kmim£^mmt?m's.-i fefi^ iiU'Z. .A&i mr YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Presented by Professor T.R, Lounsbury LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CATHOLICS. London : Printed by A. Spottiswoode, New Street-Square. LETTERS THE SUBJECT THE CATHOLICS, MY BROTHER ABRAHAM, LIVES IN THE COUNTRY. BY PETER PLYMLEY. CJuentS'firSt tKftttan. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, ORME, BRQ-WN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATEBMOSTEE-ROW. 1838. THE PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. Before publishing this Tract, we thought it right to ask permission to do so from the Gentleman to whose pen it is commonly attributed — and we received from him the following answer : — " Gentlemen, " I AM not the Author of the Tract in question — I have not the smallest wish nor the smallest objection that it should be re published. My general principle is, " Suffi cient for the day is the nonsense thereof;" but, if you think otherwise, it is your affair, not mine. Some just and honourable men now alive are attacked in this pamphlet with very blameable asperity; and I should feel remorse for this, if I were the real, as I vi publisher's preface. am the putative, father of the book. Under this imputation I am as patient as Par tridge in Tom Jones; believing that the real father will one day be known. " &c. &c. &c. " Messrs. Longman and Co," We cannot dispute with this gentleman as to who is the author of the pamphlet, but we may be allowed to differ from him as to its character. It seems to us to be a tract written with great felicity of language, great force of humour, and with deep feeling for religious liberty and human happiness : for these reasons we have used our humble efforts to rescue it from oblivion. The Publishers. CONTENTS. Page Letter 1 1 Letter II 17 Letter III 32 Letter IV 54 Letter V , 72 Letter VI 93 Letter VII 109 Letter VIII 125 Letter IX 138 Letter X 160 LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CATHOLICS. LETTER I. Dear Abraham, A worthier and better man than yourself does not exist ; 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 regu larity ; you are as powerful in the Vestry as Mr. Perceval is 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 B 2 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. the preacher. There is another point, upon which I will do you ampte 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 control his animal habits ; and however loud he may snore, his face is perpetually turned towards the fountain of orthodoxy. Having done you this act of justice, I shall proceed, according to our ancient intimacy, and familiarity, to explain to you my opinions about the Catholics, and to reply to yours. In the first place, my sweet Abraham, the Pope is 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 Protestant interest ; and though; they reflect the highest honour upon the de licate irritability of his faith, must certainly LETTER I. 3 be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigour of his understanding. By this time, however, the best informed clergy in the neighbourhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumour is without foundation : and though the Pope is probably hov-ering about our coast in a fishing-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 Foreign Office, turns out to be without the shadow of a foundation : instead of the angels, and archangels, men tioned by the informer, nothing was disco vered but a wooden image of Lord Mulgrave going down to Chatham as a head-piece for the Spanker gun- vessel : it was an exact re semblance of his Lordship in his military uniform ; and therefote as little like a god as can well be imagined. Having set your fears at rest, as to the b ^ 4 PETER PLYMLEY S LETTERS. 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 unorthodox manner ; and that they eat their god. — Very likely. All this may seem very important to you, who live fourteen mdes from a market-town, and, from long residence upon your living, 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 I now can do of a poor country full of men ; 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 think of •' raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland! " They interpret the Epistle to Timothyl " in a different manner from what we do ! LETTER I. 5 " . . . . They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, " which they call their God !".... I wish to my soul they would eat you, and such rea- soners as you are. What I when Turk, Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all combined against this country ; when men of every religioiis persuasion, and no religious persuasion ; when the population 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 suffer no one to bleed for England, who does not agree with you about the 2d of Timothy ? You talk about the Catholics ! If you and your brotherhood have been able to persuade the country into a continuation of this grossest of all absurdities, you have ten times the power which the Catholic clergy ever had in their best days. Louis XIV. when he revoked the Edict of Nantes, never thought pf preventing the Protestants from fighting his battles ; and gained accordingly some of his most splendid victories by the talents of his Protestant generals. No power b S 6 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. in Europe, but yourselves, has ever thought, for these hundred years past, of asking whe ther a bayonet is Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran ; but, whether it is sharp, and well-tempered. A bigot delights in public ridicule ; for he begins to think he is a mar tyr ; I can promise you the full enjoyment of this pleasure, from one extremity of Europe to the other. I am as disgusted with the nonsense of the Roman Catholic religion as you can be : and no man who talks such nonsense shall ever tithe the product of the earth ; nor meddle with the ecclesiastical establishment in any shape ; — but what have I to do with the speculative nonsense of his theology, when the object is to elect the mayor of a county town, or to appoint a colonel of a marching regiment ? WiU a man discharge the solemn impertinences of the one office with less zeal, or shrink from the bloody boldness of the other with greater timidity, because the block-' head thinks he can eat angels in muffins, and chew a spiritual nature in the crumpet which LETTER i. 7 he buys from the baker's shop ? * I am sorry there should be such impious folly in the world, but I should be ten times a greater fool than he is, if I refused to lead him out against the enemies of the state, till he had made a solemn protestation, that the crumpet was spiritless, and the muffin 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 common rules of morality, and militate against the fair power of the ruler : it leaves all these errors to you, and to such as you. You have every tenth porker in your parish for refuting them ; and take care that you are vigilant, and logica;l in the task. I love the church as well as you do ; but you totally mistake the nature of an establish ment, when you contend that it ought to be connected with the military and civil career of every individual in the state. It is quite * This passage has been objected to. I cannot see TffliY : — it is the plain statement of a Catholic tenet -which in my eyes is the consummation of all absurdity. B 4 8 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. right that there should be one clergyman to every parish, interpreting the scriptures after a particular manner, ruled by a regulai* hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of haycocks and wheatsheafs. When I have laid this foundation for a rational religion in the state — when I have placed 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 such measures as I know must always procure an immense majority in favour of the established church : but I can go no farther. I cannot set up a civil inquisition, and say to one, you shall not be a butcher, because you are not orthodox ; and prohibit another from brewing, and a third from administering the law, and a fourth from defending the country. 