Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN '
 
 LETTERS 
 
 ON THE SUBJECT OF 
 
 THE CATHOLICS.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Printed by A. SPOTTUWOODE, 
 New Street-Square,
 
 LETTERS 
 
 THE SUBJECT 
 
 THE CATHOLICS, 
 
 MY BROTHER ABRAHAM, 
 
 LIVES IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 BY PETER PLYMLEY. 
 
 Litton. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 I'KINTEI) FOR 
 
 LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, 
 
 PATERNOSTER- 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 
 
 S6530
 
 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
 
 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 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 j 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 
 hovering 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 therefore as little like a god as 
 can well be imagined. 
 
 Having set your fears at rest, as to the
 
 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 
 miles 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 Timothy 
 
 " 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" I wish to 
 
 my soul they would eat you, and such rea- 
 soners as you are. What ! when Turk, Jew, 
 Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all 
 combined against this country ; when men of 
 every religious 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 of 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 3
 
 o 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 j 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 ? Will 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 logical 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 
 why : 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 regular 
 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,
 
 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 useful policy, his advisers discover that 
 the very measures of concession and indul- 
 
 * These feelings of humanity and j ustice were at some 
 periods a little quickened by the representation of 40,000 
 armed Volunteers.
 
 LETTER I. 11 
 
 gence, or (to use my 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 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 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 no 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 remarks 
 about fire, faggot, 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 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 j 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 j I know not
 
 LETTER I. 15 
 
 a kinder and better man than yourself; but 
 you (if you had lived in those times) would 
 certainly have roasted your Catholic : and I 
 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 tell 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
 
 16 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 will 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 
 oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parlia- 
 ment 5 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 does when 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 Chancellor
 
 LETTER I. 19 
 
 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 
 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 j 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. 
 
 Both Mr. C - J 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 arty 
 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, prebendsy 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 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 wars, 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 
 will not ultimately avail. The Catholics will
 
 24. 
 
 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 house, and ten in the other, if the 
 Catholic emancipation were carried into effect. 
 Do you mean that these thirty members would 
 bring in a bill to take away the tithes from 
 the Protestant, and to pay them to the 
 Catholic clergy? Do you mean that a
 
 LETTER II. 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 
 c
 
 26 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 essence of madness and ignorance 
 to reject it. Can you murder the Catholics ? 
 Can you neglect them ? They are too 
 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 deprivation of 
 political power ; whereas there is no more 
 distinction between these two things than 
 there is between him who makes the distinc- 
 tion 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
 
 LETTER II. 27 
 
 be a candidate for lucrative and honourable 
 offices, but you, who are a Catholic .... I do 
 not persecute ! What barbarous nonsense is 
 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 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 
 great part, that narrow and exclusive 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 
 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 
 want 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 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 are, undoubtedly, the first 
 qualifications to be looked to in a time of the
 
 LETTER II. 29 
 
 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 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 by 
 Sir Joseph Banks to be a real quadruped : 
 so his lordship might have said Allowed by 
 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 Grenville, 
 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 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 misfortune to think so highly, learn, my 
 dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, 
 just before the breaking-up of the last admi. 
 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
 
 32 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 ALL that I have so often told you, Mr. Abra- 
 ham Plymley, is now come to pass. The 
 Scythians, in whom you and the neighbouring 
 country gentlemen placed such confidence, 
 are smitten hip and thigh ; their Benningsen 
 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 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 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 of 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 humour or 
 conciliation. Oh, Mr. Plymley, Mr. 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 debauched London bathers on the Sussex 
 coast ; because the Morning Post no longer 
 fixed the invasion sometimes for Monday, 
 sometimes for Tuesday, sometimes (positively 
 for the last time of invading) on Saturday ; 
 because all these causes of terror were sus- 
 pended, you conceive 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
 
 LETTER III. '35 
 
 English have acted during the whole of the 
 revolutionary war. If Austria or Prussia 
 armed, doctors of divinity immediately 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 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 astcmished 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 waggona ; 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, good 
 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 
 imbecility 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 .fanati- 
 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 & 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 down 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 hootings and 
 revilings of Europe, as a nation of blockheads, 
 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 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 doubly 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 silly 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 oppo-
 
 LETTER III. 4-1 
 
 nents, he 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, when it is found that all 
 concessions are in vain. I wish the Chan- 
 cellor 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 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 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 j 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 
 vast 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 ty thing-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 
 your case so clear and so 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 III. 45 
 
 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 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 upon 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 
 cut 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 
 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 de- 
 sirous of coming into possession, that he re- 
 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 
 other 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 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 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 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 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 Wilberforce, 
 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 will 
 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?
 
 50 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 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 them. They ought to have the 
 sense to see 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. 51 
 
 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.
 
 52 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 THEN comes Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown (the 
 gentleman who danced * 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 
 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 look before he leaps, 
 
 * 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 David, dancing in a linen vest, 
 was his model, is not known ; but Mr. Brown danced with 
 such inconceivable alacrity and vigour, that he threw the 
 Queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which ter- 
 minated in a miscarriage, and changed the dynasty of the 
 Neapolitan throne.
 
 LETTER IV. ,53 
 
 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 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 
 1 3,000/., its present amount, this sum was ob- 
 jected to by that most indulgent of Christians, 
 Mr. Spencer Perceval, as enormous j 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 of 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 
 himself.
 
 LETTER IV. 55 
 
 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 Wardens 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 3d 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 
 
 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 j 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 (5
 
 60 PETER PLYMLEY'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. All 
 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 William 
 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 nor Irish, was
 
 LETTER IV. 63 
 
 immediately provided with lodging, soup, 
 crucifix, missal, chapel-beads, relics, and holy 
 water j 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 for 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 all this would give 
 you so much pain, what right have you to 
 march Catholic soldiers to a place of worship, 
 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 j but do you 
 imagine they do not sympathise with the 
 honour and disgrace of their superiors ?_ Do 
 
 ^t <fV7t-^f/ * l ^*" 
 
 you think that satisfaction and (JisaflEctioa 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 Sir Henry Mildmay, 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 
 King'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 will 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 the
 
 66 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 destinies of America j but I am madly bent 
 upon keeping foreign enemies out of the 
 British Empire, and my limited understanding 
 presents me with no other means of effecting 
 my object. 
 
 You talk of waiting till another reign, be- 
 fore any alteration is made j a proposal full of 
 good sense and good-nature, if the measure 
 in question were to pull down 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 will 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 all future 
 pledges and concessions will be made in vain. 
 I do not think that peace will 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 silent about the Catholics : pressing evils 
 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 j but the 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 operation. Believe me, you talk folly, 
 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- 
 ville, or the servile drawl of Lord Castlereagh,
 
 68 PETER PL YMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 they will 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 5 and to him, and to him only, 
 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 
 to 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 
 
 tell me in my turn, what better defence is 
 there against the machinations of a wicked, 
 or the errors of a weak monarch, than the 
 impossibility of finding a minister who will 
 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 of conscience. One En-
 
 70 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 glish Monarch may, from scruples of conscience, 
 wish 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, still 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 all 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 avail myself of the 
 opportunity of pointing out general dangers 
 to the Constitution, at a moment 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, fill me with sur- 
 prise. Are you moved by the arrival of the 
 Irish Brigade at Antwerp, and the amorous 
 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 
 ignarce 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 informers 
 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 
 will 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 
 all ; that it originated in the malice of 
 antiquated quarrels, and was cut down because 
 it subjected you to vast inconvenience, and 
 E
 
 74 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 up, 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 stupidity, and inimitable 
 folly, the conduct of Bonaparte upon the 
 subject of 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 Hindoos; 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 
 reconciled to mending shoes in America ; but 
 I see it must be my lot, and I will then take a 
 dreadful 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- 
 tractors, and money-changers at their seats, 
 without a single stripe. 
 
 You cannot imagine, you say, that England 
 will ever be ruined and conquered ; and for 
 no other reason that I can 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 English are brave : so were all 
 these nations. You might get together an 
 E 2
 
 7 6 
 
 hundred thousand men individually brave ; 
 but without generals capable of commanding 
 such a machine, it would be as useless as a 
 first-rate man of war manned by Oxford clergy- 
 men, or Parisian shopkeepers. I do not say 
 this to the disparagement of English officers : 
 they have had no means of acquiring ex- 
 perience ; but 1 do 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 spirit of the pea- 
 santry, in making a gallant defence behind 
 hedge-rows, and through plate racks and hen- 
 coops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do 
 not know any nation in Europe so likely to be 
 struck with panic as the English; and this 
 from their total tinacquairitance with sciences 
 of war. Old wheat 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 wound- 
 ed sorely in his hinder parts ; Mrs. Plymley 
 in fits ; all these scenes of war an Austrian or
 
 LETTER V. 77 
 
 a Russian has seen three or four times over ; 
 but it is now three centuries since an English 
 pig has fallen in a fair battle upon English 
 ground, or a farm-house been rifled, or a 
 clergyman's wife been subjected to any other 
 proposals of love than the connubial endear- 
 ments of her sleek and orthodox mate. The 
 old edition of Plutarch's Lives, which lies in 
 the corner of your parlour window, has con- 
 tributed to work you up to the most romantic 
 expectations of our Roman behaviour. You 
 are persuaded that Lord Amherst will 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 his capitulating hand j and 
 little Mr. Sturges Bourne give forty years' 
 purchase for Moulsham-Hall, while the French 
 are encamped upon it. I hope we shall 
 witness all this, if the French do come ; but 
 in the meantime I am so enchanted with the 
 ordinary English behaviour of these invaluable 
 persons, that I earnestly pray no opportunity 
 may be given them for Roman valour, and for 
 E 3
 
 78 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 those very un-Roman pensions which they 
 would all, of course, take especial care to 
 claim in consequence. But whatever was our 
 conduct, if every ploughman was as great a 
 hero as he who was called from his oxen to 
 save Rome from her enemies, I should still 
 say, that at such a crisis you want the af- 
 fections 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 
 Jias a country, and that there is an urgent 
 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 dignities because I 
 am a Catholic, but the exclusion carries with 
 it a certain stigma, which degrades me in the 
 eyes of the monopolising sect, and the very 
 name of my religion becomes odious. These 
 effects are so very striking in England, that I 
 solemnly believe blue and red baboons to be
 
 LETTER V. 79 
 
 more popular here than Catholics and Pres- 
 byterians ; they are more understood, and 
 there is a greater disposition to do something 
 for them. When a country squire hears of 
 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 cus- 
 tomary food, and to have it privately whipped. 
 This is no caricature, but an accurate picture 
 of national feelings, as they degrade and en- 
 danger us at this very moment. The Irish 
 Catholic gentleman would bear his legal dis- 
 abilities with greater temper, if these were all 
 he had to bear if they did not enable every 
 Protestant cheesemonger and tide-waiter to 
 treat him with contempt. He is branded on 
 the forehead with a red-hot iron, and treated 
 like a spiritual felon, because, in the highest 
 of all considerations, he is led by the noblest 
 of all guides, his own disinterested conscience. 
 Why are nonsense and cruelty a bit the 
 better because they are enacted ? If Provi- 
 dence, which gives wine and oil, had blest us 
 E 4
 
 80 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 with that tolerant spirit which makes the 
 countenance more pleasant and the heart more 
 glad than these can do ; if our Statute Book 
 had never been defiled with such infamous 
 laws, the sepulchral Spencer Perceval would 
 have been hauled through the dirtiest horse-pond 
 in Hampstead, had he ventured to propose 
 them. But now persecution is good, because 
 it exists ; every law which originated in igno- 
 rance and malice, and gratifies the passions 
 from whence it sprang, we call the wisdom of 
 our ancestors : when such laws are repealed, 
 they will be cruelty and madness ; till they are 
 repealed, they are policy and caution. 
 
