mary, and tUe 1st and 
 2no of Queen Anne. 
 
 It the great mass of the people, environesl ss they are 
 on e ery side with Jenkinsons, Percevals, Meivi lies, and 
 other perils, were to pray for divine illumination and aid, 
 what more could Providence in its mercy do, than send 
 them the example of Scotland ? For what a length of years 
 was It attempted to compel the Scotch to change their re- 
 lig'on : horse, foot, artillery , and armed Prebendaries were 
 sent out after the Presbyterian parsons, and their congre- 
 gations. The Percevals of those days called for blood : 
 this call is never made in vain, and blood was shed ; bift, 
 to the as omshment and horror of the Percevals of those 
 days, they could not introduce the book of common 
 pra}er, nor revent that nieta|:hysical people from going 
 to heaven their true way, instead of our true way. With 
 a little oatmeal for food, and a little sulphur for friction, 
 allaying cutaneous irritation with the one hand, and hold- 
 ing his calvinistical creed in the other, Sawney ran away 
 to his tiinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, 
 and listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the 
 r; uoh and mij osing melancholy of the tallest thistles. Bat 
 Sa ney brought up his u breached offspring in a cordial 
 hatred of his oppressors ; and Scotland was as much a 
 part of the uea^ness of Kngland then, as Ireland is at this 
 moment. The true and the only remedy was applied ; 
 the Scotch were suffered to worship God after their own 
 tiresome manner, without pain, penalty, and privation. 
 Ko lightnings descended from iieaven ; the country was 
 
27 
 
 not ruined ; the world is not yet come to an end ; the 
 dignitaries, who foretold all these consequences, are ut- 
 terly forgotten ; and Scotland has ever since been an in- 
 creasing" source ot strength to Great Britain. In the six 
 hundredth year of our empire over Ireland, we are mak- 
 ing laws to transport a man, if he is fou d out of his 
 house after eigh. o'clock at night. Thac this is neces- 
 sary, I know too weil ; but tell me whv is it necessary ? 
 It IS not necessary in Greece, where the Turks are mas- 
 ters. 
 
 Are you aware, that there is at this moment an univer- 
 sal clamour throughout tiie whole of Irelan I against the 
 Union ? It is now one month since I returned from that 
 country : I have never seen so e\traordmary. so alarming, 
 and so rapid a change in the sentiments ot any people. 
 Those who disliked the Union before, are quite furious 
 against it now ; those who doubted, doubt no more; those 
 who were friendly to it have exchanged that friendship 
 for the most rooted aversion ; in the midst of all this 
 (which is by far the most alarming symptom) there is the 
 strongest disposition on the part of the Northern Dissen- 
 ters to unite with the Catholics, irritated by the faithless 
 injustice with which they have been treated. If this com- 
 bination does take place (mark what I say to you), you 
 will have meetings all over Ireland for the cry of No Uni- 
 on ; that cry will s read like wild-fire, and blaze over 
 every opposit on ; and if this is the case, there is no use 
 in nnncing the matter, Ireland is gone, and the death-blow 
 of England is struck ; and this event may happen instant- 
 ly — before Mr. Canni' g and Mr. Hookham P>ere have 
 turned Lord Howick'slast speech into doggrell rhyme ; 
 before " the near and dear relations''' have received ano- 
 ther quarter of their pension, or Mr. Perceval conducted 
 the Curates' Salary Bill safely to a third reading. — If the 
 mind of the English peoj^le, cursed as the}' now are with 
 that madness of religious dissension, which has been 
 breathed into them for the purposes of private ambition, 
 can be alarmed by any remembrances, and warned by any 
 events, they should never forget how nearly Ireland was 
 lost to this country during the American war ; that it was 
 saved merely by the jealousy of the Protestant Irish 'o- 
 wards the Catholics, then a much more insignificant and 
 powerless body than they now are. The Catholic and the 
 Dissenter have since combined together against you. Last 
 W^'y the winds, those ancient and unsubsidized allies oi 
 
28 
 
 jEngland ; the winds, upon which English ministers de- 
 pemj as much or saving kingdoms, as washer wo. nen do 
 for dryino clothes ; the winds stood your fr;ends ; the 
 ■pre eh could only get into Ireland in small numbers, and 
 the rebels were defeated. Since then, all the re raining 
 kingdoms of Europe have been destroyed ; and the lriv».h 
 see that heir national indcfjendence is gone, without hav- 
 ing received any smgle one of those advantages w- icf> t';ey 
 were taugrht to expect from the sacrifice. Al good things 
 were to flow from the Union ; they have none of them 
 gained any thing. Every man's pride is woun. ed by it ; 
 no man's interest is promoted. In the seventh year of that 
 Union, four million Catholics, lured by all kinds cf pro- 
 mises I'o yield up the separate dignity and sovereignty of 
 their country, are forced to squabble with such a man as 
 Mr. Spencer Perceval for five thousand p unds with which 
 to educate their children in their own mode of worship ; 
 he, the same Mr. S^jencer, having secured to his own 
 Protestant self a reversi nary portion of the public money 
 amountiiig to four times that sum. A senior Proctor of 
 the University of Oxford, or the head of a house, or the 
 examining Chaplain to a Bishop, may believe these things 
 can last; but every man of the world, vvhose understand- 
 ing has been exercised in the business of life, must see (and 
 see with a breaking heart) that they will soon come to a 
 fearful term nation. 
 
 Our conduct to Ireland, dur'ng the whole of th s war, 
 has beeb that o" a man who subscribes to hosj itals, weeps 
 at charity sermons, carries out broth and blankets to beg- 
 gars, and then comes home and beats his wife and chil- 
 dren. We had comMassion for the victims of all other op- 
 pression and injustice, except our own. If Switzerland 
 was threatene:, away' went a Treasury Clerk with a hun- 
 dred thousand pounds lor Switzerland ; large bags of 
 money were kept constantly under sailing orders ; upon 
 the lightest demonstration towards Naples, dow^. went 
 Sir William Hamilton upon his knees, and be-^rged for the 
 love of St. Januarius they would help us off with a little 
 money ; all the arts of Machiavel were resorted to, to per- 
 suade EurOj e to borrow ; troops were sent off in all direc- 
 tions to save the Catholic and Protestant world ; the Pope 
 himself was guarded by a regiment of English dragoons ; 
 if the Grand Lama had been at hand, he would have had 
 another; every Catholic Clergyman, who had the good 
 fortune to be neither English nor Irish, was immediately 
 
29 
 
 provided with lodging, soup, crucifix, missal, chapel- 
 beads, relics, and holy water ; if Turks had Ian Jed, 
 Turks would have received an order from the Treasary 
 for coffee, o^-ium, korans, and seraglios. In the midst of 
 aii this fury of saving and defending, this crusade for 
 conscience and Christianity, there was an universal agree- 
 ment among all descriptions of people to continue every 
 S; ecies of internal ersecution ; to- deny at home every 
 just r.ght that had been denied before ; to punimei ooor 
 Dr. Abraham Uees and his Dissenters ; and to treat the 
 unhappy Catholics of Ireland as if their tongues were mute, 
 their heels cloven, their nature brutal, and designedly sub- 
 jected by Providence to their Oran^^e masters. 
 
 How w.^uld my admirable bru.ner, the Jlev. Abraham 
 Plymiey, like to be marchea to a Catholic cha,el, to be 
 sprinkled with the sanctified conte ts of a pump, to hear a 
 number of false cjuantities in the Latin ong e, and to see 
 a number ot persons occupied in making right angles u^pon, 
 the breast and forehe d ? And if all this would give you 
 so much paiu, what right have you to march Catholic sol- 
 diers to a place of worship, where there is no as, ersion, no 
 rectangular gestures, and where thev understand every 
 W'TU they hear, h ving first, in order to get him to en- 
 list, made a solemn promise to the contrary ? -Can you 
 wonder, after this, that the Catholic priest stops the re- 
 cruiting in Ireland, as he is now doing to a most alarming 
 degree ? 
 
 The late question concerning military rank did not in- 
 dividually atfect the lowest persons of the Catholic persua- 
 sion ; but do you imagine they do not sympathise with 
 the honour and disgrace of their super ors ? Do you think 
 that satisfaction and disaffection do not travel down from 
 Lord Fingal to the most potatoeless Catholic in Ireland, 
 and that the glory or shame of the sect is not felt by many 
 more than these conditions personally and corporeally 
 affect ? Do you suppose that the detection of ::ir Henry 
 Mildmay, and the disappointment of Mr. Perceval in the 
 matter of the Duchy of Lancaster, did not affect every 
 dabbler in public property ? De end upon it these things 
 were felt through all the gradations (^f small plunderers, 
 down to him who filches a pound of tobacco irom the 
 King's ware-houses; while, on the contrary, the acquittal 
 of any noble and oflficial thief would not fail to diffuse the 
 most heart-felt satisfaction over the larcerous and bungla- 
 jious world, pbserve, I do not say because the lower 
 
so ■ 
 
 Catholics are affected by what concerns their superiors, 
 that they are not affected by what concerns themselves. — 
 There is no disguising the horrid truth ; there inust be 
 some relaxation with respect to tyihe : this is the cruel and 
 heart-rending price which must be paid for national pre- 
 servation. I feel how little existence will be worth hav- 
 ing, if any alteration, however slight, is made in the pro- 
 perty of Irish Rectors ; I am conscious how much such 
 changes must affect the daily and hourly comforts of every^ 
 E) glishman ; I shall feel too happy if they leave Europe 
 untouched, and are not ultimately fa al to the destinies of 
 America; but I am madly bent upon keeping f reiga 
 enemies out of the British Empire, and my limited under- 
 standing presents me with no other means of effecting my 
 object. 
 
 You talk of waiting till another reign, before any alter- 
 ation is made ; a proposal full of good sense and ii;ood 
 nature, if the measure in question were to pull down St. 
 James's Palace, or to a'ter Kew Gardens. Will Bona- 
 parte agree to put off his intrigues, and his invasion of 
 Ireland? If so I will overlook the question of justice, and 
 finding the danger suspended, agree to the delay. I sin- 
 cerely hope this re'gn may last many years, yet the delay 
 of a single session of Parliament may be fatal ; but if ano- 
 ther year elapses without some serious concession made to 
 , the Catholics, I believe, before God, that all future 
 pledges and concessions will be made in vain. I do not 
 think that peace will do you any good under such circum- 
 stances : if Bonaparte gives 30U a respite, it will only be 
 to get ready the gallows on which he means to hang you. 
 The Catholic and the Dissenter can unite in peace as well 
 as war. If they do, the gallows is ready ; and your exe- 
 cutioner, in spite of the most solemn promises, will turn 
 you off the next hour. 
 
 With every disposition to please (where to please 
 within fair and rational limits is an high duty), it is im- 
 possible for public men to be long silent about the Catho- 
 lics : pressing evils are not got rid of, because they are 
 not talked of. A man may command his family to say 
 nothing mere about the stone and surgical operations ; 
 but tne ponderous malice still lies upon the nerve, and 
 gets so big, that the patient breaks his own law of silence, 
 clamours for the knife, and expires under its late opera- 
 tion. Believe me, you talk folly, when you speak of sup- 
 pressing the Catholic question. I wish to God the case 
 
3L 
 
 admitted of such a remedy : bad as it is, it does not admit 
 of it. If the wants of the Catholics are not heard in the 
 manly tones of Lord Grenville, or the servile drawl of 
 Lord Castiereagh, they will be heard ere long in the mad- 
 ness of mobs, and the conflicts of armed men. 
 
 I observe, it is now universally the fashion to speak of 
 the first personage in tiie state as the great obstacle to the 
 measure. In the first place, I am not bound to believe 
 such rumours because I hear them ; and in the next place, 
 I object to such language, as unconstitutional. Whoever 
 retains his situation in the ministr;;, while the incapacities 
 of the Catholics remain, is the advocate for those incapa- 
 cities ; and to him, and to him only, am I to look for res- 
 posibility. But wave this question of the Catholics, and 
 put a general case : How is a minister of this country to 
 act, xvhen the conscientious scruples of his Sovereign pre- 
 vent the execution of a measure deemed by him absoluteh'' 
 necessary to the safety of the country ? His conduct is 
 quite clear— he should resign. But '.vhat is his successor 
 to do ? — Resign, But is the King to be left without mini- 
 sters, and is he in this manner to be compelled to act 
 against his own conscience ? Before I answer this, pray 
 tell me, in my turn, what better defence is there against 
 the. machinations of a wicked or the errors of a weak mo- 
 narch, than the impossibility of finding a minister who will 
 lend himself to vice and folly ? Every English Monarch, 
 in such a predicament, would sacrifice his opinions and 
 views to such a clear expression of the public will ; and it 
 is one method in which the Constitutiofi aims at briiigijig 
 about such a sacrifice. You may say, if you please, that 
 the ruler of a state is forced to give up his object, when the 
 natural love of place and power will tempt no one to assist 
 him in its attainment. This may be force ; but it is force 
 without inj^ury,and therefore without blame. I am not to be 
 beat out of these obvious reasonings, and ancient consti- 
 tutional provisions, by the term conscience. There isaio 
 fantasy, however wild, that a man may not persuade him- 
 self that he cherishes from motives of conscience : eternal 
 war against impious France, or rebellious America, or Ca- 
 tholic Spain, may in times to come be scruples of consci- 
 ence. One English Monarch may, from scruples of con- 
 science, wish to abolish every trait of religious persecu- 
 tion ; another Monarch may deem it his absolute and in- 
 dispensable duty to make a slight provision for Dissenters 
 «ut of the revenues of the Church of JSaigland. So that 
 
$2 
 
 you see, Brother Abraham, there are cases where it would 
 be t ,e dun of the best and most loyal subjects to oppose 
 the conscientious scruples of their sovereign, still taking 
 care hat their actions were constitutional, and their modes 
 res- ectful. Then you come upon me with personal ques- 
 tions, and saj', that no such dangers are to be apprehended 
 now under our present p^^racious Sovereign, of whose good 
 qualities we must be all so well convinced. All these sort 
 of discussions 1 beg leave to decline ; what I have said 
 tjpon constitutional topics, I mean, of course, for general, 
 not for particular applicat on. I agree with you mall the 
 good you have said oi the powers that be, and I avail my- 
 self of the o^^portun ty of i ointing out general dangers to 
 the Constitution, at a moment when we are so completely 
 exempted from their present influence. I cannot finish 
 this letter, without expressing my surprise and pleasure at 
 your abuse of the servile addresses poured in upon the 
 Throne ; nor can I conceive a greater disgust to a Mo- 
 narch, with a true English heart, than to see such a ques- 
 tion as that of Catholic emancipation argued, nut with a 
 reference to its justice or its importance, but universally 
 consiaered to be of no farther consequence than as it af- 
 fects his own private feelings. That these sentiments 
 should be mine, is not wonderful ; but how they came 
 to be yours, does, I confess, fill me with surprise. Are 
 you moved by the arrival of the Irish Brigade at Ant- 
 werp, and the amorous violence which awaits Mrs. Plym- 
 ley ? 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Dear Abraham j 
 
 I NEVER met a parson in my life, who did not consider 
 the Corporation and Test Acts as tlie great bulwarks of the 
 Church ; and yet it is now just sixty -four years since bills 
 of indemnity to destroy their penal effects, or, in other 
 words, to repeal them, have been passed annually as a mat^ 
 terof course. These bulwarks, without which no clergy- 
 man thinks he could sleep with his accustomed soundness, 
 
33 
 
 have actually not been in existence since any man now 
 livin.o;' has taken holy orders. Kvery year the indemnity 
 act pardons i ast breaches of these two laws, and prevents 
 any fresh actions of informers from coming to a conclu- 
 sion before the period for the next indemnity bill arrives ; 
 so that these penalties, by which alone the Church remains 
 in existence, have not had one moirent's operation for 
 sixtj-four years. — You will say, the Leo^islature, during 
 the whole of this period, has reserved to itself the discre- 
 tion of suspending, or not suspending. But had not th& 
 Legislature the right of re-enacting, if it was necessary ? 
 And now when you have kept the rod over these people 
 (with the most scandalous abuse of all principle) for sixty- 
 four years, and not found it necessary to strike once, is 
 not that the best of all reasons why the rod should be laid 
 aside ? — You talk to me of a very valuable hedge running 
 across your fields, which you would not part with on any 
 account. I go down, expecting to find a limit impervious 
 to cattle, and highly useful for the preservation of pro- 
 perty ; but to my utter astonishment,! find that the hedge 
 was cut down half a century ago, and that every year the 
 shoots are clipped the moment they appear above ground : 
 it appers, upon further enquiry, that the hedge never 
 ought to have existed at all ; that it originated in the ma- 
 lice of antiquated quarrels, and was cut down because it 
 subjected you to vast inconvenience, and broke up your 
 intercourse with a country absolutely necessary to your 
 existence. If the remains of this hedge serve only to 
 keep up an irritation in your neighbours, and to remind 
 them of the feuds of former times, good-nature and good 
 sense teach you that you ought to grub it un, and cast it 
 into the oven. This is the exact state of these two laws ; 
 and yet it is made a great argument against concession to 
 the Catholics, that it involves their repeal ; which is to 
 say, do not make me relinquish a folly that will lead to my 
 ruin ; because if you do, I must give up other follies ten 
 times greater than this. 
 