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 LETTER I. 9 a state of alienation from a point of honour, and transmit that spirit to their latest pos terity. This is just the effect your disqualify ing laws have produced. They have fed Dr. Rees, and Dr. Kippis ; crowded the congre gation of the Old Jewry to suffocation, and enabled every sublapsarian, and superlaps- arian, and semipelagian clergyman, to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live with some distant resemblance to the state of a gentleman. You say the King's coronation oath will not allow him to consent to any relaxation of the Catholic laws. — Why not relax the Catholic laws as well as the laws against Protestant dis senters ? 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 Corporation and Test Act in Ireland, and done more for the Catholics of both kingdoms than had been done for them since the Reformation. In 1778, B 5 10 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. the ministers said nothing about the royal conscience; in 1793* no conscience^ in 1804 no conscience : the common feeling of hu manity and justice then seem to have had their fullest influence upon the advisers of the crown : but in 1807 — a year, I 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. Perceval (who tried to be well paid), that that is now perjury which we had hitherto called policy and be nevolence ! 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 usefiil policy, his advisers discover that the- very measures of concession and indid- * These feelings of humanity and justice were at some periods a little quickened by the representation^f 40,000 armed Volunteers. ^ LETTER I. 11 gence, or (to use ^y my own language) the measures of justice, which he has been pur- suing through the whole of his reign, are contrary to the oath he takes at its commence ment ! That oath binds his Majesty not to consent to any measure contrary to the in terest 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 pf 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 ecclesiastical bill, he complies most srictly with his oath, if he is guided in that particular point by the advice of his parliament, 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, B 6 12 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. 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 such opinion was better than his own, and upon the same principle, in common life, you give up your opinion to your phy sician, 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 trust ing such dangerous power to himself or his successors. Now, you are either to suppose that the King for the time being has a zeal for the Catholic establishment, or that he has not. If he has not, where is the danger of giving such an option ? If you suppose that he may be influenced by such an admiration of the Catholic religion, why did his present Majesty, in the year 1804, consent to that bill which empowered the crown to station ten thousand Catholic soldiers in any part of the LETTER I. 13 kingdom, and placed them absolutely at the disposal of the crown ? If the King of Eng land for the time being is a good Protestant, there can be ilo danger in making the Catholic elegible 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 in trigue ; the other did not. Besides, what folly to talk to me of an oath, which, under all possible circumstances, is to prevent the relaxation of the Catholic laws ! for such a solemn appeal to God sets all con ditions and contingencies at defiance. Sup pose Bonaparte was to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to suc ceed, after repeated trials, in making an im pression upon Ireland, do you think we should hear any thing of the impediment of a co ronation oath ? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour such ministers, and such unheard-of nonsense, if the most 14 PETER PLYMLEY*S LETTERS. distant prospect existed of conciliating the Catholics by every species even of the most abject concession"? And yet, if your argu^ ment is good for any thing, the coronation 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^f about fire, faggot, and bloody Mary. Are you aware, my dear Priest, that there were as many persons put to death for religiouis opmions under the mild Elizabeth as under the bloody Mary ? The rei^ of the former was, to be sure, ten times as long; but I only mention the fact, merely to show 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 opinions ; 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 LETTER I. 15 a kinder and better man than yourgelf ; but you (if you had lived in those times) would certainly Jiave roasted your Catholic : and 1 promise you, if the first exciter of this re ligious 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 say ing, that the world has suffered as much from Protestant as from Catholic persecution ; far from it: but you should remember the Ca tholics 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 Protestants 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 teU me, I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my country in the hands of a pert London joker l6 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. 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 farthing 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 de fend you from the Pope, and all of us from that administration, who seek power by op- posing a measure which Burke, Pitt, and Fox all considered as absolutely necessary to the existence of the country. LETTER II. 17 LETTER II. Dear Abraham, The Catholic not respect an oath : why not ?¦ What upon earth has kept him out of Parlia ment, or excluded him from all the offices whence he is excluded, but his respect for oaths? There is no law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be no such law ; because it is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of any man's mind. Suppose it were in contempla tion to exclude all men from certain offices who contended for the legality of taking tithes, the only mode of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess would be to tender you an oath " against that damnable doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, abstract, ap propriate, subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck," &c. &c. &c. 18 peter PLYMLEY's LETTERS. and every other animal that ever existed, which of course the lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now this oath I am sure you would rather die than take ; and so the Ca- tholic is excluded from Parliament because he wiU not swear that he disbelieves the lead ing doctrines of his religion ! The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him ; your answer is, that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaiths ? The oaths keep him out of Parlia ment; why then he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by re ligious obligations as you are : but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson dPes whefi he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit any thing in favour of a Dissenter. I will not dispute with you 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 Chancelte Letter i. I9 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 gambled, and the report inflammatory. Leaving this to be settled as he pleases to settle it, I wish to inform you, that, previously to the bill last passed in favour 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 Catholics in Great Britain. I should perfectly agree with you, if the Catholics admitted such a dangerous dis- 20 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. pensing 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 devise. 