 I was somewhat amused with the impu- 
 tation brought against the Catholics by the 
 University of Oxford, that they are enemies 
 to liberty. I immediately turned to my 
 History of England, and marked as an histo- 
 rical error that passage in which it is recorded 
 that, in the reign of Queen Anne, the famous 
 decree of the University of Oxford, respecting 
 passive obedience, was ordered, by the House 
 of Lords, to be burnt by the hands of the
 
 LETTER V. 81 
 
 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 imputation was 
 a little more true, the Catholic cause would 
 not be quite so desperate with the present 
 Administration. I fear, however, that the 
 hatred to liberty in these poor devoted 
 wretches may ere long appear more doubtful 
 than it is at present to the Vice-Chancellor 
 and his clergy, inflamed, 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 and safer limits. What mistaken 
 zeal, 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 Protestant religion done for 
 liberty in Denmark, in Sweden, throughout 
 the North of Germany, and in Prussia ? The 
 purest religion in the world, in my humble 
 opinion, is the religion of the Church of 
 E 5
 
 82 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 England : for its preservation (so far as it is 
 exercised without intruding upon the liberties 
 of others), I am ready at this moment to ven- 
 ture my present life, and but through that 
 religion I have no hopes of any other j 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 have either done too much for the 
 Catholics (worthy Abraham), or too little ; if 
 you had intended to refuse them political 
 power, you should have refused them civil 
 rights. After you had enabled them to 
 acquire property, 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 choose whether you will give the rest in 
 an honourable 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 hundred thousand pounds was purchased 
 by the Catholics in Ireland. Do you think 
 it possible to be-Perceval, and be-Canning,
 
 LETTER V. 83 
 
 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 the jocularity of Mr. Canning, they will 
 soon put an end to his pension, and to the 
 pension of those " near and dear relatives," 
 for whose eating, drinking, washing, and 
 clothing, every man in the United Kingdoms 
 now pays his two-pence 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, to wear 
 Treasury ribbons, and then that we are to be 
 told that it is coarse to animadvert upon 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 seems hitherto to 
 B 6
 
 84 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 have spared a man. who never spares any 
 body. 
 
 As for the enormous wax candles, and su- 
 perstitious 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 j that Lord Howick and Mr. G rattan 
 will do each of them a mean and dishonour- 
 able action ; that any body who has heard 
 Lord Redesdale speak once will knowingly 
 and willingly hear him again ; that Lord 
 Eldon has assented to the fact of two and two 
 making four, without shedding tears, or ex- 
 pressing the smallest 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 apprehended from 
 the general diffusion of popery. It is too 
 absurd to be reasoned upon ; every man feels 
 it is nonsense when he hears it stated, and so 
 does every man while he is stating it. 
 
 I cannot imagine why the friends to the
 
 LETTER V. 85 
 
 Church Establishment should entertain such 
 an horror of seeing the doors of Parliament 
 flung open to the Catholics, and view so 
 passively the enjoyment of that right by the 
 Presbyterians, and by every other species of 
 Dissenter. In their tenets, in their church 
 government, in the nature of their endow- 
 ments, 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 
 45 members in one house, and 16 in 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 half the number of the Scotch 
 members ; and yet one exclusion is of such 
 immense importance, because it has taken 
 place; and the other no human being thinks 
 of, because no one is accustomed to it. I 
 have often thought, if the wisdom of our an- 
 cestors had excluded all persons with red 
 hair from the House of Commons, of the
 
 86 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 obloquy would the capillary 
 patriot be -exposed; what wormwood would 
 distil from Mr. Perceval, what froth would 
 drop from Mr. Canning ; how (I will not say 
 my, but our Lord Hawkesbury, for he belongs 
 to us all) how our Lord Hawkesbury 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 appeal to the Deity and his 
 own virtues, and to the hair of his children : 
 some would say that red-haired men were 
 superstitious; some would prove they were 
 atheists ; they would be petitioned against as 
 the friends of slavery, and the advocates for 
 revolt; in short, such a corrupter of the 
 heart and the understanding is the spirit of 
 persecution, that these unfortunate people 
 (conspired against by their fellow-subjects of 
 every complexion), if they did not emigrate 
 to countries where hair of another colour was
 
 LETTER V. 87 
 
 persecuted, would be driven to th.e falsehood 
 of- perukes, or the hypocrisy of the Tricosian 
 fluid. 
 
 As for the dangers of the Church (in spite 
 of the staggering events which have lately 
 taken place) I have not yet entirely lost my 
 confidence in the power of common sense, 
 and I believe the Church to be in no danger 
 at all ,; but if it is, that danger is not from the 
 Catholics, but from the Methodists, and from 
 that patent Christianity which has been for 
 some time manufacturing at Clapham, to the 
 prejudice 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 Catholics ; a .contempt for 
 the great mass of English clergy, much more 
 rooted and profound j and a regular fund to 
 purchase livings for those groaning and 
 garrulous gentlemen, whom they denominate 
 (by a standing sarcasm against the regular
 
 88 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 church) Gospel preachers, and vital clergy- 
 men. I am too firm a believer in the general 
 propriety 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 
 danger, 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 
 ignorant ages in which it originated. The 
 religious enthusiasm manufactured by living 
 men before my own eyes disgusts my under- 
 standing as much, influences my imagination 
 not at all, and excites my apprehensions 
 much more. 
 
 I may have seemed to you to treat the 
 situation of public affairs with some degree 
 of levity; but I feel it deeply, and with 
 nightly and daily anguish ; because I know 
 Ireland ; I have known it all my life ; I love 
 it, and I foresee the crisis to which it will 
 soon be exposed. Who can doubt but that 
 Ireland will experience ultimately from
 
 LETTER V. 89 
 
 France a treatment to which the conduct 
 they have experienced from England is the 
 love of a parent, or a brother? Who can 
 doubt but that five years after he has got 
 hold of the country, Ireland will be tossed 
 away by Bonaparte as a present to some one 
 of his ruffian generals, who will knock the 
 head of Mr. Keogh against the head of Cardinal 
 Troy, shoot twenty of the most noisy block- 
 heads of the Roman persuasion, wash his pug- 
 dogs in holy 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 j but I know them, and I know that, 
 at every rash and mad hazard, they will break 
 the Union, revenge 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
 
 90 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 Englishman depends ? Have you a single ally 
 in the whole world? Is there a vulnerable 
 point in the French Empire where the as- 
 tonishing resources of that people can be 
 attracted and employed ? Have you a ministry 
 wise enough to comprehend the danger, manly 
 enough to believe unpleasant intelligence, 
 honest 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 conciliation, or hope, with that 
 dreadful bill which the distractions of Ireland 
 have rendered necessary ? At the very mo- 
 ment that the last Monarchy in Europe has 
 fallen, are we not governed by a man of 
 pleasantry, and a man of theology? In the 
 six hundredth year of 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 
 hope, but in the winds of heaven, and the 
 tides of the sea ? any prayer to prefer to the 
 Irish, but that they should forget and forgive 
 their oppressors, who, in the very moment
 
 LETTER V. 91 
 
 that they are calling upon them for their ex- 
 ertions, solemnly assure them that the op- 
 pression shall still remain ? 
 
 Abraham, farewell ! If 1 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 Constitu- 
 tion, respect the King, and abhor the French. 
 But though you love the Constitution, you 
 would perpetuate the abuses which have been 
 ingrafted upon it j though you respect the 
 King, you would confirm his scruples against 
 the Catholics ; though you abhor the French, 
 you would open to them the conquest of Ire- 
 land. 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
 
 92 
 
 in Europe. As for the men of whom I have 
 been compelled in this age of mediocrity 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 completely as 
 if they had never been j 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 VI. 93 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 DEAR ABRAHAM, 
 
 WHAT amuses me the most is, to hear of the 
 indulgences which the Catholics have re- 
 ceived, and their exorbitance in not being 
 satisfied with those indulgences : now if you 
 complain to me that a man is obtrusive, and 
 shameless in his requests, and that it is im- 
 possible to bring him to reason, I must first 
 of all hear the whole of your conduct towards 
 him ; for you may have taken from him so 
 much in the first instance, that, in spite of a 
 long series of restitution, a vast latitude for 
 petition may still remain behind. 
 
 There is -a village (no matter where) in 
 which the inhabitants, on one day in the year, 
 sit down to a dinner prepared at the com- 
 mon expence : by an extraordinary piece of 
 tyranny (which Lord Hawkesbury would 
 call the wisdom of the village ancestors),
 
 94 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 the inhabitants of three of the streets, about 
 an hundred years ago, seized upon the in- 
 habitants 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 with beef and 
 beer : the next year, the inhabitants of the 
 persecuted street (though they contributed 
 an equal quota of the expence) 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 duties to keep these poor 
 fellows without their annual dinner : 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 dis- 
 believer in divine providence, and any nefa- 
 rious churchwarden who wished to succeed 
 in his election had nothing to do but to re- 
 present his antagonist as an abolitionist, in 
 order to frustrate his ambition, endanger his 
 life, and throw the village into a state of the 
 most dreadful commotion. By degrees, how-
 
 LETTER VI. 95 
 
 ever, the obnoxious street grew to be so well 
 peopled, and its inhabitants so firmly united, 
 that their oppressors, more afraid of injustice, 
 were more disposed to be just. At the next 
 dinner they are unbound, the year after al- 
 lowed to sit upright, then a bid of bread 
 and a glass of water ; till at last, after a long 
 series of concessions, they are emboldened to 
 ask, in pretty plain terms, that they may -be 
 allowed to sit down at the bottom of the 
 table, and to fill their bellies as well as the 
 rest. Forthwith, a general cry 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 thankful you were 
 for cheese-parings ? Have you forgotten 
 that memorable asra, when the lord of the 
 manor interfered to obtain for you a slice of 
 the public pudding ? And now, with an au- 
 dacity only equalled by your ingratitude, you 
 have the impudence to ask for knives and 
 forks, and to request, in terms too plain to 
 be mistaken, that you may sit down to table
 
 96 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 with the rest, and be indulged even with beef 
 and beer : there are not more than half a 
 dozen dishes which we have reserved for our- 
 selves ; the rest has been thrown open to 
 you in the utmost profusion ; you have po- 
 tatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in 
 the pan, and delicious toast and water, in 
 incredible quantities. 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 them." 
 