 I confess, with all our bulwarks and hedges, it mortifies 
 me to the very quick, to contrast with our matchless stu- 
 pidity and inimitable folly, the conduct of Bonaparte upon 
 the subject of religious persecution. At the moment 
 when we are tearina; the crucifixes from the necks of the 
 Catholics, and washing pious mud from the foreheads of 
 the Hindoos ; at that moment this man is assembling: the 
 very Jew^ at Paris, and endeavouring to give them stabi- 
 E " " 
 
u 
 
 liiy and importance. I shall never be reconciled to mcnd-=i^ 
 ing shoes in America ; but 1 see it must be my l.t, and f 
 will then take a dreadful revenpe upon Mr. Perceval, if I 
 catch him preaching within ten miles of me. 1 cannot 
 for the soul of me conceive whence this man has gained 
 his i.oudns of Christianity : he has the most evangelical 
 charity for errors in arithmetic, and the most inveterate 
 malice against errors in conscience ; while he rages against 
 those whom in the true spirit of the gospel he ought to 
 indulge, he forgets the only instance ol severity which 
 that gospel contains, and leaves the jobbers, and con- 
 trators, and nioney-ehangers at their seats, without a sin- 
 gle stripe. 
 
 You cannot imagine, you say, that England will ever 
 be rained and conquered ; and for no other reason that I 
 find, but because it seems so very odd it should be ruined 
 and conquered. Alas ! so reasoned, in their time, the 
 Austrian, Russian, and Prussian Plymleys. But the Eng- 
 lish are brave : so were all these nations. You might get 
 together an hundred thousand men individually brave ; but 
 without gener Is capable of commanding such a machine, it 
 would be as useless as a first rate man of war manned by 
 Oxford clergymen, or Parisian shopkeepers. I do not say 
 this to the disparagement of English officers ; they have 
 had no means of acquiring ex|ierience ; but I da say it to 
 create alarm ; for we do not appear to me to be half 
 alarmed enough, or to entertain that sense of our danger 
 which leads to the most obvious means of self-defence. As 
 for the s irit of the peasantry, in making a gallant defence 
 behind hedge-rows, and through plate-racks and hen- 
 coops, highly as I think of their bravery, 1 do not know*- 
 any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with panic as 
 the English ; and this from their total utiacquaintance with 
 sciences of war. Old \^heat and beans blazing for twenty 
 miles round ; cart mares shot ; sows of Lord Somerville s 
 breed running wild over the country ; the minister of the 
 Parish woiiuded sorely in his hinder parts ; Mrs. Plymley 
 in fits ; all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian 
 has seen three or four times over ; but it is now three cen- 
 turies since an t nglish pig has fallen in a fair battle upon 
 English ground, or a farm house been rifled, or a eleigy- 
 man's wife been subjected ta any other proposals of love, 
 than theconnnoial endearments of her sleek and orthodox 
 mate. The old edition of Plutarch's L ves, which lies in 
 fhe corner of your parlour windoAV, has contributed to 
 
85 
 
 work you up to the inost romantic expectations of our 
 Koman behaviour. You are persuaded that Lord Amherst 
 tvill defend Kew-Bridge like Codes ; that some maid of 
 honour will break away from her captivity, and swim over 
 the Thames ; that the Duke of York will burn h s capitu- 
 lating hand ; and little Mr. Sturges Bourne give forty 
 years purchase for Moulsham-Hall, while the i rench are 
 encamped upon it. 1 hope we shall witness all this, if the 
 French do come ; but in the mean time, I am so enchanted 
 with the ordinary English behaviour of these invaluable 
 persons, that I earnestly pray no opportunity may be gi- 
 ven them for Roman valour, and lor those very un-Roman 
 pensions which they would all, of coirse, take esj.ecal 
 care to claim in consequence. But whatever was our con- 
 duct, if every ploughman was as great a hero as he who 
 was called from his oxen to save Rome from her enemies, 
 I shoul . still say, that at such a crisis you want the affec- 
 tions of all your subjects in both islands: there is no spirit 
 which you must alienate, no heart you must avert ; every 
 man must feel he has a country, and that there is an ur- 
 gent and pressing cause why he should expose himself to 
 death. 
 
 The effects of penal laws, in matters of religion, are 
 never confined to those limits in which the Legislature 
 intended they should be placed : it is not only that I am 
 excluded from certain offices and dignties because I am 
 a Catholic, but the exclusion carres with it a certain 
 stigma, which degrades me in the eyes of the monopoli- 
 zing sect, and the very name of my religion becomes odi- 
 ous. These effects are so very striking in England, that 
 I solemnly believe blue and red baboons to be more po- 
 pular here than Catholics and Presbyterians ; they are 
 more understood, and there is a greater disposition to do 
 something for them. When a country squire hears o an 
 ape, his first feeling is to give it nuts and apples ; when he 
 hears of a Dissenter, his immediate impulse is to commit 
 it to the county jail, to shave its head, to alter its custom- 
 ary food, and to have it privately whipped. This is no 
 caricature, but an accurate picture of national feelings, 
 as they degrade and endanger us at this very mom' nt.-^ 
 The Irish Catholic gentleman would bear his legal disabi- 
 Jities with greater tem er, iUhese were all he had io bear— 
 if they did not enable every Protestatit cheesemonger ;ind 
 tide-waiter to treat him with contempt. He i- branded 
 on the forehead with a red-hot iron, and treated like a 
 
36 
 
 i 
 
 spiritual felon, because, in the hi^^hest of all considera« 
 tion , he is led by the noblest of all guides, his own disin- 
 tertsted conscience. 
 
 Why are nonsense and cruelty a bit the better because 
 they are enacted ? If Providence, v hich gives wine and 
 oil, had blest us with that tolerant spirit which makes the 
 countenance more pleasant and the heart more ejlad thaa 
 these can do ; if our Statute-Book had never been iefiled 
 with such infamous laws, the ser-ulchral Spencer Perceval 
 would have been hauled through the dirtiest horse-^ond 
 in Hampstead, had he ventered to propose them. But 
 now persecution is good, because it e.ists ; every law 
 which originated in ignorance and malice, ana gratities the 
 passions from whence it sprang, we ca.l .he wisdom of our 
 ancestors : when such laws are repealed, t ey will be vrn. 
 elty and madness; till tiiey are repealed, they are policy 
 and caution. 
 
 I was somewhat amused with the imputation brouejht 
 3,gainst the Catholics by the University of Oxford, t'st 
 they are enemies o liberty, I immediately turned to .y 
 History of England, and marked as an historical error that 
 passage, in which it is recorded, that, in the rejgn of 
 Queen Anne, the famous decree of the Univers.ty of 0.%- 
 ford, respecting passive obedience, was ordered, by the 
 House of Lords, to be burnt by the hands of the common 
 hangman, as contrary to the liberty of the subject, and 
 the law of the land. Nevertheless, I wish, whatever be 
 the modesty of those who impute, that the im; utation was 
 a little more true than it is ; the Catholic cause would not 
 be quite so desperate with the present Admitiistration. — 
 J fear, however, that the haired to liberty m these poor 
 devoted wretches may ere long appear more doubtful tlian 
 it is at present to the Vice-Chancellor and his clergy, in- 
 flame;, as they doubtless are, with classical examples of 
 republican virtue, and panting, as they always have been, 
 to reduce the power of the Crown within narrower a-id 
 safer limits. What mistaken zed to attempt to connect 
 
 one religion with freedom, and another with slavery ^ 
 
 Who laid the foundations of English liberty? What was 
 the mixed religion of Switzerland ? What has the Protes- 
 tant ' religion done for Iberty in Denmark, in Sweden, 
 throughout the North of Germany, and in Prussia ? The 
 purest religion in the v/orld, in my humble opinion, is the 
 religion of the Church of England : for its preservation 
 (so far as it is exercised without intruding upon the liber» 
 
37 
 
 ties of others), I am ready at this moment to venture my 
 present lite, and but through that religion I have no hopes 
 ot any other ; yet I am not forced to be silly because I am 
 pious ; nor will I ever join in eulogiums on my faith, which 
 every man of common reading and common sense can so 
 easily refute. 
 
 You iiave either done too much for the Catholics (wor- 
 thy Abraham), or too little ; if you had intended tore- 
 fuse tbeni political power, you should have refused them 
 civil rights. After you had enabled them to acquire pro- 
 perty, after you had conceded to them all that you did 
 concede in '78 and '93, the rest is wholly out of your 
 power : you may chuse whether you will give the rest in 
 an honorable or a disgraceful mode, but it is utterly out 
 of your power to withhold it. 
 
 In the last year, land to the amount of eight hundrei 
 thoasayid pounds was purchased by the Catholics in Ire- 
 land. Do you think it possible to be-Perceval, and be- 
 Canning, and be-Castlereagh such a body of men as this 
 out of their common rights, and their common sense ? 
 Mr. George Canning may laugh and joke at the idea of 
 Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, under the 
 9th clause of the sun-set bill ; but if some better remedy 
 is not applied to the distractions of Ireland than thejocu- 
 larity of Mr. Canning, they will soon put an end to his 
 pension, and to the pension of those " near and dear rela- 
 tives,*' for whose eating, drinking, washing, and clothing, 
 every man in the united kingdoms now pays his twopence 
 or three pence a year. You may call these observations 
 coarse, if you please ; but I have no idea that the Sophias 
 and Carolines of any man breathing are to eat national 
 veal, to drink public tea and to wear Treasury ribbons, 
 and then that we are to be told that it is coarse to animad- 
 vert u.on this pitiful and eleemosynary splendour. If 
 this is right, why not mention it ? If it is wrong, why 
 should not he who enjoys the ease of supporting his 
 sisters in this manner bear the shame of it ? Every body 
 see.ns hitherto to have spared a man, who never spares any 
 bod}'. 
 
 As for the enormous wax candles, and superstitious 
 mummeries, and painted jackets of the Catholic priests, I 
 fear them not. Tell me that the world will return again 
 under the influence of the small-pox ; that Lord Castle- 
 reagh will hereafter oppose the power of the Court; that 
 Lord Howick and Mi:. Grattaii will do each of them a 
 
ss 
 
 nean and dishonourable action ; that any body who has 
 heard Lord Redesdale sjjeak once, will knowingly and wil- 
 lingly hear him again ; that Lord Eldon has assented to 
 the fact of two and two making four, without shedding 
 tears, or ex. ressing the smal est doubt or scruple ; tell me 
 any other thing absurd or incredible, but — for the love of 
 common sense, let me hear no more of the danger to be 
 apj rehended from the general diffusion of popery. It is 
 too absurd to be reasoned u; on ; every man feels it is non- 
 sense when he hears it stated, 9,nd so does every man while 
 he is stating it. 
 
 I cannot imagine why the friends to the Church esta- 
 blishment should entertain such an horror of seeing the 
 doors of Parliament flung open to the Catholics, and view 
 so passively the enjoyment of t^at right by the Presby- 
 terians, and by every Ouher species of Dissenter. In their 
 tenets, in their church governme ts, in the nature of their 
 endowment, the Dissenters are infinitely more distant from 
 the Church of England than the Catholics are ; yet the 
 Dissenters have never been excluded from Parliament. — 
 There are forty-five members in one house, and sixteen .n 
 the other, who always are Dissenters. There is no law 
 which would prevent every member of the Lords and 
 Commons from being Dissenters. The Catholics could 
 not bring into Parliament ha.f the ni»mber of the Scotch 
 member^ ; and yet one exclusion is of such immense im- 
 portance, because it has taken place ; and the other no hu- 
 man being thinks of, because iio one is accustomed to it. 
 I have often thought, if the wisdom of our ancestors had 
 excluded all persons with red bar from the House of 
 Commons, of the throes and convulsions it would occasion 
 to restore them to their natural rights. What mobs and 
 riots would it produce ? To what infinite abuse and oblo- 
 quy would the capillary patriot be eXj^osed ; what worm- 
 wood would distil frotn Mr. Perceval, what froth would 
 drop from Mr. Canning ; how (f will not say my, but our 
 Lord Hawkesbury, for he belongs to us all> how our Lord 
 Ha^kesbury would work away about the hair of King 
 William and Lord Somers, and the authors of the great 
 and glorious Revolution ; how Lord Eldon would ap. eal 
 to the Deity, and his own virtues ; and to the hair of his 
 children : some would say that red-ha red men were su- 
 perstitious ; some would prove they were atheists ; they 
 would be petitioned against as the friends of slavery, and 
 the advocates for revolt j in short, such a corrupter of the 
 
r> 
 
 9 
 
 lieart and the understanding is the spirit of persecution, 
 thai the c untortnnate people (coiisjired against by their 
 feliow-subjectsot" every cpmplexion), if they did not emi- 
 grate to countries V, here iiair of another colour was perse- 
 cuted, would be dr ven to-the falsehood of perukes, or the 
 hyjOcrisy of the Tricosian fluid. 
 
 As for the dangers of the Church (in spite of the stag- 
 gering events which have lately taken place) I have noc 
 yet entirely lost niy confidence in the power of common- 
 sense, and I believe the church to be in no danger at all ; 
 but if it is, th 't dangeris not from the Catholics, but from 
 the Methodists, and from the patent Christianity which 
 ha been for soaje ti i e. manufacturing at Clapham, to the 
 preiudice of the old and admirable article prepared by" 
 the Church. I would counsel my Lords the Bishops to 
 keep their eyes upon that holy village, and its hallowed 
 'Vicinity : they will find there a zeal in making converts, 
 far superior to any thing which exists among the Catho- 
 lics ; a contLfflf t for the great mass of English clergy, 
 much more rooted and profound ; and a regular fund to 
 purchase livings for those groaning and garrulous gentle- 
 men, whom they denominate (by a standing sarcasm 
 against the regular Church) Gospel preachers and Vital 
 clergymen. I am too firm a believer in the general pro- 
 priety and respectability of the English clergy, to believe 
 they have much to fear either from old nonsense, or from 
 new ; but if the Church must be supposed to be in dan- 
 ger, I prefer that nonsense which is grown half venerable 
 from time, the force of which I have already tried and 
 baffled, which at least has some excuse in the dark and ig- 
 norant ages in which it originated. The religiou^ enthu- 
 siasm manufactured by living men before my own eyes, 
 disgusts my understanding as much, influences my ima- 
 gination not at ail, and excites my apprehensions much 
 more. 
 
 I may have seemed to you to treat the situation of pub- 
 lic aflPaIrs with some degree of levity ; but I feel it deeply, 
 and with nightly and i.aily anguish; because I know Ire- 
 laid ; I have known it all my life i I love it, and } foresee 
 the crisis to whicii it will soon be exposed. Who can 
 doubt but that Ireland wiM experience ultimately from 
 France a treatment, to which the conduct they have expe- 
 rienced from England is the love of a parent, or a brother? 
 Wiio c n uonbt but that five years after be has got ho d of 
 the couijtrv'j Ireland will be tossed away by Bonaparte as 
 
40 
 
 a present to some one of his ruffian generals, who will 
 knock the head of Mr. Keogh against the head of C ardinal 
 Troy, shoot twenty of the most noisy blockheads of the 
 Koman persuasion, wash his pug-dogs in ho'y water, and 
 confiscate the salt butter of the Milesian Republic to the 
 last tub. But what matters this? or who is wise enough 
 in Ireland to heed it ? or when had common sense much 
 influence with the poor dear Irish ? Mr. Perceval does not 
 know the Irish ; but I know them, and I kro that, at' 
 every rash and mad hazard, they will break the Unio , re- 
 venge their wounded pride, and their insulted religion, 
 and fling themselves into the open arms of France, sure of 
 dying in the embrace. And now what means have you of 
 guarding against this coming evil, upon which the future 
 happiness or misery of every Englishman depends ? Have 
 you a single ally in the whole world ? Is there a vulnera- 
 ble point in the French Empire, where the astonishing re- 
 sources of that people can be attracted and employed ? 
 Have you a ministry wise enough to comprehend the dan- 
 ger, manly enough to believe unpleasant intelligence, ho> 
 nest enough to state their apprehensions at the peril of 
 their places ? Is there any where the slightest disposition 
 to join any measure of love, or concilation, or hope, with 
 that dreadful bill which the distractions of Ireland have 
 rendered necessary ? At the very moment that the last 
 Alonarchy in Europe has fallen, are we not governed by a 
 man of pleasantry, and a man of theology ? In the six 
 hundredth year cf our Empire over Ireland, have we any 
 memorial of ancient kindness to refer to ? Any people, 
 any zeal, any country on which we can depend ? Have we 
 any ho e, but in the winds of heaven, and the tides of the 
 sea ? any prayer to jrefer to the Irish, but thi.t they 
 should furget and forgive their oppressors, who, in the 
 very moment that they are calling upon them for their ex- 
 ertions, solemnly assure them that the oppression shall still 
 remain ? 
 