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 thousandth 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. Letsom at the head of the Quaker church? Is not the General Assembly at the head of the church of Scot-' land ? 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 govern ment 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- LETTER I. 21 — Both Mr. C 's sisters enjoy pensions more than sufficient to place the two greatest dignitaries of the Irish Catholic church entirely at the disposal of the Crown. — Every body who knows Ireland knows perfectly well, that nothing would be easier, with, the expen- 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 nomination re mained 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, common prudence, and to common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, and the fatuity of idiots. 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 firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the power of France, and if once wrested from their alliance with England, would in three years 22 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. render its existence as an independent nation absolutely impossible. You speak of danger to the establishment : I request to know when the establishment was ever so much in dan ger 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. Perceval and his parsons forgot all this, in their horror lest twelve or fourteen old women may be converted to holy water, and Catholic nonsense. They never see that, while they are saving these venerable ladies from per dition, Ireland may be lost, England broken down, and the Protestant Church, with all its deans, prebendCl^cevals 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 condition with, no common labour. Be assured Ireland does not contain at this moment less than five millions of people. There were returned in the year 1791 to the hearth tax 701,000 LETTER I. 23 houses, and there is no kind of question that there were about 50,000 houses omitted in that return. 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 population to 4,200,000 people in the year 1791 : and it can be shown from the clearest evidence (and Mr. Newenham in his book shows it), that Ireland for 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 existing circumstances, just and necessary tvars, monstrous and un natural rebellions, and all other sources of human destruction. Of this population, two out of ten are Protestants ; 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-^ win not ultimately avail. The Catholics wiU 24 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. hang over you ; they will watch for the mo ment ; and compel you hereafter to give them ten times as much, against your will, as they would now be contented with, if it was vo luntarily surrendered. Remember what hap- pened in the American war : when Ireland compelled you to 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 establishment ? — 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 members who were Roman Catholics in one housfe, and ten in the other, if the Catholic emancipation were carried into efiect. Do you mean that these thirty members would bring in a .bill to take away the tithes from the Protestanf, and to pay them to the Catholic clergy? Do you mean that a LETTER H. 25 Catholic general would march his army into the House of Commons, and purge it of Mr. Perceval and Mr. 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 constitution ? 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 ig norance, or his baseness, in a stupid general panic, which, when called on, he 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 as they would be in Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea of security, as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in 26 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. Parliament, looked upon by all the Cafliolicsl| 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^i and the very essence of madness and ignorance,, to reject it. Can you murder the Catholics? — Can you neglect them? They are to6. numerous for both these expedients. 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 children, and for the ruin of Troy, and the misery of good old Priam and his sons, become a legislator and a politician. | A distinction, I perceive, is taken, by one of the most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivatioti of political power ; whereas there is no more distinction between these two things than: there is between him who makes the distinct tion and a booby. If I strip off the relic'-i^ covered jacket of a Catholic, and give him twenty stripes .... I persecute : if I say, Every body in the town where you live shall i LETTER II. 27 lie a candidate for lucrative and honourable offices, but you, who are a Catholic .... I do liot persecute! — What barbarous nonsense is this 1 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 tyrant by saying. You shall not enjoy — as by saying, You shall suffer. The English, I believe, are as truly religious as any nation in Europe ; I 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 by the very boys in the "'Streets. But it is not all religion ; it is, in i^'great part, that narrow and exclusive spirit I'which delights to keep the common blessings ll^of sun, and air, and freedom from other human ffbeings. " Your religion has always been f!" degraded ; you are in the dust, and I will lit" take care you never rise again. I should c 2 28 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. " enjoy less the possession of an earthly good, " by every additional person to whom it was •' extended." You may not be aware of it yourself, most reverend Abraham, 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 dumpling : she values her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because they remind her that her neighbours w;ant it : — a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest ; venial when it with, holds the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of reli-, gious 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 feai, 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; tp Mrs. Perceval, and kind tp the master. Percevals 1 These are, undoubtedly, the first qualifications to be lopked tp in a time of th& LETTER II. 29 most serious public danger ; but sohnehow 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 pre* ceding year, whipped his boys, and saved his country. The late administration did not do right ; they did not build their measures upon the solid basis of facts. They should have caused several Catholics to have been dissected after death by surgeons of either religion ; and the report to have been published with ac companying plates. If the viscera, and other organs of life, had been found to be the same as in Protestant bodies ; if the provisions of nerves, arteries, cerebum and cerebellum, had been the same as we are provided with, or as the Dissenters are now known to possess ; then, indeed, they might have met Mr. Per- .ceval upon a proud eminence, and convinced the country at large of the strong probability that the Catholics are really human creatures, endowed with the feelings of men, and entitled c 3 30 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. to all their rights. But instead of this wise and prudent measure. Lord Howick, with his usual precipitation, brings forward a bill in their favour, without offering the slightest- proof to the country that they were any thing more than horses and oxen. The person who shows the lama at the corner of Piccadilly has the precaution to write up — .Allowed hy Sir Joseph Banks to he a real quadrupeix so his lordship might have said — Allowed hy the Bench of Bishops to be real human crea tures. ... I could write you twenty letters upon this subject : 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 millions of Catholics baffled in their just expectations. If I love Lord Grenvill%'* and Lord Howick, it is because they love LETTER II. 31 their country : if I abhor ***»**, it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at die 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 misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breakin^-up of the last admL nistration, was in actual treaty with them for a place ; and if they had survived twenty-four hours longer, he would have been now de claiming against the cry of No Popery! instead of inflaming it. — With this practical comment .on the baseness of human nature, I bid you adieu I c 4 32 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. LETTER IlL All that I have so often told you, Mr. Abra ham Plymley, is now come to pass. Th$ Scythians, in whom you and the neighbouring country gentlemen placed such confidence, are smitten hip and thigh ; their Benningseft put to open shame ; their magazines of train- oil intercepted, and we are waking from our disgraceful drunkenness to all the horrors of Mr. Perceval and Mr. Canning .... We shall now see if a nation is to be saved by school boy jokes and doggerel rhymes, by affronting petulance^ and by the tones and gesticulations of Mr. Pitt. But these are not all the aux iliaries on which we have to depend; to these his colleague will add the strictest at tention 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; LETTER III. 33 and he will adjust the stipends of curates*^ when the flag of France is unfurled 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 elo quence 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 en lightened Christian, who drew from the Gos pel the toleration, the charity, and the sweet ness which it contains ; and if the other really possessed any portion of the great understand ing of his Ni'sus 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 re- ligous trifling ; by any psalmody, however sweet ; or by any persecution, however sharp : I am certain the sounds of Mr. Pitt's voice, and the measure of his tones, and the move-. * The Reverend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has, since this was -written, found time in the heat of the session to write a book on the Stipends of Curates. c 5 34 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. ment pf his arms, will do nothing for us ; when these tones, and movements, and voice bring us always declamation without sense or know. ledge, and ridicule without good humpur or conciliation. Oh, Mr. Plymley, Mr. Plymleyv 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 debauched London bathers on the Sussex coast ; because the Morning Post no longer fixed the invasion sometimes for Mondays sometimes for Tuesday, sometimes (positively for the last time of invading) on Saturday; because all these causes of terrpr were sus pended, ypu cpnceive the ppwer pf Bpnaparte tp be at an end, and were setting off for Paris, with Lord Hawkesbury the conqueror.— This is precisely the method in which the LETTER ill. 35 English have acted during the whole of the revolutionary war. If Austria or Prussia armed, doctors of divinity immediately printed ihose p3,ssages out of Habakkuk, in which the destruction of the Usurper by General Mack, and the Duke of Brunswick, are so clearly predicted. If Bonaparte halted, there was a mutiny, or a dysentery. If any one of his generals were eaten up by the light troops of Russia, and picked (as their manner is) to the bone, the sanguine spirit of this country dis played itself in all its glory. What scenes of infamy did the Society for the Suppression of Vice lay open to our astonished eyes : trades men's daughters dancing ; pots of beer carried out between the first and second lesson ; and dark and distant rumours of indecent prints. Clouds of Mr. Canning's cousins arrived by the waggonj ; all the contractors left their cards with Mr. Rose ; and every plunderer of the public crawled out of his hole, like slugs, and grubs, and worms, after a shower of rain. If my voice could have been heard at the late changes, I should have said, *' Gently ;, c 6 36 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. 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, goodj, sense, and liberality have extricated you out of your present embarrassment, then dismiss; 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 sub* mit for a little time to be respected abroad; overlook the painful absence of the tax- gatherer for a few 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, insulted, disgraced, and restrained to your heart's content. Do not imagine I have any intention of putting servility and canting hypocrisy permanently out of place, or of filling up with courage and sense those offices which naturally devolve upon decorous ifflbedltty ""and flexible cunning : give us only a little time to keep off the hussars of LETTER III. 37 France, and then the jobbers and jesters shall return to their birthright, and public virtue be called by its old name of fanatic cism."