 Is not this, my dainty Abraham, the very 
 nonsense and the very insult which is talked 
 to and practised upon the Catholics ? You 
 are surprised that men who have tasted 
 of partial justice should ask for perfect jus- 
 tice ; that he 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 earnestly counsel
 
 LETTER VI. 97 
 
 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 great deal upon the vast con- 
 cessions made by this country to the Irish 
 before the Union. I deny that any voluntary 
 concession was ever made by England to Ire- 
 land. What did Ireland ever ask that was 
 granted ? What did she ever demand that 
 was refused ? How did she get her mutiny 
 bill a limited parliament a repeal of Poyn- 
 ing*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 de- 
 manded them with the voice of 60,000 armed
 
 98 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 men, they Wsre 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 organ of these refusals. As secretary 
 to the Lord Lieutenant) the insolence and 
 the tyranny of this country ^passed through 
 his hands. Ask him if he remembers the 
 consequences. Ask him if he has forgotten 
 that memorable evening, when he came down 
 booted and mantled to the House of Com- 
 mons, 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 un- 
 dignified 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 
 submission and fear are galling terms, when 
 applied from the lesser nation to the greater ;
 
 LETTER VI. 99 
 
 but it is the plain historical truth, it is the 
 natural consequence of injustice, it is the pre- 
 ^dicament in which every country places itself 
 which leaves such a mass of hatred and dis- 
 content by its side. No empire is powerful 
 enough to endure it; it would exhaust the 
 strength of China, and sink it with all its 
 mandarins and tea-kettles to the bottom of 
 the deep. By refusing them justice, now 
 when you are strong enough to refuse them 
 any thing more than justice, you will act over 
 again, with the Catholics, the same scene of 
 mean and precipitate submission which dis- 
 graced you before America, and before the 
 volunteers of Ireland. We shall live to hea r 
 the Hampstead Protestant pronouncing such 
 extravagant panegyrics upon holy water, and 
 paying such fulsome compliments to the 
 thumbs and offals 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
 
 100 
 
 Ireland was strong. We are fast pacing round 
 the same miserable circle of ruin and imbe- 
 cility. Alas ! 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 irreclaimable 
 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. Ire- 
 land a mill- stone about your neck ! Why is it 
 not a stone of Ajax in your hand ? I agree 
 with you most cordially, that, governed 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 annihi- 
 lation 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 advantages which could happen to this 
 country. I doubt very much, in spite of all
 
 LETTER VI. 101 
 
 the just abuse which has been lavished upon 
 Bonaparte, whether there is any one of his 
 conquered 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 in- 
 flamed with 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- 
 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 for 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 hatred. Before you 
 refer the turbulence of the Irish to incurable 
 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 
 F 3
 
 102 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 anxious for their freedom as your own ? No- 
 thing of all this. What then ? Why you 
 have confiscated 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 manufactures slavishly subordinate to 
 your own : and yet the hatred which the 
 Irish bear to you is the result of an original 
 turbulence of character, and of a primitive, 
 obdurate wildness, utterly incapable of civil- 
 ization. The embroidered inanities and the 
 sixth-form effusions of Mr. Canning are really 
 not powerful enough to make me believe this ; 
 nor is there any authority on earth (always 
 excepting the Dean of Christ-Church) 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 colleague. The only opinion in which I 
 agree with these two gentlemen, is that which 
 they entertain of each other ; I am sure that
 
 LETTER VI. 103 
 
 the insolence of Mr. Pitt, and the unbalanced 
 accounts of Melville, were far better than the 
 perils of this new ignorance ; 
 
 Nonne fuit satius tristes Amaryllidis iras 
 
 Atque superba pati fastidia, aonne Menalcam, 
 
 Quamvis ille niger ? 
 
 In the midst of the most profound peace, 
 the secret articles 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, alluding to Ireland. The state of 
 the world, you tell me, justified us in doing 
 this. Just God ! do we think only of the 
 state of the world when there is an oppor- 
 tunity for robbery, for murder, and for plun- 
 der ; and do we 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 remind us, that we have four millions of 
 subjects whose injuries we ought to atone for, 
 
 * This is now completely confessed to be the case by 
 ministers. 
 
 F 4
 
 104 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 adminis- 
 tration, that they might virtuously get hold of 
 a force ten times greater than the force of the 
 Danish fleet? Was there no other way of 
 protecting Ireland, but by 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 inva- 
 sion 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 in- 
 creased the permanent strength of the country 
 while they preserved its reputation unsullied. 
 Nothing of this kind your friends have done, 
 because they are solemnly pledged to do no- 
 thing of this kind ; because to tolerate all 
 religions, and to equalise civil rights to all
 
 LETTER VI. 105 
 
 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 obtain them. Were the 
 fleets of Holland, France, and Spain destroyed 
 by larceny? You resisted the power of 150 
 sail of the line by sheer courage, and violated 
 every principle of morals from the dread of 15 
 hulks, while the expedition itself cost you 
 three times more than the value of the lar- 
 cenous matter brought away. 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 intellectual deficiency, and 
 to grow weaker and worse by the same action. 
 If they had any evidence of the intended hos- 
 tility of the Danes, why was it not produced? 
 Why have the nations of Europe been allowed 
 to feel an indignation against this country be- 
 yond the reach of all subsequent information ? 
 Are these times, do you imagine, when we 
 F 5
 
 106 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 can trifle with a year of universal hatred, dally 
 with the curses of Europe, and then regain a 
 lost character at pleasure, by the parliamentary 
 perspirations of the foreign secretary, or the 
 solemn asseverations of the pecuniary Rose ? 
 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 swallow up 
 the serpents of the magicians. 
 
 Lord Hawkesbury says, that nothing is to 
 be granted to the Catholics from fear. What ! 
 not even justice ? Why not ? There are four 
 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 parliamentary cant. 
 From what motive but fear, I should be glad 
 to know, have all the improvements in our 
 constitution proceeded ? I question if any 
 justice has ever been done to large masses of
 
 LETTER VI. 107 
 
 mankind from any other motive. By what 
 other motives can the plunderers of the Baltic 
 suppose nations to be governed in their inter- 
 course with each other? If I say, give this 
 people what they ask because it is just, do 
 you think I should get ten people to listen to 
 me ? Would not the lesser of the two Jen- 
 kinsons be the first to treat me with con- 
 tempt? The only true way to make the 
 mass of mankind see the beauty of justice is 
 by showing to them in pretty plain terms 
 the consequences of injustice. If any body 
 of French troops land in Ireland, the whole 
 population 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 
 unstatesman-like to concede any thing to 
 such a danger, that if the Catholics, in ad- 
 dition to their present just demands, were to 
 petition for the perpetual removal of the 
 said Lord Hawkesbury from his Majesty's 
 F 6
 
 108 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 councils, I think, whatever might be the 
 effect upon the destinies of Europe, and how- 
 ever it might retard our own individual de- 
 struction, 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 honour should not hide 
 him. I would tear him from the banisters of 
 the back stairs, and plunge him in the fishy 
 fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque Ports.
 
 LETTER VII. 109 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 DEAR ABRAHAM, 
 
 IN the correspondence which is passing be- 
 tween us, you 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 dis- 
 cretion 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 
 
 * The attack upon- virtue and morals in the debate 
 upon Copenhagen, is brought forward with great osten- 
 tation by this gentleman's friends. But is harlequin less 
 harlequin, because he acts well ? I was present : he 
 leaped about, touched facts with his 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 ago ; is he therefore fit for serious 
 parts?
 
 110 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 me impossible to hear him upon any arduous 
 topic without perceiving that he is eminently 
 deficient in those solid and serious qualities 
 upon which, and upon which alone, the con- 
 fidence of a great country can properly re- 
 pose. 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 a light, 
 jesting, paragraph- writing man, and that he 
 will remain to his dying day. When he 
 is jocular he is strong, when he is serious 
 he is like Sampson in a wig j any or- 
 dinary person is a match for him ; a song, 
 an ironical letter, a burlesque ode, an attack 
 in the newspaper upon Nicoll's eye, a smart 
 speech of twenty minutes, full of gross mis- 
 representations and clever turns, excellent 
 language, a spirited manner, lucky quotation, 
 success in provoking dull men, some half 
 information picked up in Pall Mall in the 
 morning: these are your friend's natural 
 weapons ; all these things he can do ; here
 
 LETTER VII. Ill 
 
 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 
 facets and the playful to be the basis of his 
 character, he would, for that species of man, 
 be universally regarded as a person of a very 
 good understanding ; call him a legislator, 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 extraordinary writer of 
 small poetry, and a diner out of the highest 
 lustre, I do most readily admit. After George 
 Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been 
 no such man for this half century. The 
 Foreign Secretary is a gentleman, 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 discretion. 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
 
 112 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 cares about the fly : the only question is, 
 How the devil did it 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 know- 
 ledge of Ireland, to be the plain truth. Of 
 the great Roman Catholic proprietors, 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 
 favourable event before they show 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
 
 LETTER VII. 113 
 
 conceal the plain truth. There is no loyalty 
 among the Catholics; they detest you as 
 their worst oppressors, and they will continue 
 to detest you till you remove the cause of 
 their hatred. 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 show 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 acted at Dublin, produced thun- 
 ders of applause from the pit and the galleries ; 
 and a politician should not be inattentive to 
 the public feelings expressed in theatres. 
 Mr. 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 
 
 * No man who is not intimately acquainted with the 
 Irish, can tell to what a curious extent this concealment 
 of arms is carried. I have stated the exact mode in which 
 it is done.
 
 114 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 the barrel 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 inspec. 
 tors, licences to possess a pistol, or a knife 
 and fork, the odious vigour of the evangelical 
 Perceval acts of Parliament, drawn up by 
 some English attorney, to save you from the 
 hatred of four million people the guarding 
 yourselves from universal disaffection 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 of 
 the first elements of justice, without which a 
 country can be no more secure than it can be 
 healthy without air. I sicken at such policy
 
 LETTER VII. 115 
 
 and such men. The fact is, the ministers 
 know nothing about the present state of 
 Ireland ; Mr. Perceval sees a few clergymen, 
 Lord C astlereagh 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 trouble 
 upon any subject: nor is the mediocrity of 
 the idolatrous 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, I believe*, blown over. You have 
 so strong an army in Ireland, and the 
 Irish are become so much more cunning 
 from the last insurrection, that you may 
 
 * I know too much, however, of the state of Ireland, 
 not to speak tremblingly about this. I hope to God I am 
 right.
 