 Abraham, farewell ! If I have tired you, remember how 
 often you have tired me, and others. I do not think we 
 really "differ in politics so much as you suppose ; or at 
 least, if we do, that difference is in the means, and not in 
 the end. We both love the Constitution, respect the 
 King, and abhor the French. But though you love the 
 Constitution, you would perpetuate the abuses which have 
 been ingrafted upon it ; though you respect the King, 
 you would confirm his scruples against the Catholics ; 
 
41 
 
 though you abhor the French, you would open to thejin 
 the conquest of Ireland. My method of respecting my 
 Sovereign, is by protecting his honour, his empire, and his 
 lasting happiness ; I evince my love of the Constitution, 
 by making it the guardian of all men's rights, and the 
 source of their freedom ; and I prove my abhorrence of 
 the French, by uniting against them the disciples of every 
 Church in the only remaining nation in Europe. As for 
 the men of whom I have been compelled in this age of me- 
 diocrit)' to say so much, they cannot of themselves be 
 worth a moment's consideration, to you, to me, or to any 
 body. In a year after their death, they will be forgotten 
 as com; letely as if they had never been ; and are now of 
 no farther importance, than as they are the mere vehicles 
 of carrying into effect the common-place and mischievous 
 prejudices of the times in which they live. 
 
 LETTER VL 
 
 \ 
 
 Dear Abraham ^ 
 
 What amuses me the most is, to hear of the indulgencei 
 which t-he Catholics have received, and their exorbitance 
 in not being satisfied with those indulgences: now if you 
 complain to me that a man is obtrusive, and shameless in 
 Jiis requests, and that it is impossible to bring him to rea- 
 son, I must first of all hear the whole of your conduct to- 
 wards him ; for you may have taken from iiim so much 
 in the first instance, that, in spite of a long scries of res- 
 titutions, a vast latitude for petition may still remain be- 
 liind. 
 
 There is a village (no matter where) in which the inha- 
 bitants, on one day in the year, sit down to a dinner pre- 
 pared at the common expence : by an extraordinary piece 
 of tyranny (which Lord Hav.kesbury would call the wis- 
 dom of the village ancestors) the inhabitants of three of 
 the streets, about an hundred years ago, seized upontlie 
 inhabitants of the fourth street, bound them hand and foot, 
 laid them upon their backs, and compelled them to look 
 on while the rest were Stuffing themselves ^kh beef and 
 F 
 
42 
 
 beer : the next year, the inhabitants of the persecuted 
 street (though they contributed an equal quota of the ex- 
 pence) were treated precisely in the same manner. The 
 tyranny grew into a custom ; and (as the manner of our 
 nature is) it was considered as the most sacred of all du- 
 ties, to keep these poor fellows without their annual din- 
 ner : the village was so tenacious of this practice, that 
 nothing could induce them to resign it ; every enemy to it 
 was looked upon as a disbeliever in divine providence, and 
 any nefarious churchwarden who wished to succeed in his 
 election, had nothing to do but to represent his antagonist 
 as an abolitionist, in order to frustrate his ambition, en- 
 danger his life, and throw the village into a state of the 
 most dreadful commotion. By degrees, however, the ob- 
 noxious street grew to be so well peopled, and its inhabi- 
 tants so firmly united, that their oppressors more afraid of 
 injustice, were more disposed to be just. At the next din- 
 ner they are unbound, the year after allowed to sit up- 
 right, then a bit of bread, and a glass of water ; till at 
 last, after a long series of concessions, they are embol- 
 dened to ask in pretty plain terras, that they may be al- 
 lowed to sit down at the bottom of the table, and to fill 
 their bellies as well as the rest. Forthwith a general cr}- 
 of shame and scandal : " Ten years ago, were you not 
 laid upon your backs ? Don't you remember what a great 
 thing you thought it to get a piece of bread ? How thank- 
 ful you were for cheeseparings ? Have you forgotten that 
 memorable aera, when the lord of the manor interfered to 
 obtain for you a slice of the public pudding ? And now, 
 with an audacity only equalled by your ingratitude, you 
 have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, and to re- 
 quest, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that you may sit 
 down to table with the rest, and be indulged even with 
 heef and beer : there are not more than half a dozen 
 dishes which we have reserved for ourselves ; the rest has 
 been thrown open to you in the utmost profusion ; you 
 have potatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the 
 pan, and delicious toast and water, in incredible quanti- 
 ties. Beef, mutton, lamb, pork and veal are ours; and 
 if you were not the most restless, and dissatisfied of hu- 
 man beings, you would never think of aspiring to enjoy 
 
 Is not this, my dainty Abraham, the very nonsense, and 
 the very insult which is talked to, and practised upon the 
 Oatholics ? You are surprised that men who have tasted of 
 
.3 
 
 partial justice should ask for perfect justice ; that lie who 
 has been robbed of coat, and cloak will not be contented 
 with the restitution of one of his garments. He would be 
 a very lazy blockhead if he were content, and I (who, 
 though an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, thank 
 God, some sense of justice) most earnestl}' counsel these 
 half fed claimants to persevere in their just demands, till 
 they are admitted to a more complete share of a dinner for 
 which they pay as much as the others ; and if they see a 
 little attenuated lawyer squabbling at the head of their 
 opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and 
 to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding, 
 which he has filched from the public feast, to carry home 
 to his wife and children. 
 
 You parade a gi-eat deal upon the vast concessions made 
 by this country to the Irish beforethe Union. I deny that 
 any voluntary concession was ever made by England to 
 Ireland. What did Ireland ever ask that was granted ? 
 What did she ever demand that was refused ? How did 
 «he get a mutiny bill — a limited parliament — a repeal of 
 Poyning's Law — a constitution ? Not by the concessions 
 of England, but by her fears. When Ireland asked for all 
 these things upon her knees, her petitions were rejected 
 with Percevalism and contempt : when she demanded 
 them with the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were 
 granted with every mark of consternation, and dismay. — 
 .Ask of Lord Auckland the fatal consequences of trifling 
 with such a people as the Irish. He himself was the or- 
 gan of these refusals. As secretary to the Lord Lieute- 
 nant, the insolence and the tyranny of this country passed 
 through his hands. Ask him if he remembers the conse- 
 quences. Ask him if he has forgotten that memorable 
 evening, when he came down booted and mantled to the 
 House of Commons, when he told the House he was about 
 to set off for Ireland that night, and declared before God", 
 if he did not carry with him a compliance with all their 
 demands, Ireland was for ever lost to this country. The 
 present generation have forgotten this ; but I have not 
 forgotten it ; and I know hasty and undignified as the 
 submission of England, then was, that Lord Auckland was 
 right, that the delay of a single day might very probably 
 have separated the two people for ever. The terms sub- 
 mission and fear are galling terms when applied from the 
 lesser nation to the greater ; but it is the plain historical 
 truth, it is the natural cou'^nqnencc of injustice, it is the 
 
u 
 
 predicament in wTiich every country places itself, which 
 leaves such a mass of hatred and discontent by it^ side, 
 ]No empire is powerful enough to endure it ; it would ex- 
 haust the strength of Cliina, and sink it with all its manda- 
 rins and tea-kettles to the bottom of the deep. By refus- 
 ing them justice, now when you are strong enough to re- 
 fuse them any thing more than justice, you will act over 
 again, with the Catholics, the same scene of mean and pre- 
 cipitate submission which disgraced you before America 
 and before the volunteers of Ireland. We shall live to hear 
 the Hampstead Protestatit pronouncing such extravagant 
 panegyrics upon holy water, and paying such fulsome 
 compliments to the thumbs and ©tTals of departed saints, 
 that parties will change sentiments, and Lord Henry 
 Petty, and Sam Whitbread take a spell at No Popery. — 
 The wisdom of Mr. Fox was alike employed in teaching 
 his country justice when Ireland was weak, and dignity 
 when Ireland was strong. We are fast pacing round the 
 same miserable circle of ruin, and imbecility. Alas 1 
 where is our guide ? 
 
 You say that Ireland is a mill-stone about our necks ; 
 that it would be better for us if Ireland were sunk at the 
 bottom of the sea ; that the Irish are a nation of irreclaima- 
 ble savages and barbarians. How often have I heard these 
 sentiments fall from the plump and thoughtless squire, and 
 from the thriving English shop-keeper, who has never felt 
 the rod of an Orange master upon his back. Ireland a 
 mill-stone about your neck ! Why is it not a stone of Ajax 
 in your hand ? I agree with you mo^ cordially, that, go- 
 verned as Ireland now is, it would be a vast accession of 
 strength if the waves of the sea were to rise, and ingulph 
 her to-morrow. At this moment, opposed as we are to all 
 the world, the annihilation of one of the most fertile 
 islands on the face of the globe, containing five millions 
 of human creatures, would be one of the most solid ad- 
 vantages which could happen to this country. I doubt 
 very much, in spite of all the abuse v/hich has been lavish- 
 ed upon Bonaparte, whether there is any one of his con- 
 quered countries the blotting out of which would be as 
 beneficial to him as the destruction of Ireland would be to 
 us : of countries I speak differing in language from the 
 French, little habituated to their intercourse, and inflamed 
 tvith all the resentments of a recently conquered people. — 
 Why will you attribute the turbulence of our people to 
 any cause but the right— to any cause but your own scan- 
 
45 
 
 dalous oppression ? If you tie your horse up to a gate, 
 and beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks you ? 
 If you have plagued, and worried a mastiff dog f-r years, 
 is he mad because he flies at you whenever he sees you ? 
 Hatred is an active, troublesome passion. Depend upon 
 it, whole nations have always some reason for their ha- 
 tred. Before you refer the turbulence of the Irish to in- / 
 curable defects in their character, tell me if you have 
 treated them as friends and equals ? Have you protected 
 their commerce ? Have you respected their religion ? 
 Have you been as anxious for their freedom as your own ? 
 Nothing of all this. What then ? Why you have confis- 
 cated the territorial surface of the country twice over : 
 you have massacred and exported her inhabitants : you 
 have deprived four-fifths of them of every civil privilege ; 
 you have at every period made her commerce and manu- 
 factures slavishly subordinate to your own : and yet the 
 hatred which the Irish bear to you is the result of an ori- 
 ginal turbulence of character, and of a primitive obdu- 
 rate wildness utterly incapable of civilization. The em- 
 broidered inanities and the sixth-form effusions of Mr. 
 Canning are really not powerful enough to make me be- 
 lieve this ; nor is there any authority on earth (always 
 excepting the Dean of Christchurch) which could make it 
 credible to me. I am sick of Mr. Canning. There is 
 not a happ'orth of bread to all his sugar and sack. I love 
 not the cretaceous and incredible countenance of his col- 
 league. The only opinion in which I agree with these 
 two gentlemen, is that which they entertain of each other; 
 I am sure that the insolence of Pitt, and the unbalanced 
 accounts of Melville, were far better than the perils of 
 this new ignorance : 
 
 Nonnft fuit satius tristes Amaryllidis Iras 
 , Atque superba pati fastidia, — nonne Menalcam^ 
 Qiiamvis ille ni^er ? 
 
 In the midst of the mo^ profound peace, the secret ar- 
 ticles of the treaty of Tilsit, in which the destruction of 
 Ireland is resolved upon, induce you to rob the Danes of 
 their fleet. After the expedition sailed comes the treaty 
 of Tilsit, containing no article,* public or private, allud- 
 ing to Ireland. The state of the world, you tell me, jus- 
 tified us in doing this. Just God! do we think only^ of* 
 
 * This is now completely confessed to be the case bj^ ministcj-s. 
 
46 
 
 the state of the world when there is an opportunity for 
 robbery, for murder, and for j hinder ; and do ve forget 
 the state of the world when we are called upon to be wise, 
 and good, and just ? Does the state of the world never re- 
 mind us, that we have four millions of subjects whose in- 
 juries we ought to atone for, and whose affections we ought 
 to conciliate ? Does the state of the world never warn us 
 to lay aside our infernal bigotry, and to Arm every man 
 who acknowledges a God and can grasp a sword ? Did it 
 never occur to this administration, that thev might virtu- 
 ousl%- get bold of a force ten times greater than the force 
 of the Danish fleet ? Was there no other way of protect- 
 ing Ireland, but b}^ bringing eternal shame upon Great 
 Britain, and by making the earth a den of robbers ? See 
 what the men whom you have supplanted would have 
 done. They would have rendered the invasion of Ireland 
 impossible, by restoring to the Catholics their long lost 
 rights: they would have acted in such a manner that the 
 French would neither have wished for invasion, nor dared 
 to attempt it : they would have increased the permanent 
 strength of the country while they preserved its reputa- 
 tion unsullied. Nothing of this kind your friends have 
 done, because they are solemnly pledged to do nothing 
 of this kind ; because to tolerate all religions, and to 
 equalize civil rights lo all sects, is to oppose some of the 
 worst passions of our nature, — to plunder and to oppress 
 is to gratify them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, 
 and they have for ever blasted the fame of England to ob- 
 tain them. Were the fleets of Holland, France, and 
 Spain, destroyed by larceny ? You resisted the power of 
 one hundred and fifty sail of the line b}- sheer courage, 
 and violated every principle of morals from the dread of 
 Tifteen hulks, while the expedition itself cost you three 
 times more than the value of the larcenous matter brought 
 awa}. The French trample upon the laws of God and 
 man, not for old cordage, but for kingdoms, and always 
 take care to be well paid for their crimes. We contrive, 
 under the present administration, to unite moral with in- 
 tellectual deficiency, and to grow weaker and worse by 
 the same action. If they had any evidence of the intend- 
 ed hostility of the Danes, wh^ was it not produced ? Why 
 have the nations of Europe been allowed to feel an indig- 
 nation against this country beyond the reach of all subse- 
 quent information ? Are these times, do you imagine, 
 when we can trifle w;'h a year of universal hatred, dallv 
 
47 
 
 with the curses of Europe, and then regain a lost charac- 
 ter at pleasure, by the parliamentary perspirations of the 
 foreign secretary, or the solemn asseverations of the pecu- 
 niary Rose r Believe me, Abraham, it is not under such 
 ministers as these that the dexterity of honest Englishmen 
 will ever equal the dexterity of French knaves ; it is not 
 in their presence that the serpent of Moses will ever swal- 
 low up the serpents of the magicians. 
 
