who wished to succeed in his election had nothing to, from the lesser nation to the greater; but it is the do but to represent 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, however, 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 allowed to sit upright, then a bit 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 era, when the lord of the manor interfered to obtain for you a slice of the public pudding? And now, with an audacity only equalled by your ingratitude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, and to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that you may sit down to table 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 ourselves; the rest has been thrown open to you in the utmost profusion; you have potatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the pan, and delicious toast and water, in incredible quantities. Beef, mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours; and if you were not the most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, you would never think of aspiring to enjoy them.'

plain historical truth, it is the natural consequence of injustice, it is the predicament in which every country places itself which leaves such a mass of hatred and discontent 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 disgraced you before America, and before the volunteers of Ireland. We shall live to hear the Hampstead Protestants 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 Ireland was strong. We are fast pacing round the same miserable circle of ruin and imbecility. Alas! where is our guide ? You say that Ireland is a millstone 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 shopkeeper, who has never felt the rod of an Orange master upon his back. Ireland a millstone 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 ingulf her to-morrow. At this moment, opposed as we are to all the world, the annihilation of one of the most fertile islands on the face of the globe, containing five millions of human creatures, would be one of the most solid advantages which could happen to this country. I doubt very much, in spite of all 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 inflamed with all the resentments of a recently conquered peo. ple. Why will you attribute the turbulence of our people to any cause but the right-to any cause but your own scandalous oppression? If you tie your horse up to a gate, and beat him cruelly, is he vicious You parade a great deal upon the vast concessions because he kicks you? If you have plagued and made by this country to the frish before the union. I worried a mastiff dog for years, is he mad because deny that any voluntary concession was ever made by he flies at you whenever he sees you? Hatred is an England to Ireland. What did Ireland ever ask that active, troublesome passion. Depend upon it, whole was granted? What did she ever demand that was nations have always some reason for their hatred. refused? How did she get her mutiny bill-a limited Before you refer the turbulence of the Irish to incurParliament a repeal of Poyning's law-a constitu- able defects in their character, tell me if you have tion? Not by the concessions of England, but by her treated them as friends and equals? Have you profears. When Ireland asked for all these things upon tected their commerce? Have you respected their her knees, her petitions were rejected with Perceval- religion? Have you been as anxious for their freedom ism and contempt: when she demanded them with as your own? Nothing of all this. What then?the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were granted with Why, you have confiscated the territorial surface of every mark of consternation and dismay. Ask of Lord the country twice over; you have massacred and exAuckland the fatal consequences of trifling with such ported her inhabitants; you have deprived four-fifths a people as the Irish. He himself was the organ of of them of every civil privilege; you have at every these refusals. As secretary to the lord-lieutenant, period made her commerce and manufactures slavishly the insolence and the tyranny of this country passed subordinate to your own; and yet the hatred which through his hand. Ask him if he remembers the con- the Irish bear to you is the result of an original tursequences. Ask him if he has forgotten that memo- bulence of character, and of a primitive, obdurate rable evening, when he came down booted and mantled wildness, utterly incapable of civilization. The emto the House of Commons, when he told the House he broidered inanities and the sixth-form effusions of Mr. was about to set off for Ireland that night, and de- Canning are really not powerful enough to make me clared, before God, if he did not carry with him a believe this; nor is there any authority on earth compliance with all their demands, Ireland was for (always excepting the Dean of Christ-Church) which, ever lost to this country. The present generation could make it credible to me. I am sick of Mr. Canhave forgotten this; but I have not forgotten it; and ning. There is not a ha'p'orth of bread to all this I know, hasty and undignified as the submission of sugar and sack. I love not the cretaceous and incre England then was, that Lord Auckland was right, dible countenance of his colleague. The only opinio that the delay of a single day might very probably in which I agree with these two gentlemen, is th have separated the two people for ever. The terms which they entertain of each other; I am sure th submission and fear are galling terms, when applied the insolence of Mr. Pitt, and the unbalanced accour

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 justice; 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 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 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.

:

of Melville, were far better than the fine perils of this | of mankind from any other motive. By what other new ignorance:

Nonne fuit satius tristes Amaryllidis iras

Atque superba pati fastidia-nonne Menalcam,
Quamvis ille niger?

Ports.

DEAR ABRAHAM,

LETTER VII.