 116 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 Harbour 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 power- 
 ful 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 500 miles, abounding in deep bays, 
 admirable harbours, and disaffected inha- 
 bitants. Your blockading ships may be 
 forced to come home for provisions and 
 repairs, or they may be blown off in a gale 
 of wind and compelled to bear away for their
 
 LETTER VII. 117 
 
 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 evidently favourable for the invasion of 
 Ireland. And yet this is called Government, 
 and the people huzza Friar Perceval for 
 continuing to expose his country day after 
 day to such tremendous perils as these j 
 cursing the men who would have given up 
 a question in theology to have saved us 
 from such a risk. The British Empire 
 at this moment 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, the Rochefort squadron will be 
 taken, and the friar will be the most holy of 
 men ; if it comes from some other point, 
 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 political existence is scarcely 
 credible ; it is the action of a mad young 
 fool standing upon one foot, and peeping
 
 118 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 down the crater of Mount ^Etna, not the 
 conduct of a wise and a sober people de- 
 ciding upon their best and dearest interests : 
 and in the name, the much injured name of 
 Heaven, what is it all for that we expose 
 iurselves to these dangers ? Is it that we may 
 sell more muslin ? Is it that we may acquire 
 more territory ? Is it that we may strengthen 
 what we have already acquired ? No : nothing 
 of all this ; but that one set of Irishmen may 
 torture another set of Irishmen, that Sir 
 Phelim 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 esti- 
 timation of brother Abraham, is to extinguish 
 the genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed 
 by a slave, Goliah smitten by a stripling, 
 Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman j 
 tremble, thou great Gaul, from whose head an 
 armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of dan- 
 ger j tremble, thou scourge of God, a pleasant
 
 LETTER VII. 119 
 
 man is come out against thee, and thou 
 shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes, and 
 he shall talk his pleasant talk against thee, 
 and thou shalt be no more ! 
 
 You tell me, in spite of all this parade of 
 sea coast, Bonaparte has neither ships nor 
 sailors : but this is a mista'ke. He has not 
 ships and sailors to contest the empire of 
 the seas with Great Britain, 'but there re- 
 mains 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 fighting fleets, it is not 
 possible to conceive that he can want sailors 
 for such sort of purposes as I have stated.
 
 120 
 
 He is at present the despotic monarch of 
 above twenty thousand miles of sea coast, and 
 yet you suppose he cannot 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 expe- 
 rience .has taught us any thing, it is the 
 impossibility of perpetual blockades. The 
 instances are innumerable, during the course 
 of this war, where 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 
 December, 1796, seven ships of the line, and 
 ten transports, reached Bantry Bay from 
 Brest, without having seen an English ship 
 in their passage. It blew a storm when 
 they were off shore, and therefore England 
 still continues to be an independent kingdom. 
 You will observe that at the very time the
 
 LETTER VII. 121 
 
 French fleet sailed out of Brest harbour, 
 Admiral Colpoys was cruizing off there 
 with a powerful squadron, and still, 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 
 days could not stir to the assistance of 
 Ireland. Admiral Colpoys, totally unable 
 to find the French fleet, came home. Lord 
 Bridport, at the change of the wind, cruised 
 for them in vain, and they got safe back 
 to Brest, without having seen a single one 
 of those floating bulwarks, the possession of 
 which we believe will enable us with impu- 
 nity to set justice and common sense at 
 defiance. Such is the miserable and pre- 
 carious state of an anemocracy, of a people 
 G
 
 who put their trust in hurricanes, and are 
 governed by wind. In August, 1798, three 
 forty -gun frigates landed 1100 me n under 
 Humbert, making the passage from Rochelle 
 to Killala without seeing any 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 engage- 
 ment, 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 6000 men, 
 commanded by General Lake, seized their 
 ordnance, ammunition, and stores, advanced 
 150 miles into a country containing an armed
 
 LETTER VII. 123 
 
 force of 150,000 men, and at last surren- 
 dered to the viceroy, an experienced general, 
 gravely and cautiously advancing at the head 
 of all his chivalry and of an immense army 
 to oppose him. You must excuse these details 
 about Ireland, but it appears to me to be of 
 all other subjects the most important. If we 
 conciliate Ireland, we can do nothing amiss ; 
 if we do not, we can do nothing well. If 
 Ireland was 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 
 our useless expeditions, and the almost in- 
 credible 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 tomb of Mr. Fox, and to tor- 
 ment every eminent Dissenter in Great Bri- 
 tain ; Lord Camden shall have large boxes 
 of plums ; Mr. Rose receive permission to 
 prefix to his name the appellative of virtuous ; 
 
 G 2
 
 124 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 glorious upon a white horse, 
 and that they cry out before him, Thus shall 
 it be done to the statesman who hath written 
 " The Needy Knife- Grinder," and the Ger- 
 man play ? Adieu only for the present ; you 
 shall soon hear from me again ; it is a subject 
 upon which I cannot long be silent.
 
 LETTER VIII. 125 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 NOTHING can be 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 almost in- 
 clined 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 statistical tables. I have 
 been writing to you a great deal about Ire- 
 land, 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 correspondence. There 
 were returned, as I have before observed, to 
 the hearth tax, in 1791, 701,132 * houses, 
 which Mr. Newenham shows from unques- 
 
 * The checks to population were very trifling from the 
 rebellion. It lasted two months : of His Majesty's Irish 
 forces there perished about 1600; of the rebels 11,000 
 were killed in the field, and 2000 hanged or exported : 
 4-00 loyal persons were assassinated. 
 
 G 3
 
 126 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 tionable documents to be nearly 80,000 
 below the real number of houses in that 
 country. There are 27,457 square English 
 miles in Ireland*, and more than five millions 
 of people. 
 
 By the last survey it appears that the in- 
 habited houses in England and Wales amount 
 1,574,902, and the population to 9,343,578, 
 which gives an average of 5 J to each house, 
 in a country where the density of population 
 is certainly less considerable than in Ireland. 
 It is commonly supposed that two-fifths of the 
 army and navy are Irishmen, at periods when 
 political disaffection does not avert the Ca- 
 tholics from the service. The current value of 
 Irish exports in 1807 was 9,314,854/. 17*. 7^.; 
 a state of commerce about equal to the 
 commerce of England in the middle of the 
 reign of George the Second. The tonnage 
 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 gallons in 1796, 
 and to 930,800 gallons in 1804. Of the ex- 
 * In England 49,450.
 
 LETTER VIII. 127 
 
 ports 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; and by weight 910,848 cwts. of 
 flour, oatmeal, barley, oats, and wheat. The 
 amount of butter exported in 1804, from Ire- 
 land, was worth, in money, 1,704,680/. sterling. 
 The importation of ale and beer, from the im- 
 mense manufactures now carrying on of these 
 articles, was diminished to 3209 barrels, in the 
 year 1804, from 11 1,920 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 average 
 of three years, ending March, 1783, there were 
 imported into Ireland, of cotton wool 3326 cwts., 
 of cotton yarn 5405 Ibs.; 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 Ibs. It is 
 impossible to conceive any manufacture more 
 flourishing. The export of linen has in- 
 G 4
 
 128 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 creased 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 1783, to 417,030 in 
 1804 ; of tobacco, from 3,459,861 Ibs. in 
 1783, to 6,611,543 in 1804; of tea, from 
 1,703,855 Ibs. 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 64 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, and in about the same space of time, its 
 exports of beef, bullocks, cows, pork, swine, 
 butter, wheat, barley, and oats, collectively 
 taken, have doubled ; and this in spite of
 
 LETTER VIII. 129 
 
 two years' famine, and the presence of an 
 immense army, that is always at hand to 
 guard the most valuable appanage of our 
 empire from joining our most inveterate 
 enemies. Ireland has the greatest possible 
 facilities for carrying on commerce with the 
 whole of Europe. It contains, within a 
 circuit of 750 miles, 66 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 20 to 100 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 sinuosities, to more than 700 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 Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer would drive into the arms of 
 G 5
 
 130 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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. Spencer Perceval does upon 
 the subject of government j that he had 
 entertained doubts* and scruples upon the 
 propriety of admitting the Protestants to an 
 equality of rights with the Catholics, and that 
 he had left in the middle of /fhis empire these 
 vigorous seeds of hatred and disaffection : 
 but the world was never yet conquered by a 
 blockhead. One of the very first measures 
 we saw him recurring to was the complete 
 establishment of religious liberty ; if his sub- 
 jects fought and paid as he pleased, he allowed 
 them to believe as they pleased : the moment 
 I saw this, my best hopes were lost. I per- 
 ceived in a moment the kind of man we had 
 to do with. I was well aware of the mise- 
 rable ignorance and folly of this country upon
 
 LETTER VIII. 131 
 
 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 this is the 
 cause of his tolerant spirit : but is it possible 
 you can intend to give us such dreadful and 
 unamiable notions of religion ? Are we to 
 understand 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 exercise of 
 their own creed can only exist in the mind of 
 an infidel ? Thank God ! I know many 
 men whose principles are as firm as they are 
 expanded, who cling tenaciously to their own 
 modification of the Christian faith, without 
 the slightest disposition to force that modifica- 
 tion upon other people. If Bonaparte is 
 liberal in subjects of religion because he has 
 no religion, is this a reason why we should be 
 illiberal because we are Christians? If he 
 owes this excellent quality to a vice, is that 
 G 6
 
 132 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 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 shows 
 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 inquiry, because he exhibits in 
 his conduct one of the most beautiful and im- 
 portant 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 sport of the antiquarian ; 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 
 the world; nor is there one single source of 
 human happiness, against which they have 
 not uttered the most lugubrious predictions.
 