 Lord Hartkesbury says, that nothing is to be granted to 
 the Catholics from fear. What I not even justice.' U'hy 
 not? There are lour millions of disaffected, people within 
 twenty miles of your own coast. I fairly confess that the 
 dread which I have of their physical power, is with me a 
 very strong motive for listening to their claims ; to talk of 
 not acting from fear is mere parliamentarv cant ; from 
 what motive but fear I should be glad to know have all the , 
 improvements in our Constitution proceeded r 1 question 
 if any justice has ever been done to large masses of man- 
 kind from any other motive ; by what other motives can 
 the plunderers of the Baltic suppose nations to be govern- 
 ed in their intercourse xvUh each other i If I say, give this 
 people what they ask because it is just, do vou think I 
 should get ten j eople to listen to me ? Would not the les- 
 ser of the two Jenkinsons be the first to treat me with 
 contempt ? The only true way to make the mass of man- 
 kind see the beauty of justice, is by shewing to them in 
 pretty plain terms the consequences of injustice. If anv 
 body of French troops land in Ireland, the whole popula- 
 tion of that country will rise against you to a man, and 
 you could not possibly survive such an event three years. 
 Such, from the bottom of my soul, do I believe to be the 
 present state of that country ; and so far does it appear to 
 me to be impolitic and unstatesmanlike to concede any 
 thing to such a danger, that if the Catholics, in addition 
 to their present just demands, were to petition for the per- 
 petual removal of the said Lord Hawkesbury from his ?kla- 
 jesty's councils, I think, whatever might be the effect upon 
 the destinies of Europe, and however it might retard our 
 own individual destruction, that the prayer of the petition 
 should be instantly complied with. Canning's crocodile 
 tears should not move me ; the hoops of the maids of ho- 
 nour should not hide him. I would tear him from the, 
 bannisters of the back stairs, and plunge him in the fishv 
 fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque Ports. 
 
is 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 ' Deal' Abrahayn, 
 
 In the correspondence which is passing between us, }^u 
 are perpetually alluding to the Foreign Secretary; and, in 
 answer to the dangers of Ireland, which I am pressing upon 
 your notice, you have nothing to urge but the confidence 
 which you repose in the discretion, and sound sense of this 
 gentleman.* I can only say, that I have listened to him 
 long, and often, with the greatest attention ; I have used 
 every exertion in my power to take a fair measure of him, 
 and it appears to me impossible to hear him upon any ar- 
 duous topic without perceiving, that he is eminently defi- 
 cient in tho^ solid, and serious qualities upon which, and 
 upon which alone the confidence of a great country can 
 properly repose. He sweats, and labours, and works for 
 sense, and Mr. Ellis seems always to think it is coming, 
 but it does not come ; the machine can't draw up what is 
 not to be found in the spring ; Providence has made him 
 alight jesting paragraph writing man, and that he will re- 
 main to his dying day. When he is jocular he is strong, 
 when he is serious he is like Sampson in a wig ; any ordi- 
 nary person is a match for him ; a song, an ironical let- 
 ter, a burlesque ode, an attack in the newspaper upon 
 T^ichoU's eye, a smart speech of twenty minutes, full of 
 gross misrepresentations and clever turns, excellent lan- 
 guage, a spirited manner, lucky quotation, success in pro- 
 voking dull men, some half information picked up in Pall 
 Mall in the morning : these are your friend's natural wea- 
 pons ; all these things he can do ; here I allow him to be 
 truly great : nay, I will be just, and go still farther, if he 
 would confine himself to these things, and consider the 
 
 * The attack upon virtue and morals in the debate upon Copenhagen, 
 is brought forward with great ostentation by tliis gentleman's friends. 
 But is harlequin less harlequin, because he acts well ? I was present : 
 he leaped about, touched facts with has wand, turned yes into no, and no 
 into yes, it was a pantomime well played, but a pantomime : Harlequin 
 deserves higher wages than he did two years .ngo : Is he therefore fit lor 
 serious parts ? 
 
.49 
 
 faccte and the playful to be the basis of his character, he 
 would, for that species of man, be universally reg;arded to 
 he a person of a very good understanding ; call him a le- 
 gislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a 
 great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly 
 were to teach bees to make honey. That he is an extraor- 
 dinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the 
 highest lustre I do most readily admit. After George 
 Selwvn, and perarps Tickell, there has been no such man 
 for this half century. The Foreign Secretary is a gentle- 
 man, a respectable, as well as an highly agreeable man in 
 private life ; but you may as well feed me with decayed 
 potatoes as console me for the miseries of Ireland by the 
 resources of his sense and his discretioyi. It is only the 
 public situation which this gentleman holds which entitles 
 me, or induces me to say so much about him. He is a fly 
 in amber, nobody cares about the fly : the only question 
 is, how the devil did he get there ? Nor do I attack him 
 from the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a 
 burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should 
 flood a province. 
 
 The friends of the Catholic question are, I observe, 
 extremely embarrassed in arguing when they come to the 
 loyalty of the Irish Catholics. As for me, I shall go 
 straight forward to my object, and state what I have no 
 manner of doubt from an intimate knowledge of Ireland, 
 to be the plain truth. Of the great Roman Catholic pro- 
 prietors, and of the Catholic prelates, there may be a few, 
 and but a few who would follow the fortunes of England at 
 all events : there is another set of men who, thoroughly- 
 detesting this country, have too much property and too 
 much character to lose, not to wait for some very favour- 
 able event before they shew themselves ; but the great 
 mass of Catholic population, upon the slightest appearance 
 of a French force in that country, would rise upon you to 
 a man. It is the most mistaken policy to conceal the plain 
 truth. There is no loyalty among the Catholics ; they 
 detest you as their worst oppressors, and they will conti- 
 nue to detest you, till you remove the cause of their ha- 
 tred. It is in your power in six months time to produce a 
 total revolution of opinions among this people ; and in 
 some future letter I will shew you that this is clearly the 
 case. At present, see what a dreadful state Ireland is in. 
 The common toast among the low Irish is, the feast of the- 
 passover. Some allusion to Bonaparte^ in a play lately 
 G 
 
Q 
 
 fr 
 
 jtcted at Dublin, produced thunders of applause from the 
 pit and the galleries ; and a politician should not be inat- 
 tentive to the publio feelings expressed in theatres. Mb.. 
 Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish : he has no more 
 disarmed the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his 
 own public emoluments. An Irish* peasant fills the bar- 
 rel of his gun full of tow dipped in oil, butters up the 
 lock, buries it in a bog, and allows the Orange bloodhound 
 to ransack his cottage at pleasure. Be just and kind to 
 the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them ; rescue them 
 from the degraded servitude in which they are held by an 
 handful of their own countrymen, and you will add four 
 millions of brave and affectionate men to your strength.— 
 Nightly visits, protestant inspectors, licences Co possess a 
 pistol, or a knife and fork, the odious vigour of the evan- 
 gelical Perceval — acts of parliament, drawn up by some 
 English attorney, to save you from the hatred of four mil- 
 lion people— the guarding yourselves from universal dis- 
 affection by a police ; a confidence in the little cunning of 
 Bow-street, when you might rest your security upon the 
 eternal basis of the best feelings : this is the meanness, 
 and madness to which, nations are reduced when they lose 
 sight ol the first elements of justice, without which a coun- 
 try can be no more secure than it can be healthy without 
 air. I sicken at such policy and such men. The fact is, 
 the ministers know nothing about the present state of Ire- 
 land ; Mr. Perceval sees a few clergymen, Lord CaStle- 
 reagh a few general officers, who take care, of course, to 
 report what is pleasant, rather than what is true. As for 
 the joyous, and lepid consul, he jokes upon neutral flags 
 ^ and frauds, jokes upon Irish rebels, jokes upon northern, 
 and western, and southern foes, and gives himself no trou- 
 ble upon any subject : nor is the mediocrity of the idol- 
 atrous deputy of the slightest use. Dissolved in grins, he* 
 reads no memorials upon the state of Ireland, listens to no 
 reports, asks no questions, and is the 
 
 •• Bourn from whom no traveller returns." * 
 
 The danger of an immediate insurrection is^ now, / be- 
 Iit'-je,f blown over. You have so strong an army in Ire- 
 
 • No man who is not intimately acquainted with the Irish, can tell to 
 \vhat a curious extent this concealment of arms is carried. I have stated 
 the exact mode in which it is done. 
 
 •}■ 1 know too much, however, of tlic state of Ireland, not to^ speak 
 trembling-ly about this. I hope to God I am right. 
 
51 
 
 land, and the Irish are become so much more cunning from 
 the last insurrection, that you may perhaps be tolerably 
 secure just at present from that evil : but are you secure 
 from the efforts which the French may make to throw a 
 body of troops into Ireland ? and do you consider that 
 event to be difficult and improbable ? From Brest Har- 
 bour to Cape St. Vincent, you have above three thousand 
 miles of hostile sea coast, and twelve or fourteen harbours 
 quite capable of containing a sufficient force for the pow- 
 erful invasion of Ireland. The nearest of these harbours 
 is not two days sail from the southern coast of Ireland, 
 with a fair leading wind ; and the farthest not ten. Five 
 ships of the line, for so very short a passage, might carry 
 five or six thousand troops with cannon and ammunition ; 
 and Ireland presents to their attack a southern coast of 
 more than fivp himdrpH milec, nhnunHiiig in dp.p.p bays, 
 admirable harbours, and disaffected inhabitants. Your 
 blockading ships may be forced to come home for provisi- 
 ons and repairs, or they way be blown off" in a gale of 
 wind and compelled to bear away for their own coast : — 
 and you will observe that the very same wind which locks 
 you up in the British Channel when you are got there ; is 
 eminently favourable for the invasion of Ireland. And 
 yet this is called Government, and the people huzza Friav 
 Perceval, for continuing to expose bis country day after 
 day to such tremendous perils as these ; cursing the men 
 who would have given up a question in theology to have 
 saved u? from such a risque. The British Empire at this 
 moipent is in the state of a peach blossom, if the wind 
 blows gently from one quarter it survives, if furiously 
 from the other it perishes. A stiff" breeze may set in from 
 the north, theRochefort squadron will be taken, and the 
 Friar will be the most holy of men ; if it comes from 
 some other pp^nt, Ireland is gone, we curse ourselves as a 
 set of monastic madmen, and call out for the unavailing 
 satisfaction of Mr. Perceval's head. Such a state of po- 
 litical existence is scarcely credible ; it is the action of a 
 mad young fool standing upon one foot and peeping down 
 the crater of Mount ^tna, not the conduct of a wise and 
 a. sober people deciding upon their best and dearest inter- 
 ests : and in the name, the much injured name of heaven, 
 what is it all for, that we expose ourselves to these dan- 
 gers ? Is it that we may sell more muslin? Is it that we 
 may acquire more territory ? Is it that we may strengthen 
 •<f/hat we have already acquired ? No : nothing of all this ; 
 
m 
 
 but that one set of Irishmen may torture awother set of 
 Irishmen, that Sir Phelem O'Callagan may continue to 
 whip Sir Toby M'Tackle, his next door neighbour, and 
 continue to ravish his Catholic daughters ; and these are 
 the measures which the honest and consistent Secretary 
 supports; and this is the Secretary whose genius in the 
 estimation of brother Abraham is to extinguish the ge- 
 nius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliak 
 smitten by a stripling, Pyrrhus died by the hand of a wo- 
 man ; tremble thou great Gaul, from whose head an arm- 
 ed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of danger ; tremble 
 thou scourge of God, a pleasant man is come out against 
 thee, and thoushalt belaid low by a joker of jokes, and he 
 shall talk his pleasant talk against thee, and thou shalt be 
 no more ! 
 
 YoM tell me thai in qpitp of .all tViic: parade of sea COast 
 
 Bonaparte has neither ships nor sailors : but this is a mis- 
 take. He has not ships and sailors to contest the empire 
 of the seas with Great Britain, but there remains quite 
 sufficient of the navies of France, Spain, Holland, and 
 Denmark, for these short excursions, and invasions. Do 
 you think too that Bonaparte does not add to his navy 
 every year ? Do you suppose, with all Europe at his feet, 
 that he can find any difficulty in obtaining timber ? And 
 that money will not procure for him any quantity of naval 
 stores he may want ? The mere machine, the empty ship, 
 he can build as well, and as quickly as you can ; and 
 though he may not find enough of practised sailors to man 
 large lighting fleets, — it is not possible to conceive that he 
 can want sailors for such sort of purposes as I have stated. 
 He is at present the despotic monarch of above twenty 
 thousand miles of sea coast, and yet you suppose he can- 
 not procure sailors for the invasion of Ireland. Believe, 
 if you please, that such a fleet met at sea by any number 
 of our ships at all comparable to them in point of force, 
 would be immediately taken, let it be so ; I count nothing 
 upon their power of resistance, only upon their power of 
 escaping unobserved. If experience has taught us any 
 thing, it is the impossibility of perpetual blockades. The 
 instances are innumerable during the course of this war, 
 v^hexe whole fleets have sailed in and out of harbour in 
 spite of every vigilance used to prevent it. I shall only 
 mention those cases where Ireland is concerned. In De- 
 cember, nye, seven ships of the line, and ten transports, 
 reached Bantry Bay from Brest, without having seen ar> 
 
English ship in their passage. It blew a storm when tliey 
 were off shore, and therefore England still continues 
 to be an independent kingdom. You will observe, that at 
 the very time the French fleet sailed out of Brest harbour, 
 Admiral Colpo3's was cruizing off there with a powerful 
 squadron, and stilJ, from the particular circumstances of 
 the weather, found it impossible to prevent the French 
 from coming out. During the time that Admiral Colpoys 
 was cruising off Brest, Admiral Richery, with six ships of 
 the line, passed him and got safe into the harbour. At 
 the very moment when the French squadron was lying in 
 Bantry Bay, Lord Bridport with his fleet was locked up by 
 a foul wind in the Channel, and for several dajs could not 
 stir to the assistance of Ireland. Admiral Colpoys, totally 
 unable to find the French fleet, came home. Lord Brid- 
 port, at the change of the wind, cruized for them in vain, 
 and they got safe back to Brest, without having seen one 
 single one of these floating bulwarks,the possession of which 
 we believe will enable us with impunity to set justice, and 
 common sense at defiance. Such is the miserable, and 
 precarious state of an anemocracy, of a people who pur: 
 their trust in hurricunes, and are governed by wind. In 
 August 1798, three forty gun frigates landed 1 100 men 
 under Humbert, making the passage from Kochelle to Kil- 
 l.ala without seeing an English ship. In October of the 
 same year, four French frigates anchored in Killala bay 
 with 2000 troops, and though they did not land their 
 troops, they returned to France in safety. In the same 
 month, a line of battle ship, eight stout frigates and a brig, 
 all full of troops and stores, reached the coast of Ireland, 
 and were fortunately in sight of land, destroyed after an 
 obstinate engagement, by Sir John Warren. 
 
 If you despise the little troop which in these numerous 
 experiments did make good its landing, take with you, if 
 you please, this precis of its exploits : eleven hundred 
 men, commanded by a soldier raised from the ranks, put 
 to rout a select army of six thousand men, commanded by 
 General Lake, seized their ordnance, ammunition, and 
 stores, advanced one hundred and fifty miles into a coun- 
 try containing an armed force of one hundred and fifty 
 thousand men, and at last surrendered to the viceroy, an 
 experienced general, gravely and cautiously advancing at 
 the head of all his chivalry and of an immense army to op- 
 pose him. You must excuse these details about Ireland, 
 but it appears to me to be of all gther subjects the most 
 
51 
 
 important* If we conciliate Ireland, we can do nothing 
 amiss : if we do not, we can do nothing well. If Ire- 
 land w^s friendly, we might equally set at defiance the 
 talents of Bonaparte and the blunders of his rival Mr. 
 Canning ; we could then support the ruinous and 
 silly bustle of useless expeditions, and the almost incre- 
 dible ignorance of our commercial orders in council. 
 Let the present administration give up but this one point, 
 and there is nothing which I would not consent to grant 
 them. Mr. Perceval shall have full liberty to insult the 
 t.omb of Mr, Fox, and to torment every eminent Dissenter 
 in Great Britain ; Lord Camden shall have large boxes of 
 plumbs ; Mr. Rose receive permission to prefix to his 
 name the appellative of virtuous ; and to the Viscount 
 Castlereagh a round sum of ready money shall be well, 
 and truly paid into his hand. Lastly, what remains to Mr. 
 George Canning, but that he ride up and down Pall Mall, 
 glprious upon a white horse, and that they cry out before 
 him, thus shall it be done to the statesman who hath writ- 
 ten " The Needy Knife-Grinder," and the German play* 
 Adieu only for the present, you shall soon hear from me 
 again, it is a subject upon whi.ch I cannot long be silent. 
 
 LETTER VIIL 
 
 Nothing can he more erroneous than to suppose that 
 Ireland is not bigger than the Isle of Wight, or of more 
 consequence than Guernsey, or Jersey ; and yet I am al- 
 most inclined to believe, from the general supineness 
 which prevails here respecting the dangerous state of that 
 country, that such is the rank which it holds in our statis- 
 tical tables. I have been writing to you a great deal aboufc 
 Ireland, and perhaps it may be of some use to state to you 
 concisely the nature, and resources of the country which 
 has been the subject of our long, and strange correspon- 
 dence. There were returned, as I have before observed, 
 to the hearth tax, in 1791, 701,102* houses, which Mr. 
 
 * The checks to population were very trifling from the rebellion. It 
 lasted two months : of his Majesty's Irish forces there perished about 
 1,600, of the rebels 11,000 were killed in the field, and 2,000 hanged op 
 exported : 400 loyal persons were assasinated. 
 