* Such is the advice I would have offered to my infatuated countrymen ; but it rained very hard in November, Brother Abraham, and the bowels of our enemies 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 of wit, and the sallow Sur^- veyor 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 the slight est degree of hesitation : that if Bonaparte * This is Mr. Canning's term for the detection of pub lic abuses ; a term invented by him^ and adopted by that simious parasite who is always grinning at his heels. Nature descends dpwn to infinite smallness. Mr. Canning has his parasites ; and if you take a large buzzing blue bottle fly, and look at it in a microscope, you may see 20 or 30 little ugly insects crawling about it, which doubtless think their fly to be the bluest, grandest, merriest, most important animal in the universe, and are convinced the world would be at an end if it ceased to buzz. 38 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. lives, and a great deal is not immediately done for the conciliation of the Catholics^ it does seem to me absolutely impossible but that we must perish ; and take this with you, that we shall perish without exciting the slightest feeling of present or future com passion, but fall amidst the hpptings and revUings of Europe, as a nation of blockheads, Methodists, and pld women. If there were any great scenery, any heroic feelings, any blaze of ancient virtue, any exalted death, any termination of England that 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 dpubly miserable to become slaves abroad, because we would be tyrants at home ; to persecute, when we are contending against persecution ; and to perish, because we have raised up worse enemies within, from our own bigotry, than we are exposed to without from the unprin- cipled ambition of France. It is, indeed,, a most siQy and afflicting spectacle to rage at LETTER III. 39 such a moment against our own kindred and our own blood ; to tell them they cannot be honourable in war, because they are con scientious in religion ; 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 emolu ments of the state, because we worship God in one way, and you worship him in another, — in a period of the deepest peace, and the fattest prosperity, this would be a fair re quest ; it should be granted, if Lord Hawkes bury 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 in troduce into the Catholic religion ; but to deny the Irish this justice now, in the present state of Europe, and in the summer months. 40 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. 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 danger of coming by the board, four foot water in the hold, men dropping off very fast ; in this dreadful situation, how do you think the Captain acts (whose name shall be Perceval) ? He calls all hands upon deck ; talks to them of King, country, glory, sweet.^ hearts, gin, French prison, wooden shoes. Old England, and hearts of oak: they give three cheers, rush to their guns, and, after a tre mendous conflict, succeed in beating off the enemy. Not a syllable of all this ; this is not the manner in which the honourable Com< mander goes to work : the first thing he does is to secure 20 or 30 of his prime sailors who happen to be Catholics, to clap them in irons, and set over them a guard of as many Pro testants ; having taking this admirable method- of defending himself against his infidel oppor LETTER III. 41 nents, hp goes upon 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 quar.^ ter-master ; issues positive orders that the Catholics should be fired at upon the first appearance of discontent; rushes through blood and brains, examining his men in the Catechism and 39 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 captain 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 seaman ? 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 com mon with many others, against the Catholics, that their demands complied with would only lead to farther exactions, and that it is better to resist them now, before any thing is con- 42 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. ceded, than hereafter; w'hen it is found that all concessions are in vain. I wish the Chah- eellor of the Exchequer, who uses this reason ing to exclude others from their just rights, had tried its efficacy, not by his understanding but by (what are full of much better things) his pockets. Suppose the person to whoiii he applied for the Meltings had withstood every plea of wife and fourteen childreni, no business and good character, and refused him this paltry little office, because he might hereafter attempt to get hold of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster for life ; would not Mr. 'Perceval have contended eagerly against the injustice of refusing moderate requests, because immoderate ones may here after be made ? Would he not have said (and said truly). Leave such exorbitant at? tempts as these to the general indignation of the Commons, who will take care to defeat them when they do occur ; but do not refuse me the Irons, and the Meltings now, because I may totally lose sight of all moderation hereafter. Leave hereafter to the spirit and the wisdom of hereafter ; and do not be nig- LETTER III. 43 gardly now, from the apprehension that men as wise as you should be profuse in times to come. You forget, Brother Abraham, that it is a yast art (where quarrels cannot be avoided) to turn the public opinion in your favour and to the prejudice of your enemy ; 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 and the navy to the Catholic ; let him purchase at the same price as the Protestant (if either Ca- .tholic or Protestant can purchase such refined pleasures) the privilege of hearing Lord Cas- tlereagh speak for three hours ; keep his clergy from starving, soften some of the most odious powers of the tything-man, and you will for ever lay this formidable question to rest. But if I am wrong, and you must quarrel at last, quarrel upon just rather than unjust grounds ; divide the Catholic, and 44 PETER PLYMLEy's LETTERS. unite the Protestant ; be just, and your own exertions will be more formidable, and their exertions 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, how ever 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 vPur case sp . clear and sp obvious, that it cannot be mistaken by the most illiterate country gentleman who rides the earth. No thing, 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 some future period, of robbing your hen*^ LETTER HI. 45 rppst. You may horsewhip him at Lady-day, because you believe he will affront you at Midsummer, You may commit a greater evil, to guard against 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 hereafter 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 prevent 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 like men in the same state for civil influence, we are safe.- All that I dread is, the physical strength of; 46 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. four millions of men combined with an in- vading 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 Eu rope cannot be worse ; the conviction which the Catholics entertain of your tyranny and injustice cannot be more alarming, nor the opinions of your own people more divided- Time, which produces such effect npon brass and marble, may inspire one Minister with modesty, and another with compassion ; every circumstance may be better ; some cer tainly 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 heredi tary transmission of forfeited property, and seriously believe that every Catholic beggar wears the terriers of his father's land next his skin, and is only waiting for better times to ciit the throat of the Protestant possessor, and get drunk in the hall of his ancestors. There is one irresistible answer to this mistake, and LETTER III. 47 that is, that the forfeited lands are purchased indiscriminately by Catholic and Protestant, and that the Catholic purchaser never objects tp such a title. Npw the land (so purchased by a Catholic) is either his own family estate, or it is not. If it is, you suppose him so de sirous of coming into possession, that he rcr sorts 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 Ireland, but forfeited property? In all cither oppressed countries which I have ever heard of, the rapacity of the conqueror 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 48 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. a particular set of Christians, and in worrying them as a boy worries