 LETTER VIII. 133 
 
 Turnpike roads, navigable canals, inoculation, 
 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 im- 
 provements in our condition. Such an 
 history might make folly a little more modest, 
 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 pre- 
 dominate in that particular spot, yet, taking 
 the whole empire together, they are to be 
 considered as a much more insignificant quota 
 of the population. 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
 
 134 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 mind I say in a very few words, if you do 
 not relieve these people from the civil incapa- 
 cities 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, nor the 
 other. Having stated this, I shall leave you 
 to be ruined, Puffendorf in hand (as Mr. 
 Secretary Canning says), 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 esta- 
 blished church were left in a minority of one 
 to four; if you had subjected these heretics 
 to very severe civil privations ; if the conse- 
 quence of such privations were an universal 
 state of disaffection among that caseous and 
 wrathful people ; and if at the same time you
 
 LETTER VIII. 135 
 
 were at war with all the world, how can you 
 doubt for a moment that I would instantly 
 restore them to a state of the most complete 
 civil liberty? What matters it under what 
 name you put the same case? Common 
 sense is not changed by appellations. I 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 
 years past. The few men, who have ill 
 treated the whole crew, live in constant terror 
 that the oppressed people will rise upon them 
 and carry the ship into Brest : they begin 
 to find that it is a very 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 sailors is hardly worth all this anxiety, 
 and that if the ship does ever fall into the 
 hands of the disaffected, all the cruelties
 
 136 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 which they have experienced will be tho- 
 roughly remembered and amply repaid. To 
 a short period of disaffection among the 
 Orangemen, I confess I should not much 
 object : my love of poetical justice does carry 
 me as far as that j one summer's whipping, 
 only one: the thumb-screw for a short sea- 
 son ; a little light easy torturing between 
 Lady-day and Michaelmas ;' a short specimen 
 of Mr. Perceval's rigour. I have malice 
 enough to ask this slight atonement for the 
 groans and shrieks of the poor Catholics, 
 unheard by any human tribunal, but regis- 
 tered by the Angel of God against their Pro- 
 testant and enlightened 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 Ca- 
 tholics. The disaffection of the Orangemen 
 will be the Irish rainbow ; when I see it, I 
 shall be sure that the storm is over.
 
 LETTER VIII. 137 
 
 If those incapacities, from which the Ca- 
 tholics 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 
 Catholics are contending merely for the 
 fringes and feathers of their chiefs. I will 
 give you a list, in my next Letter, of those 
 privations which are represented to be of no 
 consequence to any body but Lord Fingal, 
 and some twenty or thirty of the principal 
 persons of their sect. In the meantime, 
 adieu, and be wise.
 
 138 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 DEAR ABRAHAM, 
 
 No Catholic can be Chief Governor or Go- 
 vernor of this Kingdom, Chancellor or 
 Keeper of the Great Seal, Lord High Trea- 
 surer, Chief of any of the Courts of Justice, 
 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 or General, 
 Governor or Gustos Rotulorum of Counties, 
 Chief Governor's Secretary, Privy Councillor, 
 King's Counsel, Sergeant, Attorney, Solicitor 
 General, Master in Chancery, Provost or 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, Postmas- 
 ter-General, Master and Lieutenant General 
 of Ordnance, Commander in Chief, General 
 on the Staff, Sheriff, Sub-Sheriff, Mayor,
 
 LETTER IX. 139 
 
 Bailiff, Recorder, Burgess, or any other offi- 
 cer in a City, or a Corporation. No Catholic 
 can be a guardian to a Protestant, and no 
 priest guardian at all : no Catholic can be a 
 game-keeper, 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 per- 
 mitted, unless to those who shall take an oath 
 prescribed by 13 and 14 Geo. III. Now if 
 this is not picking the plums out of the 
 pudding, and leaving the mere batter 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: but surely no man 
 will contend that every barrister may not 
 speculate upon the possibility of being a 
 puisne judge ; and that every shopkeeper
 
 140 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 must not feel himself injured by his exclusion 
 from borough offices. 
 
 One of the greatest practical evils which 
 the Catholics suffer in Ireland is their exclu- 
 sion from the offices of Sheriff and Deputy 
 Sheriff. Nobody who is unacquainted with 
 Ireland can conceive the obstacles which this 
 opposes to the fair administration of justice. 
 The formation of juries is now entirely in 
 the hands of the Protestants ; the lives, liber- 
 ties, and properties of the Catholics in the 
 hands of the juries: and this is the arrange- 
 ment for the administration of justice in a 
 country where religious prejudices are in- 
 flamed to the greatest degree of animosity ! 
 In this country, if a man is a foreigner, if he 
 sells slippers, and sealing wax, and artificial 
 flowers, we are so tender 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
 
 LETTER IX. 14,1 
 
 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 unpardonable 
 breach of his duty if he did not summon a 
 Protestant pannel. I can easily believe that 
 the Protestant pannel may conduct themselves 
 very conscientiously in hanging the gentle- 
 men of the crucifix ; but I blame the law 
 which does not guard the Catholic against the 
 probable tenour of those feelings which must 
 unconsciously influence the judgments of 
 mankind. I detest that state of society which 
 extends unequal degrees of protection to dif- 
 ferent 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 pru- 
 dence, not choice. 
 
 I request to know if the vestry taxes in Ire- 
 land are a mere matter of romantic feeling, 
 which can affect only the Earl of Fingal ? In
 
 142 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 a parish where there are four thousand Ca- 
 tholics 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 1*. 6d. per acre, 
 or in the pound, I forget which, for the re- 
 pairs of the church, and how has the ne- 
 cessity of these repairs been ascertained ? A 
 Protestant plumber has discovered that it 
 wants new leading ; a Protestant carpenter is 
 convinced the timbers are not sound, and a 
 glazier who hates holy water (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 jobbing. They have a power of 
 making a county rate to a considerable extent 
 for roads, bridges, and other objects of general 
 accommodation. " You suffer the road to be 
 brought through my park, and I will have the 
 bridge constructed in a situation where it will 
 make a beautiful object to your house. You 
 do my job, and I will do yours." These are 
 the sweet and interesting subjects which oc-
 
 LETTER IX. 143 
 
 casionally occupy Milesian gentlemen while 
 they are attendant upon this grand inquest of 
 justice. But there is a religion, it seems, even 
 in jobs ; and it will be highly gratifying 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 plea- 
 sure to Mr. Perceval : but, from his unfairness 
 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 opi- 
 nion of a jobless faith, of a creed which dooms 
 a man through life to a lean and plunderless 
 integrity. He knows that human nature can- 
 not and will not bear it ; and if we were to 
 paint a political Tartarus, it would be an end- 
 less series of snug expectations and cruel
 
 144 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 disappointments. These are a few of many 
 dreadful inconveniences 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 all 
 professions ? Joel is to be brought up to the 
 bar : has Mrs. Plymley the slightest doubt of 
 his being chancellor ? Do not his two shrivelled 
 aunts live in the certainty of seeing him in 
 that situation, and of cutting out with their 
 own hands his equity habiliments ? And I 
 could name a certain minister 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 are not as absurd as Protestant 
 papas and mammas ? The probability I admit 
 to be, in each particular case, that the sweet 
 little blockhead will in fact never get a brief: 
 but I will venture to say there is not a 
 parent from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry 
 Bay who does not conceive that his child is 
 the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and 
 that nothing short of positive law could pre-
 
 LETTER IX. 145 
 
 vent his own dear pre-eminent Paddy from 
 rising to the highest honours of the state. So 
 with the army, and parliament j 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 jesting 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 demonstrates the contrary. But I repeat 
 again, what I have often stated in the course 
 of our correspondence, that your laws against 
 H
 
 146 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 the Catholics are exactly in that state in which 
 you have neither the benefits of rigour nor of 
 liberality: every law which prevented the 
 Catholic from gaining strength and wealth 
 is repealed ; every law which can irritate re- 
 mains : if you were determined to insult the 
 Catholics, you should have kept them weak ; 
 if you resolved to give them strength, you 
 should have ceased to insult them; at 
 present your conduct is pure unadulterated 
 folly. 
 
 Lord Hawkesbury says, we heard nothing 
 about the Catholics till we began to mitigate 
 the laws against them ; when 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 that he would load the Catholics with 
 their ancient chains, what absurdity it is then 
 not to render their dispositions friendly, when 
 you leave their arms and legs free ! 
 
 You know, and many Englishmen know,
 
 LETTER IX. 147 
 
 what passes in China ; but nobody knows or 
 cares what passes in Ireland At the be- 
 ginning of the present reign, no Catholic could 
 realise property, or carry on any business ; 
 they were absolutely annihilated, and had no 
 more agency in the country than so many 
 trees. They were like Lord Mulgrave's elo- 
 quence, and Lord Cambden's wit j the legis- 
 lative bodies did not know of their existence. 
 For these twenty-five years last past, the 
 Catholics have been engaged in commerce : 
 within that period the commerce of Ireland 
 has doubled : there are four Catholics at 
 work for one Protestant, and eight Catholics 
 at work for one Episcopalian ; of course, the 
 proportion which Catholic wealth bears to 
 Protestant wealth is every year altering ra- 
 pidly in favour of the Catholics. I have 
 already told you what their purchases of land 
 were the last year : since that period, I have 
 been at some pains to find out the actual 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 
 H 2
 
 148' PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 are at present 2000 Catholics in Ireland," 
 possessing an in come 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 Heaven 
 knows when, and Lord Hawkesbury why! 
 As for me, I never think of the situation of 
 Ireland, without feeling the same necessity 
 for immediate interference as I should do if I 
 saw blood flowing from a great artery. I rush 
 towards it with the instinctive rapidity of a 
 man desirous 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 attempt made by the last 
 ministry to do something for the relief of 
 Ireland. The general cry in the country was, 
 that they would not see their beloved monarch 
 used ill in his old age, and that they would 
 stand b) him to the last drop of their blood ;
 
 LETTER IX. 14$ 
 
 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 displayed 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, when he was paying a morning visit in the 
 house of an acquaintance. The confusion 
 was of course very great, and messengers were 
 despatched, in every direction, to find a sur- 
 geon, who, upon his arrival, declared that his 
 Excellency must be immediately blooded, and 
 prepared himself forthwith to perform the 
 operation : the barbarous servants of the em- 
 bassy, who were there in great numbers, no 
 sooner saw the surgeon prepared to wound 
 the arm of their master with a sharp shining 
 instrument, than they drew iheir swords, put 
 themselves in an attitude of defence, and 
 swore in pure Sclavonic, "that they would 
 murder any man who attempted to do him the 
 H 3
 
 150 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 slightest injury: he had been a very good 
 master to them, and they would not desert 
 him in his misfortunes, or suffer his blood to 
 be shed while he was off his guard, and in- 
 capable of defending himself." By good 
 fortune, the secretary arrived about this period 
 of the dispute, and his Excellency, relieved 
 from superfluous blood and perilous affection, 
 was, after much difficulty, restored to life. 
 