55 
 
 Newenham shews from unquestionable documents to be 
 nearly 80,000 below the real number of houses in that 
 country. There are 27,457 square English miles in Ire- 
 land,* and more than five millions of people. ' 
 
 By the last survey it appears, that the inhabited houses 
 in England and Wales amount to 1,574,902, and the popu- 
 lation to 9,343,578, which gives an average of 5^ to each 
 house, in a country where the density of population is 
 certainly less considerable than in Ireland. It is com- 
 monly supposed that two-fifths of the army and navy are 
 Irishmen, at periods when policical disaffection does not 
 avert the Catholics from the service. The current value 
 of Irish exports in 1807, was o£'9,3l4,&54. 17^. Id. a state 
 of commerce about equal to the commerce of England in 
 the middle of the reign of George the Second . The ton- 
 nage of ships entered inward and cleared outward in the 
 trade of Ireland, in 1807, amounted to 1,567,430 tons. — 
 The quantity of home spirits exported amounted to 10, 
 284 gaJlons in 1796, and to 930,800 gallons in 1804. Of 
 the exports which I have stated, provisions amounted to 
 four millions, and linen to about four millions and a half. 
 There was exported from Ireland, upon an average of two 
 years, ending in January 1804, 591,274 barrels of barley, 
 oats and wheat j and by weight 910,848 cwts. of flour, 
 oatmeal, barley, oats, and wheat. The amount of butter 
 exported in 1804 from Ireland, was worth in money, 
 of 1,704,680 sterling. The importation of ale and beer, 
 from the immense manufactures now carrying on of these 
 articles, was diminished to 3,209 barrels, in the year 1804, 
 from 111,920 barrels, which was the average importation 
 per annum, taken from three years ending in 1792; and at 
 present there is an export trade of porter. On an ave- 
 rage of three years, ending March 1783, there were im- 
 ported into Ireland, of cotton wool 3,326 cwts. of cotton 
 yarn 5,405 lbs. ; but on an average of three years, ending 
 January 1803, there were imported, of the first article 13, 
 159 cwts. and of the latter 628,406 lbs. It is impossible to 
 conceive any manufacture more flourishing. The export 
 of linen has increased in Ireland from 17,776,862 yards, 
 the average in 1770, to 43,534,971 yards, the amount in 
 1805. The tillage of Ireland has more than trebled within 
 the last twenty-one years. The importation of coals has 
 increased from 230,000 tons., in i783, to 417,030 in 1S04 ; 
 
 • In England, 49,450. 
 
^ 56 
 
 of tobacco, from 3,459,861 lbs. in 1783, to 6,611,543, in 
 1804; of tea, from 1,103,855 lbs. in 1783, to 3,358,256, 
 in 1804 ; of sugar, from 143,117 cwts. in 1782, to 309, 
 076 in 1804. Ireland now supports a funded debt of above 
 sixty-four millions, and it is computed that more than 
 three millions of money are annually remitted to Irish ab- 
 sentees resident in this country. In Mr. Foster's report, 
 of 100 folio pages, presented to the House of Commons 
 in the year 1806, the total expenditure of Ireland is stated 
 at ^9,760,013. Ireland has increased about two-thirds in 
 its population within twenty-five years, and yet, in about 
 the same space of time, its exports of beef, bullocks, cows, 
 pork, swine, butter, wheat, barley, and oats, collectively 
 taken, ^ve doubled ; and this in spite of two years fa- 
 mine, and the presence of an immense army, that is al- 
 ways at hand to guard the most valuable appanage of our 
 empire from joining our most inveterate enemies. Ire- 
 lanti has the greatest possible facilities for carrying on com- 
 merce with the whole of Europe. It contains within a 
 circuit of seven hundred and fifty miles, sixty-six secure 
 harbours, and presents a western frontier against Great 
 Britain, reaching from the Firth of Clyde north to the 
 Bristol Channel south, and varying in distance from 
 twenty to one hundred miles ; so that the subjugation of 
 Ireland would compel us to guard with ships, and soldiers, 
 a new line of coast, certainly amounting, with all its sinu- 
 osities, to more than seven hundred miles, — an addition of 
 polemics, in our present state of hostility with all the 
 world, which must highly gratify the vigorists, and give 
 them an ample opportunity of displaying that foolish 
 energy upon which their claims to distinction are founded. 
 Such is the country which the Right Reverend the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer would drive into the arms of 
 France, and for the conciliation of which we are requested 
 to wait, as if it were one of those sinecure places which 
 were given to Mr. Perceval snarling at the breast, and 
 which cannot be abolished till his decease. 
 
 How sincerely, and fervently have I often wished, that 
 the Emperor of the French had thought as Mr. Spender 
 Perceval does upon the subject of government ; that he 
 had entertained doubts and scruples i-.pon the proptiety of 
 admitting the Protestants to an equality of rights with 
 the Catholics, and that he had left in the middle of his em^ 
 pire these vigorous seeds of hatred and disaffection : but 
 the world was never yet conquered by a blockhead One 
 
^f the very first Hieasures we saw him recurriog to was 
 the complete establishment of religious liberty ; if his 
 subjects fought and paid as he pleased, he allowed them 
 to believe as they pleased : the moment I saw this, n-xy 
 best hopes were lost. I perceived in a moment the kind of 
 man we had to do with, I was well aware of the miserable 
 ignorance and follow of this country upon the subject of 
 toleration, and every year has been adding to the success 
 of that game which it was clear he had the will, and the 
 ability to play against us. 
 
 You say Bonaparte is not in earnest upon the subject of 
 religion, and that .his is the cause of his tolerant spirit ; 
 but is it possible you can intend to give us such dreadful 
 and such unamiable notions of religion ? Are we to under- 
 stand that the moment a man is sincere, he is narrow 
 minded ; that persecution is the child of belief ; and that 
 a desire to leave all men in the quiet, and unpunished ex- 
 ercise of their own creed can only exist in the mind of an 
 infidel. Thank God, I know many men whose princi- 
 ples are as firm, as they are expanded, who cling tenaci- 
 ously to their own modification of the christian faith, with- 
 out the slightest disposition to force that modification upon 
 other people. If Bonaparte is liberal in subjects of reli- 
 gion because he has no religion, is this a reason why we 
 Siould be illiberal because we are christians ? If he owes 
 this excellent quality to a vice, is that any reason why we 
 may not owe it to a virtue ? Toleration is a great good, 
 and a'good to be imitated, let it come from whom it will. 
 If a sceptic is tolerant, it only shews that he is not foolish 
 in practice as well as erroneous in theory. If a religious 
 man is tolerant, it evinces that he is religious from thought 
 and enquiry, because he exhibits in his conduct one of the 
 most beautiful and important consequences of a religious 
 mind, an inviolable charity to all the honest varieties of 
 human opinion. 
 
 Lord Sidmouth, and all the anti-catholic people, little 
 foresee that they will hereafter be the spurt of the anti- 
 quarian ; that their prophecies of ruin, and destruction, 
 from Catholic emancipation will be clapped into the notes 
 of some quaint history, and be matter of pleasantry even 
 to the sedulous housewife, and the rural dean. There is 
 always a copious supply of Lord Sidmouths in this world j 
 nor is there one single source of human happiness, against, 
 which they have not uttered the most lugubrious predic- 
 tions. Turnpike roads, navigable cana!$j iDocuiation^ 
 H 
 
58 
 
 hops, tobacco, the reformation, the revolution,;— -there 
 are always a set of worthy, and moderately gifted men, 
 who bawl out death, and ruin upon every valuable change, 
 which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and 
 imperiously requires. I have often thought that it would 
 be extremely useful to make a collection of the hatred, 
 and abuse that all those changes have experienced, which 
 are now admitted to be marked improvements in our condi- 
 tion. Such an history might make folly a little more mo- 
 dest, and suspicious of its own decisions. 
 
 Ireland, you say, since the Union is to be considered as 
 a part of the whole kingdom ; and therefore, however 
 Catholics may predominate in that particular spot, yet, 
 taking the whole empire together, they are to be consi- 
 dered as a much more insignificant quota of the popula- 
 tion. Consider them in what light you please, as part of 
 the whole, or by themselves, or in what manner may be 
 most consentaneous to the devices of your holy mind — I 
 say in a very few words, if you do not relieve these people 
 from the civil incapacities to which they are exposed, you 
 will lose them ; or you must employ great strength, and 
 much treasure, in watching over them. In the present 
 state of the world, you can afford to do neither the one, or 
 the other. Having stated this, I shall leave you to be 
 ruined, Puffendorf in hand (as Mr, Secretary Canning 
 ?ays) and to lose Ireland, just as you have found out what 
 proportion the aggrieved people should bear to the whole 
 population, before their calamities meet with redress. As 
 for your parallel cases, I am no more afraid of deciding 
 upon them than I am upon their prototype. If ever any 
 one heresy should so far spread itself over the principality 
 of Wales, that the established church were left in a mino- 
 rity of one to four ; if you had subjected these heretics to 
 very severe civil privations ; if the consequence of such 
 privations were an universal state of disaffection among 
 that caseous and wrathful people ; and if at the same time 
 you were at war with all the world, how can you doubt 
 lor a moment that I would instantly restore them to a 
 state of the most complete civil liberty ? What matters 
 it under what namei you put the same case ? Common 
 sense is not changed by appellations. 1 have said how I 
 would act to Ireland, and I would act so to all the world. 
 
 I admit that, to a certain degree, the government will 
 lose the affections of the Orangemen by emancipating the 
 Catholics; much less, however, at present, than three 
 
59 
 
 years past. The few men who have ill treated the whole 
 crew, live in constant terror that the oppressed people \vill 
 rise upon them and carry the ship into Brest : — they begin 
 to find that it is a ver}^ tiresome thing to sleep every night 
 with cocked pistols under their pillows, and to breakfast, 
 dine, and sup, with drawn hangers. They suspect that 
 the privilege of beating, and kicking the rest of the sai- 
 lors is hardly worth all this anxiety, and that if the ship 
 does ever fall into the hands of the disaffected, all the cru- . 
 cities which they have experienced will be thoroughly re- 
 membered and amply repaid. To a short period of dis- 
 affection among the Orangemen, I confess 1 should not 
 much object : my love of poetical justice does carry me as 
 far as that : one summer'^ whipping, only one : the 
 thumb-screw for a short season ; a little light eas}^ tortur- 
 ing between Lady-day and Michaelmas ; a short specimen 
 of Mr. Perceval's rigor. I have malice enough to ask tiiia 
 slight atonement for the groans and shrieks of the poor 
 Catholics, unheard by any human tribunal, but registered 
 by the Angel of God against their protestant, and enlight- 
 ened oppressors. 
 
 Besides, if you who count ten so often, can count five, 
 you must perceive that it is better to have four friends, 
 and one enemy, than four enemies and one friend ; and 
 the more violent the hatred of the Orangemen, the more 
 certain the reconciliation of the Catholics. The disaffec- 
 tion of the Orangemen will be the Irish I'ainbow ; when I 
 see it, I shall be sure that the storm is over. 
 
 If those incapacities from which the Catholics ask to be 
 relieved, were to the mass of them only a mere feeling of 
 pride ; and if the question were respecting the attainment 
 of privileges which could be of importance only to the 
 highest of the sect, I should still say, that the pride of the 
 mass was very naturally wounded by the degradation of 
 their superiors. Indignity to George Rose would be felt 
 by the smallest nummary gentleman in the King's employ ; 
 and Mr. John Bannister could not be indifferent to any 
 thing which happened to Mr. Canning. But the truth is, 
 it is a most egregious mistake to suppose that the Catlio-. 
 lies are contending merely for the fringes, and feathers at 
 their chiefs. I will give you a list in my next Letter, of 
 those privations which arc represented to be of no conse- 
 quence to any body but Lord Fingal, and some twenty or 
 thirty of the principal persons of their sect. Tn the raear 
 *:imep adieu, and be wise. 
 
m 
 
 LJiiTTER IX 
 
 Dear Abrahamy 
 
 No Catholic can be Chief Govenor, o\ Governors ot 
 fins Kingdom, Chancellor, or Keeper of the Great Seal, 
 Lord High Treasurer, Chief of any of the Courts of Jus- 
 tice, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Puisne Judge, Judge 
 in the Admiralty, Master of the Rolls, Secretary of State, 
 Keeper of the Privy Seal, Vice-Treasurer, or his Deputy ; 
 Teller, or Cashier of Exchequer, Auditor Genera], Go- 
 vernor or Gustos Rotulorum of Counties, Chief Govern- 
 or's Secretary, Privy Counsellor, King's Counsel, Ser- 
 geant, Attorney, or Solicitor General, Master in Charr- 
 eery, Provost or Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin ; Post- 
 master-General, Master and Lieutenant General of Ord- 
 nance, Commander in Chief, General on the Statf, Sherifl, 
 Sub-Sheriff, Mayor, Bailiff, Recorder, Burgess, or any 
 other officer in a City, or a Corporation. No Catholic 
 can be a guardian to a Protestant, and no Priest guardian 
 at all : no Catho-lic can be a Gamekeeper, or have for sale, 
 or otherwise, any arms, or warlike stores : no Catholic 
 can present to a living, unless he choose to turn Jew in 
 order to obtain that privilege ; the pecuniary qualification 
 of Catholic Jurors is made higher than that of Protestants, 
 and no relaxation of the ancient rigorous code is permit- 
 ted, unless to those who shall take an oath prescribed by 
 thirteen and fourteen Geo. IIL Now if this is not pick- 
 ing the plumbs orut of the pudding, and leaving the mere 
 bdtter to the Catholics, I know not what is. If it were 
 merely the Privy Council, it would be (I allow) nothing 
 but a point of honour for which the mass of Catholics were 
 contending, the honour of being chief-mourners or pall- 
 "bearers to the country ; bat surely no man will contend 
 that every Barrister may not speculate upon the possibility 
 of being a Puisne Juage ; and that every Shopkeeper, 
 must not feel himself injured by his exclusion from bo 
 sough offi'ees. 
 
61 
 
 One of the greatest practical evils which the Catholics 
 suffer in Ireland, is their exclusion from the offices of 
 Sheriff, and Deputy Sheriff. Nobody who is unacquaint- 
 ed with Ireland can conceive the obstacles which this op- 
 poses to the fair administration of justice. The formation 
 of Juries is now entirely in the hands of the Protestants ; 
 the lives, liberties, and properties of the Catholics in the 
 hands of the Juries : and this is the arrangement for the 
 administration of justice in a country where religious pre- 
 judices are inflamed t© the greatest degree of animosity. 
 In this country, if a man is a foreigner, if he sells slip- 
 pers and sealing-wax, and artificial flowers, we are so ten- 
 der of human life, that we take care half the number of 
 persons who are to decide upon his fate should be men of 
 similar prejudices and feelings with himself: but a poor 
 Catholic in Ireland may be tried by twelve Percevals, and 
 .destroyed (according to the manner of that gentleman) in 
 the name of the Lord, and with all the insulting forms of 
 Justice. I do not go the length of saying, that deliberate 
 and wilful injustice is done. I have no doubt that the 
 Orange Deputy-Sheriff thinks it would be a most unpar- 
 donable breach of his duty if he did not summon a Pro- 
 tectant pannel. I can easily believe that the Prostestant 
 pannel may conduct themseles very conscientiously in 
 hanging the g-entlemen of the crucifix : but I blame the 
 law which does not guard the Catholic against the proba- 
 ble tenor of those feelings which must unconsciously in- 
 fliience the judgments of mankind, I detest that state of 
 society which extends unequal degrees of protection to 
 different creeds, and persuasions, and I cannot describe to 
 you the contempt I feel for a man who, calling himself a 
 statesman, defends a system which fills the heart of every 
 Irishman with treason, and makes his allegiance prudence, 
 not choice. 
 
 I request to know if the vestry taxes in Ireland are a 
 mere matter of romantic feeling, which can affect only 
 the Earl of Fingal. In a parish where there are four thou- 
 sand Catholics and fifty Protestants, the Protestants may 
 meet together in a vestry meeting, at which no Catholic 
 has the right to vote, and tax all the lands in the parish Is. 
 6d. per acre, or in the pound, I forget which, for the 
 repairs of the church, — and how has the necessity of these 
 repairs been ascertained ? A Protestant plumber has dis- 
 covered that it wants new leading ; a Protestant carpen- 
 jS^er is C!:>nvinced the tjmbers are not sound, and a glazier 
 
6^ 
 
 vvho hates holy \vatcr (as an accoucheur hates celibacy) 
 because he gets nothing by it, is employed to put in new 
 sashes. 
 