a puppy dog ; it is an amusement in which aU 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 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 easy) way. But then, my gpod Abraham, this sport, admirable' as it is, is become, with respect to the Ca tholics, a little dangerous ; and if we are not extremely careful 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 Wilberfbrcei'l Esq., and the patent Christians of Clapham. We shall by this expedient enjoy the same LETTER III. 49 opportunity for cruelty and injustice, without being exposed to the same risks : we wUl compel them to abjure vital clergymen by a public test, to deny that the said William 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 appear (once in the quarter at the least) at some melo- drame, 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 witness ing the impotent anger of men compelled to submit to civil degradation, 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 consider able. Cruelty and injustice must, of course, exist; but why connect them with danger? D 50 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. Why torture a bull- dog, when ypu can get a frog or a rabbit ? I am sure my proposal will meet with the most universal approbation. Do not be apprehensive of 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 suffering Ireland to be rode by that faction which now predominates 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? and the folly of the Orangemen * in playing this game themselves, is almost as absurd as ours in playing it for theni. They ought to have the sense to seesi'that their business now is to keep * This remark begins to be sensibly felt in Ireland. The Protestants in Ireland are fast coming over to the Catholic cause. LETTER III. SI quietly the lands and beeves of which 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 foreign land, abhorred equally by the English, who have witnessed their oppression, and by the Catholic Irish, who have smarted under them. D ^ 52 peter PLYMLEY's t-ETTERS LETTER IV. Then comes Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown (the gentleman who danced* so badly at the Court pf Naples), and asks, if it is not 9x1 anomaly to educate men in another religion than your own ? It certainly is our duty to get rid of error, and above all of religious error ; but this is not to be done per saltum, or the measure will miscarry, like the Queen. It may be very easy to dance away the royal embryo of a great kingdom ; but Mr. Hawkins Brown must Ippk before he * In the third year of his present Majesty, and in the 30th of his own age, Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown, then upon his travels, danced one evening at the Court of Naples. His dress was a volcano silk with lava buttons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing un der St. Vitus, or whether Da-vid, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known ; but Mr. Brown danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigour, that he thre-vf the. Queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which ter minated in a miscarriage, and changed the dynasty of the Neapolitan throne. Letter iv. dB When his object is to crush an opppsite 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 centuries, before the absurdities of the Catholic religion are laughed at as much as they deserve to be ; but surely, in the mean time, the Catholic religion is better than none ; four millions of Catholics are better than four millions of wild beasts ; two hundred priests educated by our own government are better than the same number educated by the man who means to destroy us. The whole sum now appropriated by Go vernment to the religious education of four millions of Christians is 13,000/. ; a sum about one hundred times as large being appropriated in the same country to about one eighth part of this number of Protestants. When it was proposed to raise this grant from 8000/. to ] 3,000/., its present amount, this sum was ob jected to by that most indulgent of Christians, Mr. Spencer Perceval, as enormous ; he him- D 3 54 peter plymley's letters, self having secured for his own eating and drinking, and the eating and drinking of the Master and Miss Percevals, the reversionary sum of 21,000/. 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 pf it is, that this Minister, after abusing his predecessors for their impious bounty to the Catholics, has found himself compelled, from the apprehension of imme diate danger, to grant the sum in question; thus dissolving his pearl * in vinegar, and destroying all the value of the gift by the virulence and reluctance with which it was granted. I hear from some persons in Parliament, and from others in the sixpenny societies for debate, a great deal about unalterable laws passed at the Revolution. When I hear any any man talk of an unalterable law, the only * Perfectly ready at the same time to follow the other half of Cleopatra's example, and to swallow the solution iimself. LETTER IV. 56 effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool. A law passed when there was Germany, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, and Turkey ; when there was a disputed succession ; when four or five hundred acres were won and lost after ten years' hard fighting; when armies were commanded by the sons of kings, and campaigns passed in an interchange of civil letters and ripe fruit ; and for these laws, when • the whole state of the world is completely changed, we are, now, according to my Lord Hawkesbury, to hold ourselves ready to perish. It is no mean misfortune, in times like these, to be forced to say any thing about such men as Lord Hawkesbury, and to be reminded that we are governed by them ; but as I am driven to it, I must take the liberty of observing, that the wisdom and liberality of my Lord Hawkes bury are of that complexion which always shrinks from the present exercise of these virtues, by praising the splendid examples of them in ages past. If he had lived at such periods, he would have opposed the Revolution D 4 56 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. by praising the Reformation, and the Reform- ation by speaking handsomely of the Crusades. He gratifies his natural antipathy to great and courageous measures, by playing off the wisdom 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 unfor tunately 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 military commands, before the Sd and 4th of William and Mary, and the 1st and 2nd of Queen Anne. If the great mass of the people, environed as they are on every side with Jenkinsons, Percevals, Melvilles, and other perils, were to pray for divine illumination and aid, what more could Providence in its mercy do than LETTER IV. 57 send them the example of Scotland? For what a length of years was it attempted to compel the Scotch to change their religion : horse, foot, artillery, and armed Prebendaries were sent out after the Presbyterian parsons and their congregations. The Percevals of those days called for blood : this call is never made in vain, and blood was shed ; but, to the astonishment and horror of the Percevals of those days, they could not introduce the book of common prayer, nor prevent that metaphy- sical 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 holding his Calvinistical creed in the other, Sawney ran away to his flinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy of the tallest thistles. But Sawney brought up his unbreeched offspring in a cordial hatred of his oppressors ; and Scotland was as much a part of the weakness of England then, as D 5 58, PETER plymley's LETTERS. 