 There is an argument brought forward with 
 some appearance of plausibility in the House 
 of Commons which certainly merits an answer : 
 you know that the Catholics now vote for 
 members of parliament hi Ireland, and that 
 they outnumber the Protestants in a very 
 great proportion ; if you allow Catholics to sit 
 in parliament, religion will be found to in- 
 fluence votes more than property, and the 
 greater part of the 100 Irish members who 
 are returned to parliament will be Catholics. 
 Add to these the Catholic members who 
 are returned in England, and you will have a 
 phalanx of heretical strength which every 
 minister will be compelled to respect, and oc-
 
 LETTER IX. 151 
 
 casionally to conciliate by concessions incom- 
 patible with the interests of the Protestant 
 church. The fact is, however, that you are 
 at this moment subjected to every danger of 
 this kind which you can possibly apprehend 
 hereafter. If the spiritual interests of the 
 voters are more powerful than their temporal 
 interests, they can bind down their represen- 
 tatives to 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 su- 
 perior possessions of the Protestants prevent 
 the Catholics from uniting for a common 
 political object, then the danger 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 allowing them to sit in parliament. There 
 are, as nearly as I can recollect, thirty seats in 
 Ireland for cities and counties, where the Pro- 
 testants are the most numerous, and where the 
 H 4
 
 152 
 
 members returned must of course be Protes- 
 tants. In the other seventy representations, 
 the wealth of the Protestants is opposed to the 
 number of the Catholics ; and if all the seventy 
 members returned were of the Catholic per- 
 suasion, they must still plot the destruction of 
 our religion in the midst of 588 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 
 nauseous, antiperistaltic, and emetical. 
 
 How can you for a moment doubt of the 
 rapid effects which would be produced by the 
 emancipation? In the first place, to my 
 certain knowledge, the Catholics have long 
 since expressed to his Majesty's ministers 
 their perfect readiness to vest in his Majesty, 
 either with the consent of the Pope, or without 
 iifit cannot be obtained, the nomination of 
 the Catholic prelacy. The Catholic prelacy 
 in Ireland consists of twenty-six bishops and 
 the warden Galway, a dignitary enjoying Ca- 
 tholic jurisdiction. The number of Roman 
 Catholic priests in Ireland exceeds one
 
 LETTER IX. i.5.3 
 
 thousand. The expenses of his peculiar 
 worship are, to a substantial farmer or 
 mechanic, five shillings per annum; to a 
 labourer (where he is not entirely excused) 
 one shilling per annum : this includes the con- 
 tribution of the whole family, 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 30/. to 50/. ; in the other parts of 
 Ireland from 60/. to 901. per ann. The best 
 paid Catholic bishops receive about 400/. per 
 ann. ; the others from 3001. to 3501. My 
 plan is very simple j I would have 300 
 Catholic parishes at 1001. per ann., 300 at 2001. 
 per ann., and 400 at 300/. per ann. ; this, for 
 the whole thousand parishes, would amount to 
 190,000/. To the prelacy I would allot 
 20,000/. in unequal proportions, from one 
 thousand to .500/. : and I would appropriate 
 40,000/. more for the support of Catholic 
 schools, and the repairs of Catholic churches j 
 H 5
 
 154 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 the whole amount of which suras is 250, OOO/., 
 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 Ireland, and I would 
 place the whole patronage in the hands of the 
 Crown. Now, I appeal to any human being, 
 except Spencer Perceval, Esq. of the parish 
 of Hampstead, what the disaffection of a clergy 
 would amount to, gaping after this graduated 
 bounty of the Crown, and whether Ignatius 
 Loyala himself, if he were a living blockhead 
 instead of a dead saint, could withstand the 
 temptation of bouncing from 100/. a year 
 in Sligo, to 300/. in Tipperary? This is 
 the miserable sum of money for which the 
 merchants, and land-owners, and nobility of 
 England are exposing themselves to the tre- 
 mendous peril of losing Ireland. The sinecure 
 places of the Roses and the Percevals, 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 reason-
 
 LETTER IX. 15 O 
 
 able than to expect that a Catholic priest should 
 starve to death, genteelly and pleasantly, for 
 the good of the Protestant religion ; but is it 
 equally reasonable to expect that he should 
 do so for the Protestant pews, and Protestant 
 brick and mortar ? On an Irish sabbath, the 
 bell of a neat parish church often summons 
 to church only the parson and an occasion- 
 ally 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 anything be more 
 distressing than to see a venerable man 
 pouring forth sublime truths in tattered 
 breeches, and depending for his food upon 
 the little offal he gets from his parishioners ? I 
 venerate a 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 flagellents; strict 
 principles, and good pay, is the motto of 
 Mr. Perceval: the one he keeps in great 
 measure for the faults of his enemies, the 
 other for himself. 
 
 H 6
 
 156 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 There are parishes in Connaught in which 
 a Protestant was never settled, nor even 
 seen : in that province, in Minister, and in 
 parts of Leinster, the entire peasantry for 
 sixty miles are Catholics; in these tracts, 
 the churches are frequently shut for want 
 of a congregation, or opened to an assem- 
 blage 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 fifteen to one Protestant. In 
 the diocese of Tuam they are sixty to one ; 
 in the parish of St. Mullins, diocese of 
 Leghlin, there are four thousand Catholics 
 and one Protestant; in the town of Gras- 
 genamana, in the county of Kilkenny, there 
 are between four and five hundred Catholic 
 houses, and three Protestant houses. In the 
 parish of Allen, county Kildare, there is no 
 Protestant, though it is very populous. In 
 the parish of Arlesin, Queen's County, the
 
 LETTER IX. 157 
 
 proportion is one hundred to one. In the 
 whole county of Kilkenny, by actual enu- 
 meration, 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 present 
 state of Ireland ; and yet there are men 
 impudent and ignorant enough to contend 
 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 
 
 Excoquitur vitium. 
 . 
 
 I cannot describe the horror and disgust 
 which I felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call upon 
 the then ministry for measures of vigour in 
 Ireland. If I lived at Hampstead upon 
 stewed meats and claret j if I walked to 
 church every Sunday before eleven young 
 gentlemen of my own begetting, with their 
 faces washed, and their hair pleasingly 
 combed; if the Almighty had blessed me 
 with every earthly comfort, how awfully
 
 158 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 would I pause before I sent forth the flame 
 and the sword over the cabins of the poor, 
 brave, generous, open-hearted peasants of 
 of Ireland ! How 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 
 the decision has cost us a severe struggle 
 how much in all ages have wounds and 
 shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar 
 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 
 cruelty and ignorance. The vigour I love, 
 consists in finding out wherein subjects are 
 aggrieved, in relieving them, in studying the 
 temper and genius of a people, in consulting 
 their prejudices, in selecting proper persons 
 to lead and manage them, in the laborious, 
 watchful, and difficult task of increasing
 
 LETTER IX. 159 
 
 public happiness by allaying each particular 
 discontent. In this way Hoche pacified La 
 Vendee and in this way only will Ireland 
 ever be subdued. But this, in the eyes of 
 Mr. Perceval, is imbecility and meanness : 
 houses are not broke open women are not 
 insulted the people seem all to be happy ; 
 they are not rode over by horses, and cut by 
 whips. Do you call this vigour ? Is this 
 government ?
 
 LETTER X. AND LAST. 
 
 You must observe that all I have said 
 of the effects which will be produced by 
 giving salaries to the Catholic Clergy only 
 proceeds upon the supposition that the 
 emancipation of the laity is effected : 
 without that, I am sure there is not a clergy- 
 man in Ireland 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 collect- 
 ing 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 agistment tithe in 
 Ireland by a vote of the Irish House of
 
 LETTER X. 161 
 
 Commons, and without any remuneration to 
 the church, was a most scandalous and 
 Jacobinical measure. I do not blame the 
 Irish Clergy ; but I submit to your common 
 sense, if it is possible to explain to an Irish 
 peasant upon what principle of justice, or 
 common sense, he his to pay every tenth 
 potatoe in his little garden to a clergyman 
 in whose religion nobody believes for twenty 
 miles 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 reason 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 tenths of the produce of the land, which 
 is all that belongs to the owner ; this he has.
 
 162 
 
 at the market price ; if the land-owner pur- 
 chases the other tenth of the church, of course 
 he has a right to make a correspondent ad- 
 vance upon his tenant. 
 
 I very much doubt, if you were to lay open 
 all civil offices to the Catholics and to grant 
 salaries to their clergy, in the manner I have 
 stated, if the Catholic laity would give them- 
 selves much trouble about the advance of their 
 church ; for they would pay the same tithes 
 under one system that they do under another* 
 If you were to bring the Catholics into the 
 daylight 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 as other people do : instead of 
 that, you set a mark of infamy upon them, 
 rouse every passion of our nature in favour 
 of their creed, and then wonder that meri are 
 blind to the follies of the Catholic religion. 
 There are hardly any instances of old and 
 rich families among the Protestant Dissent- 
 ers : when a man keeps a coach, and lives 
 in good company, he comes to church, and
 
 LETTER X. 163 
 
 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 all the 
 concerns of civil life, as the Catholics are. 
 If a rich young Catholic were in parliament, 
 he would belong to White's and to Brookes's, 
 would keep race-horses, would walk up and 
 down Pall Mall, be exonerated of his ready 
 money and his constitution, become as totally 
 devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge, and 
 civility as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall, 
 and return home with a supreme contempt 
 for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan. 
 I am astonished at the madness of the Catholic 
 clergy, in not perceiving that Catholic emanci- 
 pation is Catholic infidelity ; that to entangle 
 their people in the intrigues of a Protestant par- 
 liament, and a Protestant court, is to insure the 
 loss of every man of fashion and consequence 
 in their community. The true receipt for 
 preserving their religion is Mr. Perceval's 
 receipt for destroying it : it is to deprive every
 
 164 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 rich Catholic of all the objects of secular 
 ambition, to separate him from the Protestant, 
 and to shut him up in his castle with priests 
 and relics. 
 
 We are told, in answer to all our arguments, 
 that this is not a fit period, that a period of 
 universal war is not the proper time for dan- 
 gerous innovations in the constitution : this is 
 as much as to say, that the worst time for 
 making friends is the period when you 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 restored, the Catho- 
 lics may for ever bid adieu to the slightest pro- 
 bability 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 right ; the only 
 word which rouses them is peril / where they 
 can oppress with impunity, they oppress for 
 ever, and call it loyalty and wisdom. 
 