 The grand juries in Ireland are the great scene of job- 
 bing. They have a power of making a county rate, to a 
 considerable extent ; for roads, bridges, and other objects 
 of general accommodation. " You sutler the road to be 
 brought through my park, and I will have the bridge con- 
 structed in a situation where it will make a beautiful ob- 
 ject to your house. You do my job, and I will do 3 ours.'* 
 These are the sweet and interesting subjects which occa- 
 sionally occupy milesian gentlemen while they are attend- 
 ant upon this grand inquest of justice. But there is a re- 
 ligion it seems, even in jobs; and it will be highly gratify- 
 ing to Mr. Perceval, to learn, that no man in Ireland who 
 believes in seven sacraments can carry a public road, or 
 bridge, one yard out of the direction most beneficial to 
 the public, and that nobody can cheat that public who 
 does not expound the scriptures in the purest, and most 
 orthodox manner. This will give pleasure to Mr. Perce- 
 vBii ; but, from his tmfairness upon these topics, I appeal 
 to the justice, and the proper feelings of Mr. Huskisson. 
 I ask him, if the human mind can experience a more 
 dreadful sensation, than to see its own jobs refused, and 
 the jobs of another religion perpetually succeeding.— I 
 ask him his opinion of a jobless faith, of a creed which 
 dooms a man through life to a lean, and plunderless inte- 
 ^^rity. He knows that human nature cannot, and will not 
 bear it ; and if he were to paint a political Tartarus, it 
 would be an endless series of snug expectations, and cruel 
 disappointments. These are a tew of many dreadful in\- 
 ^ conveniences which the Catholics of all ranks suffer from 
 the laws by which they are at present oppressed. Besides, 
 look at human nature : — what is the history of allprofessi- 
 ons ? Joel is to be brought up to the bar : has Mrs. Plym- 
 ley the slightest doubt pf his being Chancellor ? Do not 
 bis two shrivelled aunts live in the certainty of seeing him 
 in that situation, and of cutting out with their own hands 
 his equity habiliments r And I could name a certain mini- 
 ster of the gospel who does not, in the bottom of his heart, 
 , much differ from these opinions. Do you think that the 
 fathers, and mothers of the holy Catholic church arc not 
 as absurd as Protestants papas, and mammas ? The proba- 
 bility I admit to be, in each particular case, that the sweet 
 little blockhead will in fact never get a brief :— but I will 
 
•o 
 
 to 
 
 rent'ure to say there is not a parent from the Giant's Causes 
 way to Bantry Bay, who does not conceive that his child 
 is the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and that no- 
 thing short of positive law could prevent his own dear pre- 
 eminent Paddy from rising to the highest honours of the 
 State. So with the army, and Parliament, in fact, few are 
 excluded ; but, in imagination, all ; you keep twenty or 
 thirty Catholics out, and you lose the affections of four 
 millions ; and, let me tell you, that recent circumstances 
 have by no means tended to diminish in the minds of men 
 that hope of elevation beyond their own rank which is so 
 congenial to our nature : from pleading for John Roe to 
 taxing John Bull, from jesang for Mr. Pitt, and writing in 
 the Anti-Jacobin, to managing the affairs of Europe, — 
 these are leaps which seem to justify the fondest dreams of 
 mothers, and of aunts. 
 
 I do not say that the disabilities to which the Catholics 
 are exposed, amount to such intolerable grievances, that 
 the strength and industry of a nation are overwhelmed by 
 them: the increasing prosperity of Ireland fully demon- 
 strates the contrary. But I repeat again, what I have 
 often stated in the course of our correspondence, that 
 your laws against the Catholics are exactly in that state in 
 which you have neither the benefits of rigor, nor of liber- 
 ality : every law which prevented the Catholic from gain- 
 ing strength, and wealth, is repealed ; every law which- 
 can irritate remains : if you were determined to insult the 
 Catholics, you should have kept them weak ; if ) ou re- 
 solved to give them strength, you should have ceased to 
 insult them ; at present your conduct is pure unadulte- 
 rated folly. 
 
 Lord Hawkesbury says, we heard nothing about the. 
 Catholics till we began to mitigate the laws against them ; 
 ■Vvhen we relieved them in part from this oppression, they 
 began to be disaffected. This is very true ; but it proves 
 Just what I have said, that you have either done too much, 
 or too little ; and as there lives not, I hope, upon earth, 
 so depraved a courtier thac he would load the Catholic 
 with their ancient chains, what absurdity it is then not to 
 render their dispositions friendly, vvhen you leave their 
 arms and legs free. 
 
 You know, and many Englishmen kuov/, what passes in 
 China; but nobody knows, or cares, what passes in Ire- 
 land. At the beginning of the present reign, no Catholic; 
 could realize nronertv, or carry on anv business ; r.hp\ 
 
6*4. 
 
 were absolutely annihilated, and had no more ageTicy in 
 the country than so many trees. They were like Lord 
 Mulgrave's eloquence, and Lord Camden's wit, the legis- 
 lative bodies did not know oi their existence. For these 
 twenty-five years last past, the Catholics have been en- 
 gaged in commerce : within that period the commerce of 
 Ireland has doubled : — there are four Catholics at work 
 for one Protestants, and eight Catholics at work for one 
 Episcopalian ; of course, the proportion which Catholic 
 wealth bears to Protestant wealth is every year altering 
 rapidly in favour of the Catholics. I have already told 
 you what their purchases of land wej*e the last year : since 
 that period, I have been at some pains to find out the ac- 
 tual state of the Catholic wealth: it is impossible, upon 
 such a subject, to arrive at complete accuracy ; but I have 
 good reason to believe, that there are at present two thou- 
 sand Catholics in Ireland, possessing an income from ;«^500 
 upwards, many of these with incomes of one, two, three, 
 and four thousand, and some amounting to fifteen and 
 . twenty thousand, per annum : — and this is the kingdom^ 
 and these the people, for whose conciliation we are to wait 
 hcavfen knows when, and Lord Hawkesbury why. As for 
 me, I never think of the situation of Ireland, without feel- 
 ing the same necessity for immediate interference, as I 
 should do it I saw blood flowing from a great artery, I 
 rush towards it with the instinctive rapidity of a man de- 
 sirous of preventing death, and have no other feeling but 
 that in a few seconds the patient may be no more. 
 
 I could not help smiling, in the times of No Popery, to- 
 witness the loyal indignation of many persons at the at- 
 tempt made by the last ministry, to do something for the 
 relief of Ireland. The general cry in the country was, 
 tliut they would not see their beloved monarch used ill in 
 his old age, and that they would stand by him to the last 
 drop of their blood : I respect good feelings, however 
 erroneous be the occasions on which they display them- 
 selves ; and therefore I saw in all this as much to admire, 
 as to blame. It was a species of affection, however, which 
 reminded me very forcibly of the attachment displa3'ed by 
 the servants of the Russian ambassador, at the beginning; 
 of the last century !^ His Excellency happened to fall 
 down in a kind of apoplectic fit, v-fhen he Mas paying a 
 morning visit, in the house of an acquaintance. The con 
 fusion was of course very great, and messengers were dis- 
 patched, in every direction, to find a surgeon, who upon 
 
m 
 
 his arrival declared, that his Excellency must be immedi= 
 ately blooded, and i^repared himself forthwith to perform 
 the operation the barbarous servants of the embassy, 
 who were there in great numbers, no sooner saw the sur- 
 geon prepared to wound the arm of their master with a 
 sharp shining instrument, than they drew their swords, 
 put themselves in an attitude of defence, and swore in 
 pure Sclavonic, that thev would murder any man who at- 
 tempted to do him the slightest injury : he had been a very 
 good master to them, and they wou d not desert him in his 
 misfortunes, or suffer his bloo i to be shed while he was off 
 his {juard, and incapable of defending himself. By 
 good fortune, the Secretar}'^ arrived about this period of 
 the dispute, and h s Excellency, relieved from superfluous 
 blood, and perilous aiiection, was, after much difficulty, 
 restored to life. 
 
 There is an argument brought forward with some ap* 
 pearance of plans bility in the House of Commons which 
 certainly merit , an answer : you know that the Catholics 
 now vote tor Members of Parliament in Ireland, and that 
 they out-number the Protestants in a very great )roportion; 
 if you allow Cath:/lics to sit in Parliament, religion will 
 be found to influence votes more than property, and the 
 greater part of the hundred Irish members who are re- 
 turned to Parliament will be Catholics. — Add to these the 
 Catholic members who are returned to England, and you 
 w'\\i have a phalanx of heretical strength which every mi- 
 nister will be compelled to respect, and occasionally to 
 conciliate by concessions incompatible with the interests 
 of the Protestant church. The fact is, however, that you 
 Are at this moment, subjected to every danger of this kind, 
 virhich you can ;>os:^ibly apprehend hereafter. If the spi- 
 ritual interests of the voters are more powerful than their 
 temporal interests, they can bin 1 down their representa^ 
 tivesto support any measures favourable to the Catholic 
 religion, and they can change the objects of their choice 
 till they have found Protestant members (as they easily 
 may do) perfectly obedient to their wishes. If the supe- 
 rior possessions of the Protestants prevent the Catholics 
 from uniting for a common political object, then the dan- 
 ger you fear cannot exist : if zeal, on the contrary, gets 
 the better of acres, then the danger at present exists, from 
 the right of voting already given to the Catholics, and it 
 will not be increased by adowing them to sit in Parlia- 
 ment. There are, as nearly as J can recollect, thirty seats^ 
 I 
 
m 
 
 in Ireland for cities and counties where the Protestants ar6 
 the most numerous, and where the members returned must 
 of course be Protestants. In the other seventy represen- 
 tations the wccdth of the Protestants is opposed to the 
 number of the Ca holies ; and if all the seventy members 
 returned were of the Catholic persuasion, they must still 
 plot he destruction of our religion in the midst of five 
 hundred and eighty-eihgt Protestants. Such terrors would 
 disgrace a cook- maid, or a toothless aunt, — when they fall 
 from the lips of bearded, and senatorial men, they are nau- 
 seous, antipriestaltic, and emetical. 
 
 How can you for a moment doubt of the rapid effects 
 which would be produced by the emanci,mtion ? — In the 
 first place, to my certain knowledge, the Catholics have 
 long since expressed to his Majesty's ministers their per- 
 fect readiness to vest in his Majesty, either with the consent 
 of the Pope or without it, if it cannot be obtainsd, thenomi- 
 7iatio?i of the Catholic prelacy. The Catholic prelacy in 
 Ireland consists of twenty-six bishops and the warden of 
 Gal vay, a dignitary enjoying Catholic jurisdiction. The 
 number of Roman Cathol c Priests in Ireland exceeds one 
 thousand. The expences of his peculiar worship are to. 
 a substantial farmer, or mechanic, five shillings per an- 
 num ; to a labourer (where he is not entirely excused) one 
 shilling per annum : this includes the contribution of the 
 whole fadiily, and for this the priest is bound to attend 
 them when sick, and to confess them when they apply to 
 him : he is also to keep hiS chapel in order, to celebrate 
 divine service, and to preach on Sundays and holidays. — 
 In the northern district a priest gains from o£30 to £50 ; 
 in the other parts of Ireland from J60 to £90 per ann. 
 The best paid Catholic bishops receive about J 400 per 
 ann. ; the others from J'300 to ^350. My plan is very 
 simrle; I would have three hundred Catholic parishes at 
 J^lbo per ann. three hundred at =^'200 ; er ann. and four 
 hundred at J'300 per ann. ; this, for the whole thousand 
 parishes, would amount to J" 190,000. To the prelacy I 
 would allot ^"20,000 in unequal proportions irom one 
 thousand to JSOO : and I would appropriate J'40,000 more 
 for the support of Catholic schools, and the repairs of Ca- 
 tholic churches ; the whole amount of which sums is 
 J'250,000, about the expence of three days of one of our 
 genuine, good English, Just and necessary wars. The 
 clergy should all receive their salaries at the bank of Ire- 
 land, and I would place the whole patronage in the hands 
 
&7 
 
 of the crown. Now I appeal to any human being, exeep.t 
 Spencer Perceval, Esq. of the • arish of Hampstead, what 
 the disaffection of a clergy would amount to, gaping after 
 this graduated bounty of the crown, and whether Ignatius 
 Loyola himself, if he were a living blockhead instead of a 
 dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing 
 from ci^lOO a }ear in Sligo, to ci^SOO in Tipperary. — 
 This is the miserable sum of money for which the mer- 
 chants, and land-owners, and nobility of England are ex- 
 posing themselves to the tremendous peril of losing he- 
 land. The sinecure places of the Roses, and the Per- 
 cevals, and the " dear and near relations," put up to 
 auction at thirty years purchase, would almost amount to 
 the money. 
 
 I admit that nothing can be more reasonable than to ex- 
 pect that a Catholic Priest should starve to death, gen- 
 teelly, and pleasantly, for the good of the Protestant re- 
 ligion ; but is It equally reasonable to ex;iect that he 
 should do so for Protestant pews, and Protestant brick, 
 9nd mortar ? On an Irish sabbath, the bell of a neat pa- 
 rish church often summons to church only the parson, and 
 an occasionally conforming clerk ; while, two hundred 
 yards off, a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a 
 miserable hovel, and pelted by all the storms of heaven. 
 Can any thing be more distressing than to see a venerable 
 mau pouring forth sublime truths in tattered breeches, and 
 dependmg for his food upon the little offai he gets from his 
 parishioners. I venerate an human being who starves for 
 his principles let them be what they may, but starving for 
 any thing is not at all to the taste of the honourable llagel- 
 lants ; strict principles, and good pay is the motco of Mr. 
 Perceval : the one he keens in great measure for the faults 
 of his enemies, the other for himself. 
 
 There are parishes in Connaught in which a Protestant 
 was never settled nor even seen : in that province, ia 
 Munster, and in parts of Leinstsr, the entire peasantry for 
 isixty miles are Carbolics; in these tracts, the churches 
 are frequently shut for want of a congregation, or opened 
 to an assemblage of from six, to twenty persons. Of 
 what Protestants there are in Ireland, the greatest part 
 are gathered together in Ulster, or they live in towns. In 
 the country of the other three provinces, the Catholics see 
 no other religion but their own, and are at the least as fif- 
 teen to one Protestant. In the diocese of Tuam they are 
 as sixty to one ; in the parish of St, MuHins, diocese o|" 
 
68 
 
 Leghiin, the>re are four thousand Catholics and one Pro- 
 testant ; in the town of Grasgenamana in the county of 
 Kilkenny, there are between four hundred and five hun- 
 dred Ci'tholic houses, and three Protestant houses. In the 
 parish of Allen, county Kildare, there is ro Protestant, 
 though it is very populous. In the parish of Arlesin, 
 Queen's County, the proportion is one hundred to one.— 
 In thewhcle county of Kilkenny, by actual enumeration, 
 it is seventeen to one : in the diocese of Kilmacduagh, in 
 the province of Connaught, fifty-two to one, by ditto. — 
 These i give you as a few specimens of the ; resen: state 
 of Ireland ; — and yet there are men imi udent and igno* 
 rant enough to co tend that such evils require no remedy, 
 and that mild family man who dwelleth in Hampstead can 
 find none but the cautery and the knife, 
 
 omne per ignem - 
 
 Excoqu'itur vitium. 
 
 I cannot describe the horror, and disgust which I felt at 
 hearing Mr. Perceval call upon the then ministry for mea^ 
 sures of vigor in Ireland, if I l.ved at Ham stead upon 
 stewed meats and claret; if i \ialked to church every 
 Sunday before eleven young gentlemen of my own beget- 
 ting, with their faces washed and their hair pleasingly 
 combed ; if the Almigbty had blessed me with every 
 earthly comfort, ho-, awfully would I pane before I sent 
 forth the fiame and the sword over the cabins of the poor, 
 brave, generous, open hearted peasants of Ireland. Hov\^ 
 easy it is to shed human blood— how easy it is to persuade 
 ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the decision 
 has cost us a severe struggle — how much -n all ages have 
 xvounds, and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vu'gar 
 resources of the rulers of mankind— how difficult, and 
 how noble it is to govern in kindness, and to found an 
 Empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection ; 
 but what do men call vigour ? to let loose Hussars, and 
 to bring up artillery, to govern with lighted matches, and 
 to cut, and push, and prime— I call this, not vigour, but 
 the sloth of cruelly and ignorance. The vigour I love con- 
 sists in finding out wherein subjects are aggrieved, in re- 
 jieving them, in studying the temper, and genius ol a peo- 
 ple, in consulting their prejudices, in selecting proper per- 
 sons to lead, and manage them, in the laborious, watchful 
 ?ind difficult task of increasing public happiness by allay- 
 
\ 69 
 
 ing each particular discontent. In this way Hoche paci- 
 fied La Vendee — and in this way only will IreJand ever be 
 subdued — But this in the eyes of Mr. Perceval is imbe- 
 cility and meanness — Houses are not broken open — women 
 are not insulted, the people seem all to be bappy — they 
 are not rode over by horses, and cut by whips. Do you 
 ckli this vigour ? — Is this government ? 
 
 LETTER X. AND LAST. 
 