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. No lightnings descended from heaven ; the country was not ruined ; the world is not yet come to an end ; the digni taries, who foretold all these consequences, are utterly forgotten ; and Scotland has ever since been an increasing source of strength to Great Britain. In the six hundredth year of our empire over Ireland, we are making laws to transport a man, if he is found out of his house after eight o'clock at night. That this is necessary, I know too well ; but tell me why is it necessary ? It is not necessary in Greece, where the Turks are masters. Are you aware, that there is at this mo ment an universal clamour throughout the .whole of Ireland against the Union ? It is now one month since I returned from that country : I have never seen so extraordinary, so alarming, and so rapid a change in the sentiments of any people. Those who dis- LETTER IV. 59 liked the Union before are quite furious against it now ; those who doubted doubt no more ; those who were friendly to it have ex changed 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 Dissenters to unite with the Ca tholics, 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 Union ; that cry will -spread like wild-fire, and blaze over every opposition ; and if this is the case, there is no use in mincing the matter, Ireland is gone, and the death-blow of England is struck ; and this event may happen instantly — before Mr. Canning and Mr. Hookham Frere have turned 'Lord Howick's last speech into doggerel rhyme ; before " the near and dear relations" have received another quarter of their pension, or Mr. Perceval conducted the ( Curates' Salary Bill safely to a third reading. D 6 60 PETER PLYMLE'y's LETTERS. — If the mind of the English people, cursed as they 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 Pro testant Irish towards the Catholics, then a much more insignificant and powerless body than they now are. The Catholic and the Dis senter have since combined together against you. Last war, the winds, those ancient and unsubsidized allies of England; the winds, upon which English ministers depend as much for saving kingdoms as washerwomen do for drying clothes ; the winds stood you friends ; the French could only get into Ireland in small numbers, and the rebels were defeated. Since then, all the remaining king doms of Europe have been destroyed; and the Irish see that their national independence is gone, without having received any single LETTER IV. 61 one of those advantages which they were .taught to expect from the sacrifice. AU good things were to flow from the Union ; they have none of them gained any thing. Every man's pride is wounded by it ; no man's interest. is promoted. In the seventh year of that Union, four million Catholics, lured by all kinds of promises to 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 pounds with which to educate their children in their own mode of worship ; he, the same Mr. Spencer, having secured to his own Protestant self a reversionary portion of the public money amounting to four times that sum. A senior Proctor of the University of Oxford, the head of a house, or the ex amining Chaplain to a Bishop, may believe these things can last ; but every man of the world, whose understanding has been exer cised in the business of life, must see (and see with a breaking heart) that they will soon come to a fearful termination. 62 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. Our conduct to Ireland, during the whole of this war, has been that of a man who sub scribes to hospitals, weeps at charity sermons, carries out broth and blankets to beggars, and then comes home and beats his wife and children. We had compassion for the victims of all other oppression and injustice, except our own. If Switzerland was threatened^ away went a Treasury Clerk with a hundred thousand pounds for Switzerland ; large bags of money were kept constantly under sailing orders ; upon the slightest demonstration towards Naples, down went Sir WiUiam Hamilton upon his knees, and begged for the love of St. Januarius they would help us off with a little money ; all the arts of Machiavel were resorted to, to persuade Europe to borrow ; troops were sent off in all directions 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 npr Irishj wa« LETTER IV. 63 immediately provided with lodging, soup, crucifix, missal, chapel-beads, relics, an^ holy water; if Turks had landed, Turks would have received an order from the Treasury for coffee, opium, korans, and seraglios. In the midst of all this fury of saving and defending, this crusade fpr conscience and Christianity, there was an universal agreement among all descriptions of people to continue every species of internal persecution ; to deny at home every just right that had been denied before ; to pummel poor Dr. Abraham Rees 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 subjected by Providence to their Orange masters. How would my admirable brother, the Rev. Abraham Plymley, like to be marched to a Catholic chapel, to be sprinkled with the sanctified contents of a pump, to hear a number of false quantities in the Latin tongue, and to see a number of persons oc cupied in making right angles upon the breast 64 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. and forehead? And if aU this would give ypu go much pain, what right have you to march Catholic soldiers to a place of wprship, where there is no aspersion, no rectangular gestures, and where they understand every word they hear, having first, in order to get him to enlist, made a solemn promise to the contrary? Can you wonder, after this, that the Catholic priest stops the recruiting in Ireland, as he is now doing to a most alarm ing degree ? The late question concerning military rank did not individually affect the lowest persons of the Catholic persuasion ; but do you imagine they do not sympathise with the honour and disgrace of their superiors ? Do you think that satisfaction and dis^jroction do not travel down from Lord Fingal to the most potatpeless 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 Sir Henry MUdmay, and the disappointment of Mr. Perceval in the matter LETTER IV. 65 of the Duchy of Lancaster, did not affect every dabbler in public property? Depend upon it these things were felt through all the gradations of small plunderers, down to him who filches a pound of tobacco from the Xing's warehouses ; while, on the contrary, the acquittal of any noble and official thief would not fail to diffuse the most heartfelt Satisfaction over the larcenous and burgla rious world. Observe, I do not say because the lower Catholics are affected by what con cerns their superiors, that they are not affect ed by what concerns themselves. There is no disguising the horrid truth ; there must be some relaxation with respect to tithe : this is the cruel and heart-rending price which must be paid for national preservation. I feel how- little existence wiU be worth having, if any alteration, however slight, is made in the property of Irish Rectors ; I am conscious how much such changes must affect the daily and hourly comforts of every Englishman ; I shall feel too happy if they leave Europe un touched, and are not ultimately fatal to th^ 66 P^TER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. destinies