 I am so far from conceiving the legitimate
 
 LETTER X. 165 
 
 strength of the crown would be diminished by 
 these abolitions of civil incapacities in conse- 
 quence of religious opinions, that my only ob- 
 jection to the increase of religious freedom is 
 that it would operate as a diminution of poli- 
 tical freedom : the power of the Crown is so 
 overbearing at this period, that almost the only 
 steady opposers of its fatal influence are men 
 disgusted by religious intolerance. Our esta- 
 blishments are so enormous, and so utterly 
 disproportioned to our population, that every 
 second or third man you meet in society gains 
 something from the public : my brother the 
 commissioner, my nephew the police justice, 
 purveyor of small beer to the army in Ire- 
 land, clerk of the mouth, yeoman to the 
 left hand, these are the obstacles which 
 common sense and justice 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,
 
 166 
 
 a good father, and a good master; that he 
 dresses plain, loves hunting and farming, 
 hates the French, and is, in all his opinions 
 and habits, quite English : these feelings are 
 heightened by the present situation of the 
 world, and the yet un exploded clamour of 
 Jacobinism. In short, from the various sources 
 of interest, personal regard, and national taste, 
 such a tempest of loyalty has set in upon the 
 people, that the 47th proposition in Euclid 
 might now be voted down with as much ease 
 as any proposition in politics ; and therefore, 
 if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths 
 of science as much as he hates concrete truth 
 in human affairs, now is his time for getting 
 rid of the multiplication table, and passing a 
 vote of censure upon the pretensions of the 
 hypotheneuse. 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 them to be so degraded as to 
 look to their safety from a man who proposes
 
 LETTER X. 167 
 
 to subdue Europe by keeping it without 
 Jesuit's Bark. The people, at present, have 
 one passion, and but one 
 
 A Jove principium, 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 instead of flattering it, they would not 
 command twenty votes. 
 
 Do not imagine by these observations that 
 I am not loyal : without joining in the com- 
 mon cant of the best of kings, I respect the King 
 most sincerely as a good man. 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 safer understanding than both of them put to- 
 gether. 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
 
 168 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS^ 
 
 of the public welfare in our exaggerated ad- 
 miration of him who is appointed to reign only 
 for its promotion and support. I detest 
 Jacobinism ; and if I am doomed to be a slave 
 at all, I would rather be the slave of a king 
 than a cobbler. 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 in- 
 dividual 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 my 
 pension and my place, God give my sisters an 
 allowance out of the privy purse, make me 
 clerk of the irons, let me survey the meltings, 
 let me live upon the fruits of other men's in- 
 dustry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public. 
 What is it possible to say to such a man as 
 the Gentleman of Hampstead, who really be- 
 lieves it feasible to convert the four million
 
 LETTER X. 169 
 
 Irish Catholics to the Protestant religion, and 
 considers this as the best remedy for the dis- 
 turbed state of Ireland ? It is not possible to 
 answer such a man with arguments ; we must 
 come out against him with beads, and a cowl, 
 and push him into a hermitage. It is really 
 such trash, that it is an abuse of the privilege 
 of reasoning to reply to it. Such a project is 
 well worthy the statesman who would bring 
 the French to reason by keeping them with- 
 out rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful 
 spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. 
 This is not the dream of a wild apothecary in- 
 dulging in his own opium ; this is not the dis- 
 tempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, deli- 
 rious 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 sagacity. What a sub- 
 lime thought, that no purge can now be taken 
 between the Weser and the Garonne ; that 
 the bustling pestle is still, the canorous mortar 
 mute, and the bowels of mankind locked up 
 i
 
 170 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 for fourteen degrees of latitude I When, I 
 should T)e curious to know, were all the powers 
 of crudity and flatulence fully explained to 
 his Majesty's ministers ? At what period was 
 this great plan of conquest and constipation 
 fully developed ? In whose mind was 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 procured? Will they bear the loss of 
 mercury ? " There's the rub." Depend upon 
 it, the absence of the materia medica will soon 
 bring them to their senses, and the cry of 
 Bourbon and bolus burst forth from the Baltic 
 to the Mediterranean. 
 
 You ask me for any precedent in our 
 history where the oath of supremacy has 
 been dispensed with. It was dispensed with 
 to the Catholics of Canada in 1 774. They 
 are only required to take a simple oath 
 of allegiance. The same, I believe, was the 
 ase in Corsica. The reason of such exemp-
 
 LETTER X. 171 
 
 tionwas obvious ; you could 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, you were wise ; 
 when nonsense and bigotry threaten you with 
 destruction, it is impossible to bring you back 
 to the alphabet of justice and common sense : 
 if men are to be fools, I would rather they 
 were fools in little matters than in great ; 
 dulness turned up with temerity, is a livery 
 all the worse for the facings ; and the most 
 tremendous of all things is the magnanimity 
 of a dunce. 
 
 It is not by any means necessary, as you 
 contend, to repeal the Test Act if you give re- 
 lief to the Catholic; what the Catholics ask 
 for is to be put on a footing with the Protes- 
 tant Dissenters, which would be done by re- 
 pealing that part of the law which compels 
 them to take the oath of supremacy and to 
 make the declaration against transubstantiation : 
 they would then come into parliament as all 
 other Dissenters are allowed to do, and the
 
 172 
 
 penal laws to which they were exposed for 
 taking office would be suspended every year, 
 as they have been for this half century past to- 
 wards Protestant Dissenters. Perhaps, after 
 all, this is the best method, to continue the 
 persecuting law, and to suspend it every year, 
 a method, which, while it effectually de- 
 stroys the persecution itself, leaves to the 
 great mass of mankind the exquisite gratifica- 
 tion of supposing that they are enjoying some 
 advantage from which a particular class of their 
 fellow-creatures are excluded. We manage the 
 Corporation and Test Acts 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 humour. 
 
 How can you imagine that a provision for 
 the Catholic clergy affects the 5th article of 
 the Union ? Surely I am preserving the Pro- 
 testant church in Ireland if I put it in a
 
 LETTER X. 173 
 
 better condition than that in which it now is. 
 A tithe proctor in Ireland collects his tithes 
 with a blunderbuss, and carries his tenth hay- 
 cock 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, if parliament chooses 
 to fix upon the empire the burthen of sup- 
 porting a double ecclesiastical establishment ? 
 Are the revenues of the Irish Protestant 
 clergy in the slightest 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, Calvinists, and Lutherans, many of the 
 Greek Church, and many Jews: such was 
 the state of their religious dissensions, that 
 Mahomet had often been called in to the aid 
 i 3
 
 174 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 of Calvin, and the crescent often glittered on 
 the walls of Buda and of Presburg. At last, 
 in 1791, during the most violent crisis of dis- 
 turbance, a diet was called, and by a great 
 majority of voices a decree was passed, which 
 secured to all the contending sects the fullest 
 and freest exercise of religious worship and 
 education ; ordained (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 con- 
 fessions 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, "that public offices and 
 honours, high or low, great or small, shall be 
 given to natural-born Hungarians who deserve 
 well of their country, and possess the other 
 qualifications, let their religion be what it 
 may. " Such was the line of policy pursued 
 in a diet consisting of four hundred members, 
 in a state whose form of government ap- 
 proaches nearer to our own than any other,
 
 LETTER X. 175 
 
 having a Roman Catholic establishment of 
 great wealth and power, and under the 
 influence of one of the most bigoted Catholic 
 courts in Europe. This measure has now 
 the experience of eighteen years in its favour; 
 it has undergone a trial of fourteen years of 
 revolution such as the world never witnessed, 
 and more than equal to a century less con- 
 vulsed : what have been its effects ? When 
 the French advanced like a torrent within a 
 few days* march of Vienna, the Hungarians 
 rose in a mass ; they formed what they call 
 the sacred insurrection, to defend their sove- 
 reign, 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 hierarchy of Hungary exists in 
 all its former splendour and opulence ; never 
 has the slightest attempt been made to 
 diminish it; and those revolutionary prin- 
 ciples, to which so large a portion of civilised 
 Europe has been sacrificed, have here failed 
 in making the smallest successful inroad, 
 i 4
 
 176 
 
 The whole history of this proceeding of the 
 Hungarian Diet is so extraordinary, and such 
 an admirable comment upon the Protestantism 
 of Mr. Spencer Perceval, that I must compel 
 you to read a few short extracts from the law 
 itself: " The Protestants of both confessions 
 shall, in religious matters, depend upon their 
 own spiritual superiors alone. The Protes- 
 tants may likewise retain their trivial and 
 grammar schools. The church dues which 
 the Protestants have hitherto paid to the 
 Catholic parish priests, school-masters, or other 
 such officers, either in money, productions, or 
 labour, shall in future entirely cease, and after 
 three months from the publishing of this law 
 be no more any where demanded. In the 
 building or repairing of churches, parsonage 
 houses, and schools, the Protestants are not 
 obliged to assist the Catholics with labour, nor 
 the Catholics the Protestants. The pious 
 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,
 
 LETTER X. 177 
 
 cannot be taken from them under any pretext, 
 nor yet the care of them j but rather the un- 
 impeded administration shall be intrusted to 
 those from among them to whom it legally 
 belongs, and those foundations which may 
 have been taken from them under the last go- 
 verment shall be returned to them without 
 delay. All affairs of marriage of the Protes- 
 tants are left to their own consistories ; all 
 landlords and masters of families, under the 
 penalty of public prosecution, are ordered not 
 to prevent their subjects and servants, 
 whether they be Catholic or Protestant, from 
 the observance of the festivals and ceremonies 
 of their religion," &c. &c. &c. By what 
 strange chances are mankind influenced ! A 
 little Catholic barrister of Vienna might have 
 raised the cry of No Protestantism, and Hun- 
 gary would have panted for the arrival of a 
 French army as much as Ireland does at this 
 moment ; arms would have been searched for ; 
 Lutheran and Calvinist houses entered in the 
 dead of the night j and the strength of Austria 
 exhausted in guarding a country from which, 
 i 5
 
 178 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 under the present liberal system, she may 
 expect, in a moment of danger, the most 
 powerful aid : and let it be remembered that 
 this memorable example of political wisdom 
 took place at a period when many great 
 monarchies were yet unconquered in Europe ; 
 in a country where the two religious parties 
 were equal in number ; and where it is impos- 
 sible to suppose indifference in the party which 
 relinquished its exclusive privileges. Under 
 all these circumstances, the measure was 
 carried in the Hungarian Diet by a majority 
 of 280 to 120. 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 where the op- 
 pressed are four times as numerous as their 
 oppressors. So much for the wisdom of our 
 ancestors so much for the nineteenth cen- 
 tury so much for the superiority of the 
 English over all the nations of the Continent I 
 Are you not sensible, let me ask you, of 
 the absurdity of trusting the lowest Catholics
 
 LETTER X. 179 
 
 with offices correspondent to their situation 
 in life, and of denying such privilege to the 
 higher ? A Catholic may serve in the mi- 
 litia, but a Catholic cannot come into par- 
 liament ; in the latter case you suspect 
 combination, and in the former case you 
 suspect no combination ; you deliberately 
 arm ten or twenty thousand of the lowest of 
 the Catholic people ; and the moment you 
 come to a class of men whose education, 
 honour, and talents seem to render all mis- 
 chief less probable, then you see the danger 
 of employing a Catholic, and cling to your 
 investigating tests and disabling laws. If you 
 tell me you have enough of members of par- 
 liament, and not enough of militia, without 
 the Catholics, I beg leave to remind you, 
 that, by employing the physical force of any 
 sect, at the same time when you leave them 
 in a state of utter disaffection, you are not 
 adding strength to your armies, but weakness 
 and ruin : if you want the vigour of their 
 common people, you must not disgrace their 
 nobility, and insult their priesthood. 
 i 6
 
 180 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 I thought that the terror of the Pope had 
 been confined to the limits of the nursery, 
 and merely employed as a means to induce 
 young master to enter into his small-clothes 
 with greater speed, and to eat his breakfast 
 with greater attention to decorum. For these 
 purposes, the name of the Pope is admirable ; 
 but why push it beyond ? Why not leave to 
 Lord Hawkesbury all farther 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 Pro- 
 testant 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 had 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
 
 LETTER X. 181 
 
 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 mischief 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 possessions, and degrading 
 him in the eyes of all Europe, Bonaparte 
 has not taken quite the proper method of 
 increasing his influence. 
 