 You must observe that all I have said of the effects 
 which Avill be produced by giving salaries to the Catholic 
 Clergy, only proceeds upon the supposition that the eman- 
 cipation of the laity is effected : — without that I am sure 
 there is not a clergyman in Ii-eland who would receive a 
 shilling from Government ; he could not do so, without 
 an entire loss of credit among the members of his own 
 persuasion. 
 
 What you say of the moderation of the Irish Protestant 
 clergy in collecting tithes, is, I believe, strictly true. — 
 Instead of collecting what the law enables them to collect, 
 I believe they seldom, or ever collect more than two-thirds ; 
 and I entirely agree with you, that the abolition of agist- 
 ment tithe in Ireland by a vote of the Irish House of Com- 
 mons, and without any remuneration to the church, was 
 a most scandalous andjacobinical measure. I do not blame 
 the Irisi: clergy ; but I submit to your common sense, if 
 it is possible to explain to an Irish Catholic peasant, upoa 
 what principle of justice, or common sense, he is to pay 
 every tenth potatoe in his little garden to a clergyman in 
 whose religion nobody believes for twenty m les around 
 him, and who has nothing to preach to but bare walls. It 
 is true, if the tithes are bought up, the cottager must pay 
 more rent to his landlord ; but the same thing done in the 
 shape of rent, is less odious than when it is done in the 
 shape of tithe : I do not want to take a shilling out of the 
 pockets of the clergy, but to leave the substance of things, 
 and to change their names. I cannot see the slightest 
 T«?ason why the Irish labourer is to be relieved from the 
 
real onus, or from any thing else but the name of tithe» 
 At present, he rents only nine-tenthvS of the produce of the 
 land, which is all thai belongs to the owner ; this he has at 
 the market price ; if the land owner purchases the other 
 tenth of the church, of course he has a right to make a cor- 
 respondent advance upon his tenant. 
 
 I very much doubt, if you were to lay open all civil offi- 
 ces to the Catholics and.to grant salaries to their clergy, 
 in the manner 1 have stated, if the Catholic Laity would 
 give themselves much tr* ubie about the advance of tl eir 
 church ; for they would pay the same tithes under one 
 system, that they do under another. Ifyu were to bring 
 the Catholics into ';he day-light of the world, to the high 
 situations of the army, the navy, and the bar, numbers of 
 them would come over to the established church, and do 
 ns other people do : instead of tb.it, you set a mark of in- 
 famy upon them, rouse every passion of our nature in fa- 
 vour of their creed, and then wonder that men are blind 
 to the follies of the Catholic religion. There are hardly 
 any instances of old, and rich families among the Protes- 
 tant Dissenters: when a man keeps a coach, and lives in 
 good company, he comes to church, and gets ashamed of 
 the meeting house ; if this is not the case with the father, 
 it is almost always the case with the son. These things 
 would never be so, if the dissenters were, in practice, as 
 much excluded from aU the concerns of civil life, as the 
 Catholics are. If a rich young Catholic were in Parlia- 
 ment, he would belong to White*s and to Brooks s, would 
 3ieep race-horses, would walk up and down Pall-Mall, be 
 exonerated of his ready mono}' and his constitution, be- 
 come as totally devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge, 
 and civility, as Protestant loungers in Pall-Mall, and re- 
 turn home with a supreme contempt for Father O'Leary, 
 and Father O'Cailaghan. I am astonished at the madness 
 of the Catholic clergy, in not perceiving that Catholic 
 emancipation is Catiiolic infidelity ; that to entangle their 
 people in the intrigues of a Protestant Parliament, and a 
 Protestant Court, is to insure the loss of every man O'f 
 fashion, and consequence, in their community. The true 
 receipt for preserving their religion, is Mr. Perceval's re- 
 ceipt for destroying it : it is, to deprive ever}^ rich Catho- 
 lic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him 
 from the Protestant, and to shut him up 'n\ his castle with 
 ■Driests and relics. 
 
71 
 
 We are told, in answer to all oar arguments, that this \3 
 not a fit period, — that a period of universal war is not the 
 proper time for dangerous innovations in the constitution: 
 this is as much as to say, that the worst time for making 
 friends is the period when yon have made many enemies ; 
 that it is the greatest of all errors to stop when you are 
 breathless, and to lie down when you are fatigued. Of 
 one thing I am quite certain : if the safety of Europe is 
 once completely restoied, the Catholics may for ever bid 
 adieu to the slightes; probability of effecting their object. 
 Such men as hang about a Court, not only are deaf to the 
 suggestions of mere justice, but they despise justice ; 
 they detest the word 7'ight ; the only word which rou- 
 ses them is peril ; where they can oppress with impu- 
 nity, they oppress for ever^ and call it loyalty, and wis- 
 dom. 
 
 lam 90 far from conceiving the legitimate strength of 
 thecr wn would be diminished by these abolitions of civil 
 inca; acities in consequence of religious opinions, that 
 my only objection t > the increase of rel.gious freedom is, 
 that it would operate as a diminution of political iree- 
 doui : the po er of the crown is so overbearing at this 
 period, that almost the only steady opposers of its fatal in- 
 fluence, are men disgusted by religious intolerance. Our 
 establj hments are so enormous, and so utterly dispvopor- 
 tioned to our population that every second or third man 
 you meet in society gains something from the public : my 
 brother the com:.iissio:;er — my nephew the police justice — - 
 purveyor of small beer to the army in Ireland — clerk of 
 the mouth — yeoman to the left hand — these are the obsta- 
 cles which common sense and just'ce have now to over- 
 come : Add to this that the King, old, and infirm, excites 
 a principle of very amiable generosity in his favour ; that 
 he has led a good, moral, and religious life, equally re- 
 moved from profligacy, and methodistical hypocrisy : 
 that he has been a good husband, a good father, and a 
 good master ; that he dresses plain, loves hunting and 
 farming, bates the Fret.ch, and is in all his opinions and 
 habits, quite Enp lish : — these feelings are heightened by 
 the present situation of the world, and the yet unexploded 
 clamour of Jacobinism. In short, from the various sour- 
 ces of interest, personal regard, and national taste, sucli 
 a tempest of loyalty has set in upon the people, that the 
 forty-seventh proposition in Euclid might now be voteci 
 down, with as much ease as any proposition in politics y 
 
and therefore, if Lord Hawkesbury hates the absttact 
 truths of science, as much as he hates concrete truth in 
 human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the mul- 
 tipUcation table, and passing a vote of censure upon the 
 pretensions of the hypoiheyieuse. Such is the history of 
 English parties at this moment: you cannot seriously 
 suppose, that the people care for such men as Lord 
 Hawkesbury, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Perceval, on their 
 own account ; you cannot really believe then to be so de- 
 graded as to look to their safety from a man who propo- 
 ses to subdue Europe by keeping it without Jesuit's 
 Bark. The people at present, have one passion, and but 
 one 
 
 A Jove pr'mcipiumj Jovis omnia plena. 
 
 They care no more for the ministers I have mentioned than 
 they do for those sturdy royalists who for ^60 per annum 
 stand behind his Majesty's carriage arrayed in scarlet, and 
 in gold. If the present ministers opposed the Court in- 
 stead of flattering it, they would not command twenty 
 votes. 
 
 Do not imagine by these observations, that I am not 
 loyal : without joining in the common cant of the best of 
 kings, I respect the King most sincerely as a good n^an. 
 His religion is better than the religion of Mr. Perceval, 
 his old morality very superior to the old morality of Mr. 
 Canning, and I am quite certain he has a better under- 
 standing than both of them put together. Loyalty, within 
 the bounds of reason, and moderation, is one of the great 
 instruments of English happiness ; but the love of the 
 King may easily become more strong than the love of the 
 kingdom, and we may lose sight of the public welfare in 
 our exaggerated admiration of him who is appointed lo 
 reign only for its promotion, and support. I detest Ja- 
 cobinism, and if I am doomed to be a slave at all, I would 
 rather be the slave of a King, than a cobler. God save 
 the King, you say, warms your heart like the sound of a 
 trumpet. I cannot make use of so violent a metaphor ; 
 but I am delighted to hear it, when it is the cry of genuine 
 affection ; I am delighted to hear it, when they hail not 
 only the individual man, but. the outward and living sign 
 of all English blessings. These are noble feelings, and 
 the heart of every good man must go with them ; but God 
 save the King, in these times, too often means, God save 
 
7S 
 
 aay pension and my place, God give ray sisters an aiiovv- 
 ance out of the pvivy purse, make me clerk of the irons, 
 let me survey the meltings, let me live upon the fruits of 
 other men's industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the 
 public ! 
 
 What is it possible to say to si^ch a man as the gentle- 
 man of Hampstead. who really believes it feasible to con- 
 vert the four million vrsh Catholics to theProcestant reli- 
 gion, and consider* this as the best ren-edy for the dis- 
 turbed state of Ireland. It is not fxissible to ans er such 
 a man with arguments ; we mu-t come out against hini 
 with beads, and a cowl, and [ush him ;nto a hermitage- 
 It is really such trash, that it is an abuse ff the privilege 
 of reasonmg to reply to it. Such a projec is well wo'thy 
 the statesman who would bring the French to reason by 
 keening them without riiubarb, and exhibit to mankind the 
 awful spectacle of a natfon deprived of neutral salts. — 
 This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in 
 own opium ; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder 
 of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits ; but it is the 
 sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom 
 the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment 
 is considered by many as a masterpiece of political saga- 
 city. What a sublime thought, that no purge can now be 
 taken between the Weser and the Garonne ; that the bust- 
 ling pestle is still, the canorous mortar mute, and the bow- 
 els of mankind locked up for fourteen degrees of latitude. 
 When, I should be curious to know, were all the powers 
 of crudity, and flatulence fully explained i:o his Majesty's 
 ministers '' At what period was this great plan of conquest 
 constipation fully developed ? In whose mind v as the idea 
 of destroying the pride, and the plaisters of France first 
 engendered ? Without castor-oil, they might for some 
 months, to be sure, have carried on a lingering war ; but 
 can they do without bark ? Will the people live under a 
 government where antimonial powders cannot be procur- 
 ed ? Will they bear the loss of mercury ? " There's tlue 
 rub." Depend upon it, the absence of the materia medi- 
 ca will soon bring them to their senses, and the cry of 
 Bourbon and Z-o/kj) burst forth from the Baltic to the Medi- 
 terranean. 
 
 You ask me.foA-any precedent in our history, wheie the 
 oath of supremacy has been dispensed with. It was dis- 
 pensed with to the Catholics of Canada in m-4. They 
 are only required to take a simple oath of allegiance. Thr» 
 K 
 
 m^ 
 
74 
 
 same, I believe, was the case in Corsica. The reason of 
 such exemption was obvious, you cou^d not possibly have 
 retained either of these countries without it : And what 
 did it signify whether you retained them or not ? in cases 
 where you might have been foolish without peril, vou were 
 wise ; when nonsense and bigotry threaten you with de- 
 struction, it is impossible to bring you back to the alpha- 
 bet of justice and common sense : if men are to be fools, 
 I would rather they were fools in little matters, tha;i in 
 great ; dullness turned up with temerity, is a livery all the 
 worse for the facings ; and .he most tremendous of all 
 things is the magnanimity of a dunce. 
 
 It is not by any means necessar- , as you contend, to re- 
 peal the test act if you give relief to the Catholic ; what 
 the Catholics ask for, is to be put on a footing with the 
 Protestant Dissenters, which would be done by repealng 
 that part of the law which compels them to take the oath 
 of supremacy, and to make the declarati* n against tran- 
 substantiiition : they would then come into Parliament, as 
 all other Dissenters areallowed to do. and the penal laws o 
 which they were ex.; osed for taking office would be sus- 
 pended every year, as they have been for this half century 
 past towards Protestant Dissenters. Perhaps, after all, 
 this is the best method — to continue the persecuting law, 
 and to sus]iend it every year — a method which, while it 
 effectually destroys the persecution itself, leaves to the 
 great mass of mankind the exquisite gratification of sup- 
 posing that they are enjoying some advantage frem which 
 a particular class of tiieir fellow creatures are excluded. — 
 We manage the corporation, and test act at present much 
 in the same manner as if we were to persuade parish boys 
 who had been in the habit of beating an ass, to spare 
 the animal, and beat the skin of an ass stuffed with 
 straw ; this would preserve the semblance of tormenting, 
 without the reality, and keep boy, and beast in good hu- 
 mour. 
 
 Plow can you imagine that a provision for the Catholic 
 Clergy affects the 5th article of tlie Union ? Surely I am 
 preserving tke Protestant Church in Ireland if I put it in 
 a better condition than that in which it now is. A tithe 
 proctor in Ireland collects his tithes with a blunderbuss, 
 and carries his tenth haycock by storm, sword in hand : 
 to give him equal value in a more pacific shape, cannot, I 
 should imagine, be considered as injurious to the church 
 of Ireland : and what right has that church to complain, 
 
75 
 
 if Parliament chooses to fix upon the empire the burthen 
 of supporting a double ecclesiastical establishment ? Are 
 the revenues of the Irish Protestant Clergy in the slight- 
 est degree injured by such provision ? On the contrary, is 
 it possible to confer a more serious benefit upon that 
 church, than by quieting, and contenting those who are 
 at work for its destruction ? 
 
 It is impossible to think of the affairs of Ireland without 
 being forcibly struck with the parallel of Hungary. Of 
 her seven millions of inhabitants, one half were Protes- 
 tants, Calvmists and Lutherans, many of the Greek 
 Church, and many Jews : such was the state of their reli- 
 gious dissensions, that Mahomet had often been called in 
 to the aid ot Calvin, and the crescent often glittered oni 
 the walls of Buda and of Presburg. At last, in 1791, dur- 
 ing the most violent crisis of disturbance, a diet was called, 
 and by a great majority of voices a decree was passed, 
 which secured to all the contending sects the ful'est and 
 freest exercise of religious worship, and education ; or- 
 dained (let it be heard in Hampstead) that churches and 
 chapels should be erected for all on the most perfectly 
 equal terms, that the Protestants of both confessions should 
 depend upon their spiritual superiors alone, liberated them 
 from swearing by the usual oath, " the hOly Virgin Mary, 
 the saints, and chosen of God ;" and then, the decree 
 adds, " th?Lt public offices y and honours y high or loxs), great 
 cr small, shall be given to natural born Hungarians tvho 
 deserve xvell of their country, and possess the other qualifica^ 
 tionSy let their religion be what it may.'''' Such was the lirie 
 of policy pursued in a diet consisting of four hundred 
 members, in a state whose form of government approaches 
 uearer to our own, than any other, having a Koma^^. Ca- 
 tholic establishment of great wealth and power, and under 
 the influence of one of the most biijoted Catholic courts 
 in Europe. This measure has now the experience of eigh- 
 teen years in its favour ; it has undergone a trial of four- 
 teen years of revolution such as the world never witness- 
 ed, aad more than equal to a century less covulsed : what 
 have been its effects r When the French advanced like a 
 torrent within a few days march of Vienna, the Hunga- 
 rians rose in a mass ; they formed what they call the sa- 
 cred insurrection to defend tlieir sovereign, their rights, 
 and liberties now common to all ; and the apprehension of 
 their approach dictated to the reluctant Bonaparte the im- 
 mediate signature of the treaty of Leoben, the Romish 
 
7e 
 
 hierarchy of Hungary exists in all its former splendor, 
 and opulence ; never has the slightest attempt been made 
 to diminish it ; and those revolutionary principles to which 
 so large a portion of civilized Europe has been sacri- 
 ficed, have here failed in making the smallest successful 
 inroad. 
 
 The whole history of this proceeding of the Hunga- 
 rian Diet is so extraordinary, and such an admirable com- 
 ment Uj on the Protestaniism of Mr. Spencer Perceval, 
 that I must coriipel you to read a few short extracts from 
 the law itsel; : " The Protestants of both confessions, 
 shall in religious matters, de|.end upon their own spiritual 
 superiors alone. The Protestants may likewise retain 
 the.r trivial, and grammar schools. The church dues 
 which the Protestants have hitherto paid to the Catholip 
 Parish Priests, School-masters, or other 'such Officers, 
 cither in money, productions, or 1< hour, shall in future 
 entirely cease, and after three months Irom the publishing 
 of this law, be no n)Ore any where demanded. In the 
 building or repairing of churches, parsonage houses, and 
 schools, the Protestants are not obliged to assist the Ca- 
 tholics with labour, nor fhe Catholics the Protestants. — 
 The pioHs foundations, and donations of the Protestants, 
 which already exist, or which in future may be made for 
 their churches, ministers, schools and students, hospitals, 
 orphan- houses, and poor, cannot be taken from them un- 
 der any pretext, nor yet the care of them ; but rather the 
 unimpeded administration shall be entrusted to those from 
 among them to whom it legaily belongs, and those lounda- 
 tions which may have been taken from them under the last 
 government shall be returned to them without delay. All 
 aflairs of marriage of the Protes ants arc left to their own 
 consistories ; all landlords and masters of families, under 
 the penalty of public prosecution, are ordered not to pre-' 
 vent their subjects and servants, whether they be Catho- 
 l.c, or Protestant, from the observance ef the festivals, 
 and ceremon es of their religion, &c. &c. ikc." — By what 
 strange chances are mankind influenced ! A little Catholic 
 barrister of Vienna might have raised the cry of No Pro- 
 tes trmt ism, awd Hungary would have panted for the arrival 
 ol a I'rencharmy, as much as Ireland does at this moment; 
 arms would have been searched for ; Lutheran and Calva- 
 nist houses entered in the dead of the night ; and the- 
 strength of Aus ria exhausted in guarding a country from 
 which, under the present liberal system, she may expect. 
 