of America; but I am madly bent upon keeping foreign enemies out pf the British Empire, and my limited understanding presents me with np pther means pf effecting my object. You talk of waiting till another reign, be fore any alteration is made ; a proposal full of good sense and good-nature, if the measure in question were to pull dpwn St. James's Palace, or to alter Kew Gardens. Will Bona parte agree to put off his intrigues, and his invasion of Ireland ? If so, I wUl overlook the question of justice, and, finding the danger suspended, agree to the delay. I sincerely hope this reign may last many years, yet the delay of a single session of Parliament may be fatal ; but if another year elapses without some serious concession made to the Ca tholics, I believe, before God, that aU future pledges and concessions will be made in vain. I do not think that peace wUl do you any good under such circumstances : if Bonaparte gives you a respite, it will only be to get ready the gallows on which he means to hang LETTER IV. 67 you. The Catholic and the Dissenter can unite in peace as well as war. If they do, the gallows is ready; and your executioner, 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 impossible for public men to be, long sUent about the Catholics : pressing evUs are not got rid of, because they are not talked of. A man may command his family to say nothing more about the stone, and surgical operations ; but the ponderous malice stUl Jies 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 operation. Believe me, you talk foUy, when you speak of suppressing the Catholic question. I wish to God the case 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 Gren- -vUle, or the servUe drawl of Lord Castlereagh, "68 PETER plymley's LETTERS. they wUl be heard ere long in the madness of mobs, and the conflicts of armed men. I observe, it is now universally the fashion to speak of the first personage in the 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 un constitutional. Whoever retains his situation in the ministry, while the incapacities of the Catholics remain, is the advocate for those incapacities ; and to him, and to him 9nly; am I to look for responsibility. But waive this question of the Catholics, and put a ge neral case : How is a minister of this country , to act when the conscientious scruples of his Sovereign prevent the execution of a measure deemed by him absolutely necessary to the safety of the country ? His conduct is quite clear — he should resign. But what is his successor to do ? — Resign. But is the King lo be left without ministers, and is he in this manner to be compelled to act against his own conscience ? Before I answer this, pray LETTER IV. 69. tjell rrie in my turn, what better defence is there against the machinations of a wicked, or the errors of a weak monarch, than the ijjipossibUity of finding a minister who wUl lend himself to vice and folly ? Every En glish 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 Constitution aims at bringing about such a sacrifice. You may say, if you please, 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 injury, 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 is no fantasy, however wild, that a man may not persuade himself that he che rishes from motives of conscience ; eternal war against impious France, or rebellious America, or Catholic Spain, may in times to come be scruples pf conscience. One En, 70 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. glish Monarch may, fromscruples of conscience, vfish to abolish every trait of religious perse cution; another Monarch may deem it his absolute and indispensable duty to make a slight provision for Dissenters out of the revenues of the Church of England. So that you see. Brother Abraham, there are cases where it would be the duty of the best and most loyal subjects to oppose the concientious scruples of their Sovereign, stUl taking care that their actions were constitutional, and their modes respectful. Then you come upon me with personal questions, and say, that no such dangers are to be apprehended now under our present gracious Sovereign, of whose good qualities we must be . aU so well convinced. All these sort of discussions I beg leave to decline ; what I have said upon con stitutional topics, I mean of course for ge neral, not for particular, application. I agree with you in all the good you have said of the powers that be, and I avaU myself of the opportunity of ppinting put general dangers tP the Cpnstitutipn, at a mpment when we LETTER IV. 71 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 Monarch, with a true English heart, than to see such a question as that of Catholic Emancipation argued, not with a reference to its justice or its importance, but universally considered to be of no farther consequence than as it affects his own private feelings. That these sentiments should be mine, is not wonderful ; but how they came to be yours, does, I confess, fiU me with sur prise. Are you moved by the arrival of the Irish Brigade at Antwerp, and the amorpus violence which awaits Mrs. Plymley ? 72 PETER PLYMLEY's LETTERS. LETTER V. Dear Abraham, I never met a parson in my life, who did not consider the Corporation and Test Acts as the 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 matter of course. Heu vatum ignaree mentes. These bulwarks, without which no clergyman thinks he could sleep with his accustomed soundness, have actually not been in existence since any man now living has taken holy orders. Every year the Indemnity Act pardons past breaches of these two laws, and prevents any fresh actions of inforfners from coming to a conclusion 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 LETTER V. 73 ¦moment's operation for sixty-four years. You wUl say the legislature, during the whole of this period, has reserved to itself the discretion of suspending, or not suspending. But had not the 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 imper vious to cattle, and highly useful for the pre servation of property; but, to my utter astonishment, I 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 appears, upon farther inquiry, that the hedge never ought to have existed at aU; tbat it originated in the malice of antiquated quarrels, and was cut down because it subjected you to vast inconvenience, and E 7* PETER PL~yMLEt's LETTERS. broke up youT intercourse with a couiftty aibsdlutely necessary to yotir existence. If the remains of this hedge serve only to keep upa;n irritation in your neighbours, and tb remind them of the feuds of forrfter times, good nature and goad sense teach you that you '©ught^to grub it up, and east it irttP tbe 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 stupidity, and inimitable folly, the conduct of Bonaparte upon the subject pf religious persecution. At the mo ment when we are 'tearing the crucifixes from the necks of the Catholics, and washing pious mud from the foreheads of the Hindeos ; at that moment this man is assembling the very Jews at Paris, and endeavouring to give them LETTER v. 75 stability -and importance. I shall never be jieconciled to mending shoes in America ; but I see it must be my lot, and I will then take a diseadful revenge upon Mr. Perceval, if I catch him preaching within ten miles of me. I cannot for the soul of me conceive whence this man has gained his notions 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 of severity which that Gospel contains, and leaves the jobbers, and con-