 But why not a Catholic king, as weU as a 
 Catholic member of parliament, or of the 
 cabinet ? Because it is probable that the 
 one would be mischievous, and the other not. 
 A Catholic king might struggle against the 
 Protestantism of the country, and if the 
 struggle was not successful, it would at least 
 be dangerous ; but the efforts of any other
 
 182 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 Catholic would be quite insignificant, and his 
 hope of success so small that it is quite im- 
 probable the effort would ever be made : my 
 argument is, that in so Protestant a country 
 as Great Britain, 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 immeasureably greater 
 than the power which the Catholics could 
 obtain from any other species of authority in 
 the state ; and it does not follow, 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 chan- 
 cellor, I have not the least hesitation in 
 saying, that his appointment would not do a 
 ten-thousandth part of the mischief to the 
 English church that [might be done by a 
 methodistical chancellor of the true Clapham 
 breed j 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
 
 LETTER X. 183 
 
 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 religion at all ? 
 
 Why are you to suppose that eligibility 
 and election are the same thing, and that all 
 the cabinet will be Catholics whenever all 
 the cabinet may 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, by a 
 similar stratagem, will lay England under a 
 large contribution of meal and sulphur: no 
 measure is without objection if you sweep 
 the whole horizon for danger ; it is not suf- 
 ficient to tell me of what may happen, but 
 you must show me a rational probability that 
 it will happen : after all, I might, contrary to 
 my real opinion, admit all your dangers to 
 exist ; it is enough for me to contend that 
 all other dangers taken together are not equal
 
 184 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 to the danger of losing Ireland from dis- 
 affection and invasion. 
 
 I am astonished to see you, and many 
 good and well-meaning clergymen beside you, 
 painting the Catholics in such detestable co- 
 lours ; two thirds, at least, of Europe are 
 Catholics, they are Christians, though mis- 
 taken Christians ; how can I possibly admit 
 that any sect of Christians, and above all that 
 the oldest and the most numerous sect of 
 Christians, are incapable of fulfilling the com- 
 mon duties and relations of life : though I do 
 differ from them in many particulars, God 
 forbid I should give such an handle to infi- 
 delity, and subscribe to such a blasphemy 
 against our common religion I" 
 
 Do you think mankind never change their 
 opinions without formally expressing and 
 confessing that change? When you quote 
 the decisions of ancient Catholic councils, are 
 you prepared to defend all the decrees of En- 
 glish convocations and universities since the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth? I could soon 
 make you sick of your uncandid industry
 
 LETTER X. 185 
 
 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 and 
 present practice. 
 
 I must beg to be excused from explaining 
 and refuting all the mistakes about the Ca- 
 tholics made by my Lord Redesdale ; and I 
 must do that nobleman the justice to say, that 
 he has been treated with great disrespect. 
 Could any thing be more indecent than to 
 make it a morning lounge in Dublin to call 
 upon his lordship, and to cram him with Ara- 
 bian-night stories about the Catholics? Is 
 this proper behaviour to the representative of 
 Majesty, the child of Themis, and the keeper 
 of the conscience in West Britain? Who- 
 ever reads the Letters of the Catholic Bishops, 
 in the Appendix to Sir John Hippesly's very 
 sensible book, will see to what an excess this 
 practice must have been carried with the 
 pleasing and Protesant nobleman whose name 
 I 'have mentioned, and from thence I wish 
 you to receive your answer about excommu-
 
 186 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 nication, and all the trash which is talked 
 against the Catholics. 
 
 A sort of notion has, by some means or 
 another, crept into the world, that 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 circuit if they 
 differed in creed, nor Cockell and Mingay be 
 engaged in the same cause if Cockell was a 
 Catholic and Mingay a Muggletonian. It is 
 supposed that Huskisson and Sir Harry En- 
 glefield would squabble behind the Speaker V 
 chair about the Council of Lateran, and many 
 a turnpike bill miscarry by the sarcastical 
 controversies of Mr. Hawkins Brown and Sir 
 John Throckmorton upon the real presence. 
 I wish I could see some of these symptoms of 
 earnestness upon the subject of religion ; but 
 it really seems to me that, in the present state 
 of society, men no more think about inquiring 
 concerning each other's faith than they do 
 concerning the colour of each other's skins. 
 There may have been times in England when
 
 LETTER X. 187 
 
 the quarter sessions would 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 
 that he spoke English, had no tail, only a 
 single row of teeth, and that he loved port 
 wine, after all the scandalous and infamous 
 reports of his physical conformation had been 
 clearly proved to be false, he would be 
 reckoned a jolly fellow, and very superior in 
 flavour to a sly Presbyterian. Nothing, in 
 fact, can be more uncandid and unphiloso- 
 phical* than to say that a man has a tail, 
 because you cannot agree with him upon reli- 
 gious subjects : it appears to be ludicrous, but 
 I am convinced it has done infinite mischief 
 to the Catholics, and made a very serious im- 
 pression upon the minds of many gentlemen 
 of large landed property. 
 
 In talking of the impossibility of Catholic 
 and Protestant living together with equal pri- 
 vilege under the same government, do you 
 
 * Vide Lord Bacon, Locke, and Descartes.
 
 188 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 forget the Cantons of Switzerland? You 
 might have seen there a Protestant congrega- 
 tion going into a church which had just been 
 quitted by a Catholic congregation : and I will 
 venture to say that the Swiss Catholics were 
 more bigoted to their religion than any people 
 in the whole world. Did the kings of Prussia 
 ever refuse to employ a Catholic ? Would 
 Frederick the Great have rejected an able 
 man on this account ? We have seen Prince 
 Czartorinski a Catholic secretary of state in 
 Russia: in former times, a Greek patriarch 
 and an apostolic vicar 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 nature from the top of 
 Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought be- 
 yond the little sphere of his own vision. 
 " The snail," say the Hindoos, " sees nothing
 
 LETTER X. 189 
 
 but its own shell, and thinks it the grandest 
 palace in the universe." 
 
 I now take a final leave of this subject of 
 Ireland ; the only difficulty in discussing it 
 is a want of resistance, a want of something 
 difficult to unravel, and something dark to 
 illumine ; to agitate 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 ques- 
 tion I can well understand; but that any 
 human being with an understanding two de- 
 grees elevated above that of an Anabaptist 
 preacher, should conscientiously contend for 
 the expediency 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 utterly 
 out of my power to conceive. Such a mea- 
 sure as the Catholic question is entirely beyond 
 the common game of politics ; it is a measure 
 in which all parties ought to acquiesce, in
 
 190 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 order to preserve the place where, and the 
 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 pros- 
 perity were before us : in the next ten years 
 our fate must be decided; we shall know, 
 long before that period, whether we ean bear 
 up against the miseries by which we are 
 threatened, or not : and yet, in the very midst 
 of our crisis, we are enjoined to abstain from 
 the most certain means of increasing our 
 strength, and advised to wait for the remedy 
 till 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
 
 LETTER X. 191 
 
 short a period. The vigour of the ministry is 
 like the vigour of a grave.-digger, the tomb 
 becomes more ready and more wide for every 
 effort which they make. There is nothing 
 which it is worth while either to take or to 
 retain, and a constant train of ruinous expe- 
 ditions have been kept up. Every English- 
 man 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 com- 
 mercial people at war with the greatest part 
 of Europe, that there should be a free entry 
 of neutrals into the enemy's ports ; the neu- 
 trals who carried our manufactures we have 
 not only excluded, but we have compelled 
 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 not made a peace, and we have con- 
 vinced the people of nothing but of the arro- 
 gance 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 epigrams, turned into ministers of state,
 
 192 PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 were determined to show country gen- 
 tlemen that the late administration had no 
 vigour. In the mean time commerce stands 
 still, manufactures perish, Ireland is more 
 and more irritated, India 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 j and in the midst of this 
 unparalleled insanity we are told that the 
 Continent is to be reconquered by the want 
 of rhubarb and plums.* A better spirit 
 than exists in the English people never existed 
 in any people in the world j it has been misdi- 
 rected, and squandered upon party purposes 
 in the most degrading and scandalous man- 
 ner ; they have been led to believe that they 
 were benefiting the commerce of England by 
 destroying the commerce of America, that they 
 
 * Even Allen Park Caccustomed as he has always been 
 to be delighted by all administrations) says it is too bad ; 
 and Hall and Morris are said to have actually blushed in 
 one of the divisions.
 
 LETTER X. 193 
 
 were defending their sovereign by perpe- 
 tuating the bigoted oppression of their fellow- 
 subject ; 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, which, 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 vices : 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 let 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 perish waging war
 
 194* PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS. 
 
 against lazar-houses and hospitals -, that it 
 should perish persecuting with monastic bi- 
 gotry ; that it should calmly give itself up to be 
 ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, 
 and the narrow fanaticism of another ; these 
 events are within the power of human beings, 
 and I did not think that the magnanimity of 
 Englishmen would ever stoop to such degra- 
 dations. 
 
 Longum vale ! 
 
 PETER PLYMLEY. 
 
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 present state exhibit, the result of the labours of all preceding critical editors of the New 
 
 Testament, as well as of hi, own researches for more than thirty years. Upon the whole, 
 
 without depreciating t/ie merit of the labours of preceding editors, this third edition may 
 
 justly be regarded as the most valuable for Biblical students, that hat yet been issued front 
 
 Rev. T. Hartwell Home's Introduction to the Holy Scriptures. 9th edition. 1839. 
 
 COLLEGE & SCHOOL GREEK TESTAMENT, 
 
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 12
 
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 = 13
 
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 16