77 
 
 in a moment of danger, the most powerful aid : and let h 
 be remembered, that this memorable example of political 
 wisdom took place at a period when many great mo- 
 narchies were } et unconquered in Europe ; in a country 
 where the two religious parties were equal in number ; 
 and where it is impossible to suppose inditference in thet 
 party which relinquished its exclusive privileges. Under 
 all these circumstances, the measure was carried in the 
 Hungarian Diet by a majority of two hundred and eighty 
 to one hundred and twenty. In a few weeks, we shall see 
 every concession denied to the Catholics by a much larger 
 majority of Protestants, at a moment when every other 
 power is subjugated but ourselves, and in a country whei'e 
 the oppressed are four times as numerous as their op- 
 pressors. So much for the w.sdom of our ancestors — 
 so much for the nineteenth century — so much for the 
 superiority of the English over all the nations of the Con- 
 tinent. 
 
 Are you not sensible, let me ask you, of the absurdity 
 of trusting the lowcbt Catholics with offices correspondent 
 to their situation m life, and of denying such y>rivilegeto 
 the higher r A Catholic may serve in the Mditia, but a 
 Catholic cannot come into Parhament ; in the latter case 
 you suspect combination, and in the former case, you sus- 
 pect no cojnbination ; you deliberately arm ten or twenty 
 thousand of the lo^^estof the Catholic people; and the 
 moment you come to a class of men whose education, 
 honour, and taJcnts, seem to render all mischief les'i 
 probable, then you see the da!)ger of employing a Catho- 
 lic ; and t ling to v our investigating tests, and disabling 
 3av\s. if von tell me vou have enough of members ot 
 Parliament, and not enough of MiLtia, without the Catho- 
 lics, I beg '.cave to remi d you, that by employing the 
 physical force of any sect, at the s;:me time when you 
 leave them in a state of utter disallection, yoa are not 
 adding strength to your armies, but weakness and rain ; 
 If you want the vigour of their common people, yoir 
 must not disgrace their nobility, and insult their Priest- 
 hootl. 
 
 1 thought that the terror of the Pope had been confined 
 to the Umits of the nursery, and merely employed as a 
 means to induce young snaster io enter into his small - 
 clotiics with greater speed, and to eat his breakfast with 
 greater attention to decorum. For these purposes, the 
 the name of the Pope i? admirable ; but why ptjsh it be- 
 
c 
 
 78 
 
 yondi Why not leave to Lord Kawkesbury all farthei* 
 enumeration of the Pope's powers ? For a whole century, 
 you have been exposed to the enmity of France, and your 
 succession was-disputed in two rebellions ; what could the 
 Pope do at the period when there was a serious struggle 
 whether England should be Protestant or Catholic, and 
 when the issue was completely doubtful ? Could the Pope 
 induce the Irish to rise in 1715 ? Could he induce them to 
 rise in 1745 ? You bad no Catholic enemy, when half this 
 island was in arms ; and what did the Pope attempt in the 
 last rebellion in Ireland ? But if he had as much power 
 over the minds of the Irish as Mr. Wilberforce has over 
 the mind of a young Methodist converted the preceding 
 quarter, is this a reason why we are to disgust men who 
 may be acted upon in such a manner by a foreign power ; 
 or is it not an additional reason why we should raise up 
 every barrier of affection, and kindness against the mis- 
 chiei of foreign influence ? But the true answer is, the 
 mischief does not exist. Gog and Magog have produced 
 as much influence upon human affairs as the Pope has done 
 for this half century past ; and, by spoiling him of his pos- 
 sessions, and degrading him in the eyes of all Europe, Bo- 
 naparte has not taken quite the proper metb.od of increas- 
 ing his influence. 
 
 But why not a Catholic King, as well as a Catholic 
 Member of Parliament, or of the Cabinet ? Because it is 
 probable that the one would be mischievous, and the othev 
 not. A Catholic King might struggle against the Protes- 
 tantism of the country, and if the struggle was not success- 
 ful, it would at least be dangerous : but theeflPorts of any 
 other Catholic would be quite insignificant, and his hope 
 of success so small, that it is quite improbable the eflfort 
 would ever be made : my argument is, that in so Protest- 
 ant a country as Great Britam, the character of her Par- 
 liaments and her Cabinet could not be changed by the few 
 Catholics who would ever find their way to the one, or the 
 other ; but the power of the crown is immeasurably greater 
 than the power which the Catholics could obtain from any 
 other species of authority in the State ; and it does not fol- 
 low, because the lesser degree of power is innocent, that 
 the greater should be so too. As for the stress you lay 
 upon the danger of a Catholic Chancellor, I have not the 
 least hesitation in saying, that his appointment would no 
 do a ten thousandth part of the mischief to the English 
 church, that might be done by a methodistical chancellor 
 
»ri 
 
 79 
 
 of the true Clapham breed ; and I request to know, if it is 
 really so very necessary that a chancellor should be of the 
 religion of the church of England, how many chancellors 
 you have had within the last century who have been bred 
 up in the Presbyterian religion ? And again, how many 
 you have had who notoriously have been without any reli- 
 gion at all ? - 
 
 Why are you to suppose that eligibility, and election 
 are the same thing, and that all the cabinet xvill be Catho- 
 lics whenever all the Cabmet w^ay be Catholics ? You have 
 a right you say, to suppose an extreme case, and to argue 
 upon it — so have I : and I will suppose that the hundred 
 Irish members will one day come down in a body, and pass 
 a law compelling the King to reside in Dublin. I will 
 suppose, that the Scotch members, b}'^ a similar strata- 
 gem, will lay England under a krge contribution of meal 
 and sulphur : no measure is without objection if you sweep 
 the whole horizon for danger ; it is not sufficient to tell 
 me of what may hapren, but you must shew me a rational 
 probability that it will happen : after all, I might, con- 
 trary to my real Ojnnion, admit all your clangers to exist ; 
 it is enough for me to contend, that all other dangers ta- 
 ken together are not equal to the danger of losing Ireland 
 from disaffection and invasion. 
 
 lam astonished to see you, and many good and well- 
 meaning clergymen beside you, pointing the Catholics in 
 such detestable colours ; two-thirds, at least, of Europe, 
 are Catholics — they are Christians, though mistaken Chris- 
 tians ; how can I possibly admit, that any sect of Chris- 
 tians, and above all, that the oldest, arid the most numer- 
 ous sect of Christians, are incapable of fulfilling the com- 
 mon duties, and relations of life ; though I do differ frorav 
 them in many particulars, God forbid I should give such 
 an handle to infidelity, and subscribe to such a blasphemy 
 against our common religion ! 
 
 Do you think mankind never change their opinions, 
 without formally expressing, and confessing that change f 
 When you quote the decisions of ancient Catholic Coun- 
 cils, are you prepared to defend all the decrees of English 
 convocations, and universities since the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth ? I could soon make you sick of your uncandid 
 industry against the Catholics, and bring you to allow, 
 that it is better to forget times past, and to judge and be 
 judged, by present opinions j and present practice. 
 
86 
 
 I must bes;^ to be excused from explaining, and refuting' 
 all the mistakes abcjut the Catholics made by my Lord . 
 Redesdale ; and I must do th'at nobleman the justice to 
 sa}', that he has been treated with great disrespect.—^ 
 Could anv thi. g be move indecent, than to nakeit a morn- 
 ing lounge in Dublin to call upon his lordship, and to cram 
 him with Arabian-night stories about the Catholics ? Ts 
 this proper behaviour to therej resentati^e of majesty, the 
 child of Themis, and the kee er of the conscience in West 
 Britain ? Whoever reads the Le ters of the Catholic Bi- 
 shops, in the Appendix to Sir John Hij)[etly's very sensi- 
 ble book, will see to what an excess this practice must 
 have been carried, with the pleasing and Protestan no- 
 bleman whose name I have mentioned, and from thence I 
 wish you to receive your answer about excommunication, 
 and all the trash which is talked against the Catholics. 
 
 A sort of notion ha-^, by some means or another, crept 
 into the world, th;!t difference of religion would render 
 men unfit to perform together the offices of common and 
 civil life : that Brother Wood and Brother Grose could 
 not travel together the same circu.t if they differed in 
 creed, nor Cocke. 1 and Mingay be engaged in the same 
 cause, if Cockell was a Catholic, and Mingay a Muggle- 
 tonian. It is supposed that Huskisson, and Sir Harry En- 
 glefield would squabble behind the Speaker's chair about 
 the Council of Lateran, and many a turnpike bill miscarry- 
 by the sarcastica: controversies of Mr. Hawkins Brown 
 and Sir John Throchmorton, u;)on the real presence. I 
 wish I could see some of these symptoms of -earnestness 
 upon the subject of religion, but ii really seems to me, 
 that in the present state of society, men no more think 
 about enquiring concerning each other's faith than they 
 do concerning the colour of each other's skins. There may 
 have been times in England when the quarter sessions 
 r/ould have been disturbed by theological polemics : but 
 now, after a Catholic justice had once been seen on the 
 bench, and it had been clearly ascertained th 't he spoke 
 English, had no tail, onl}^ a single row oi teeth, and that he 
 l.oved port wine — after all "rhe scandalous and infamous re- 
 ports of his physical conformation had been clearly proved 
 to be false — he would be reckoned a jolly fclioA^, and very- 
 superior in fiavourto a sly Presbyterian. Nothing in fact, 
 can be rnore uncandid, and unphilosopbical,* than to spy 
 
 * ?'7t'fcLord]3:u;on, Pugald, Stewart, Locke, and Descartes. 
 
81 
 
 that a man has a tail, because you cannot agree with him 
 upon religious subjects ; it appears to be ludicrous, but I 
 am convinced ;t has done infinite mischief to the Catholics, 
 and made a very serious impression upon the minds of ma- 
 nv gentlemen of large landed property. 
 
 *^In talking of the impossibility of Catholic, and Protes- 
 tant living together with equal privilege under the same 
 government, do you forget the Cantons of Switzerland t 
 You might have seen there a Pro estant congregation go- 
 ing into a church which had just been quitted by a Catho- 
 lic congregation ; and I will venture to say that the Swiss 
 Catholics were more bigotted to their religion than any 
 people in the whole world. Did the Kiigs of Prussia ever 
 refuse to employ a Catholic ? Would Frederick the Great 
 have rejected an able man on this account ? We have seen 
 Prince Czartcrinski a Catholic Secretary of State in Rus- 
 sia: in former times, a Greek patriarch and an apostolic vicav . 
 acted together in the most perfect harmony in Venice, and 
 we have seen the Emperor of Germany in modern times 
 entrusting the care of his person, and the command of his 
 guard to a Protestant Prince, Ferdinand of Wirtemberg : 
 but what are all these things to Mr. Perceval ? He has 
 looked at human naiure from the top of Hampstead Hill, 
 and has not a thought beyond the little sphere of bis 
 own vision. " The snail, say the Hindoos, sees nothing 
 but its own shell and thmks it the grandest palace in the 
 universe." 
 
 I now take a final leave of this subject of Ireland ; the 
 only difficult}' in discussing it is a want of resistance, a 
 want of something difficult to unravel, and something dark 
 to illumine ; to agi.ate such a question is to beat the air 
 with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar ; it is a 
 prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a 
 man says I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose 
 it, this mode of arguing upon the Catholic question I can 
 well underst.md ; but that any human being with an under- 
 standing two degrees elevated above that of an anabaptist 
 preacher, should conscientiously contend for the expedi- 
 ency, and propriety of leaving the Irish Catholics in their 
 present state, and of subjecting us to such tremendous 
 peril in the present condition of the world, it is utterlj' 
 out of my power to conceive. Such a measure as tjie Ca- 
 tholic question is entirely beyond the common game of 
 politics ; it is a measure in which all parties ought to 
 acquiesce, in order to preserve the place where, and th^' 
 J. 
 
83 
 
 stake for which they play. If Ireland is gone, where are 
 jobs ? where are reversions ? where is my brother, Lord 
 Arden ? where are my dear and near relations ? The game 
 is up, and the Speaker of the House of Commons will be 
 sent as a present to the menagerie at Paris. We talk of 
 waiting from particular considerations, as if centuries of 
 joy, and prosperity were before us : in the next ten years 
 our fate must be decided ; we shall know, long before that 
 period, whether we can bear up against the miseries by 
 which we are threatened, or not . and yet, in the very 
 midst of our crisis, v.e are enjoined to abstain from the 
 most certain means of increasing our strength, and ad- 
 vised to wait for the remedy tdl the disease is removed by 
 death, or health. And now, instead of the plain and manly 
 policy of increasing unanimity at home, by equalising 
 rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and 
 wicked system which has been pursued ? Such a career of 
 madness and of folly, was I believe, never run in so short 
 a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour 
 oi a grave-digger, the tomb becomes more ready, and 
 more wide lor every eflbrt which they make. There is 
 nothing which it is worth while either to take, or to retain, 
 and a constant train of ruinousexpeditions have been kept 
 up. J^-very Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his 
 country : the character of the country is lost for ever. — it 
 is of the utmost consequence to a commercial people at 
 war with the grea est part of Europe, that there sliould be 
 a free entry of neutrals into the enemy's ports ; the neu- 
 trals who carried our manufactures, we have not only ex- 
 cluded, but we have comj>elled them to declare war against 
 us. — It was our interest to make a good peace, or convince 
 our own people that it could not be obtained ; we have 
 tiot made a [ eace, and we have convinced the people of 
 nothing but of the arrogance of the foreign secretary : 
 and all this has taken place in the short space of a year, 
 because a King's Bench Barrister, and a writer of epi- 
 grams turned into ministers of state were determined to 
 shew country gentlen en, that the late administration had 
 no vigour, in the mean time commerce stands still, ma- 
 nufactures perish, Ireland is more and more irritated, In- 
 dia is threatened, fresh taxes are accumulated upon the 
 wretched people, the war is carried on without it being 
 possible to conceive any one single object which a rational 
 being can propose to himself by its continuation, and in 
 the midst of this unparalleled insanity we are told that the 
 
 '(A 
 
83 
 
 Continent is to be reconquered by the want of rhubarb 
 and plumbs.* A better spirit than exists in the English 
 peo le never existed ih any peOj le in the world; it has 
 \>een uiisdirecteci, and squandered upon party j^urposesiu 
 the most degradinor and scandalous manner; they have 
 been Jed to believe that they were benefiting the commerce 
 oi England by cies roying the commerce of America, that 
 they were defending their sovereign by perpetuating the 
 bigoted oppression of their fellow subjects ; their rulers 
 and their guides have told them that they would equal the 
 vigour of France by equalling her atrocity, and they have 
 gone on wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, 
 \\hich if husbanded by prudent, and moderate counsels, 
 might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same 
 policy of turning the good qualities of Englishmen to 
 their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, 
 continues his power to those who resemble him only in his 
 Tices : advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen, 
 to make them meanly submissive ; their piety is turned 
 into persecution ; their courage into useless and obstinate 
 contention ; they are plundered because they are ready to 
 pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because they are 
 full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, 
 so Jet it be : that event is in the hands of God ; we must 
 dry up our tears and submit. But that England should 
 perish swindling and stealing, that it should j)erish waging 
 war against lazar-houses and hospitals, that it shouid pe- 
 rish persecuting with monastic bigotry ; that it should 
 calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance 
 ot one man, and the narrow ianaticism of another ; these 
 events are within the j^ower of human beings, and I did 
 not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever 
 stoop to such degradations. 
 
 Longum -valey 
 
 PETER PLYMLEY. 
 
 * Even Allen Park (accustomed as he has always been to be delighted 
 by all administi-ations) says it is too bad ; and Hall and Morris are said 
 to have actually blushed in one of the divisions. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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