motives can the plunderers of the Baltic suppose nations to be governed in their intercourse with each other? If I say, give this people what they ask because it is just, do you think I should get ten people In the midst of the most profound peace, the secret to listen to me? Would not the lesser of the two Jenarticles of the treaty of Tilsit, in which the destruc-kinsons be the first to treat me with contempt? The tion of Ireland is resolved upon, induce you to rob the only true way to make the mass of mankind see the Danes of their fleet.-After the expedition sailed beauty of justice, is by showing to them in pretty comes the treaty of Tilsit, containing no article, pub- plain terms the consequences of injustice. If any bolic or private, alluding to Ireland. The state of the dy of French troops land in Ireland, the whole populaworld, you tell me, justified us in doing this. Just tion of the country will rise against you to a man, and God! do we only think of the state of the world when you could not possibly survive such an event three there is an opportunity for robbery, for murder, and for years. Such, from the bottom of my soul, do I believe plunder; and do we forget the state of the world when to be the present state of that country; and so far we are called upon to be wise, and good, and just? like to concede any thing to such a danger, that if the does it appear to me to be impolitic and unstatesmanDoes the state of the world never remind us, that we have four millions of subjects whose injuries we ought Catholics, in addition to their present just demands, to atone for, and whose affections we ought to con- Lord Hawkesbury from his majesty's councils, I were to petition for the perpetual removal of the said ciliate? Does the state of the world never warn us to think, whatever might be the effect upon the destinies lay aside our infernal bigotry, and to arm every man who acknowledges a God and can grasp a sword? of Europe, and however it might retard our own indiDid it ever occur to this administration, that they should be instantly complied with. Canning's croco vidual destruction, that the prayer of the petition might virtuously get hold of a force ten times greater dile tears should not move me; the hoops of the maids than the Danish fleet?-Was there no other way of of honour should not hide him. I would tear him protecting Ireland, but by bringing eternal shame upon from the banisters of the back stairs, and plunge him Great Britain, and by making the earth a den of rob in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque bers? See what the men whom you have supplanted would have done. They would have rendered the invasion of Ireland impossible, by restoring to the Catholics their long-lost rights; they would have acted in such a manner, that the French would neither have wished for invasion, nor dared to attempt it; they would have increased the permanent strength of the country while they preserved its reputation unsul lied. Nothing of this kind your friends have done, because they are solemnly pledged to do nothing of this kind; because to tolerate all religions, and to equalize civil rights to all sects, is to oppose some of the worst passions of our nature-to plunder and to oppress is to gratify them all They wanted the huzzas of mobs, and they have for ever blasted the fame of England to obtain them. Were the fleets of Hol. land, 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 larcenous 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 hostility of the Danes, why was it not produced? Why have the nations of Europe been allowed to feel an indignation against this country beyond the reach of all subsequent information? Are these times, do you imagine, when we 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 solenin 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

*This is now completely confessed to be the case by ministers.

IN the correspondence which is passing between 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 discretion and sound sense of this gentleman. I can only say, that I have listened to him long and often, with the greatest attention; I have used every exertion in my power to take a fair measure of him, and it appears to me impossible to hear him upon any arduous topic without perceiving that he is eminently deficient in those solid and serious qualities upon which, and upon which alone, the confidence of a great country can properly repose. He sweats, and labours, and works for sense, and Mr. Ellis seems always to think it is coming, but it does not come; the machine can't draw up what is not to be found in the spring; Providence has made him 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 Samson in a wig; any ordinary 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 misrepresentations 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 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 facete 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

The attack upon virtue and morals in the debate upon Copenhagen is brought forward with great ostentation 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 pantomine well played, but a pantomine; Harlequin deserves higher wages than he did two years ago; is he therefore fit for serious parts?

respectable as well as an highly agreeable man in pri- | believe, blown over. You have so strong an army in vate 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 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.

Ireland, and the Irish are become so much more cunning from the last insurrection, that you may perhaps be tolerably 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 seacoast, and twelve or fourteen harbours quite capable of containing a sufficient force for the powerful inva sion of Ireland. The nearest of these harbours is not two days' sail from the southern coast of Ireland, The friends of the Catholic question are, I observe, with a fair leading wind; and the farthest not ten. extremely embarrassed in arguing when they come Five ships of the line, for so very short a passage, might to the loyalty of the Irish Catholics. As for me, I carry five or six thousand troops with cannon and shall go straight forward to my object, and state what ammunition; and Ireland presents to their attack a I have no manner of doubt, from an intimate know- southern coast of more than 500 miles, abounding in ledge of Ireland, to be the plain truth. Of the great deep bays, admirable harbours, and disaffected inhab Roman Catholic proprietors, and of the Catholic pre- itants. Your blockading ships may be forced to come lates, there may be a few, and but a few, who would home for provisions and repairs, or they may be blown follow the fortunes of England at all events; there is off in a gale of wind and compelled to bear away for another set of men who, thoroughly detesting this their own coast-and you will observe, that the very country, have too much property and too much char- same wind which locks you up in the British Channel, acter to lose, not to wait for some very favourable when you are got there, is evidently favourable for event before they show themselves; but the great the invasion of Ireland. And yet this is called gov. mass of Catholic population, upon the slightest appear- ernment, and the people huzza Mr. Perceval for conance of a French force in that country, would rise upon tinuing to expose his country day after day to such you to a man. It is the most mistaken policy to con- tremendous perils as these; cursing the men who ceal the plain truth. There is no loyalty among the would have given up a question in theology to have Catholics; they detest you as their worst oppressors, saved us from such a risk. The British Empire at and they will continue to detest you till you remove this moment is in the state of a peach-blossom-if the the cause of their hatred. It is in your power in six wind blows gently from one quarter, it survives, if fumonths' time to produce a total revolution of opinions riously from the other, it perishes. A stiff breeze among this people; and in some future letter I will may set in from the north, the Rochefort squadron show you that this is clearly the case. At present, will be taken, and the minister will be the most holy see what a dreadful state Ireland is in. The common of men; if it comes from some other point, Ireland is toast among the low Irish is, the feast of the passover. gone, we curse ourselves as a set of monastic madSome allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately acted in men, and call out for the unavailing satisfaction of Dublin, produced thunders of applause from the pit Mr. Perceval's head. Such a state of political exisand the galleries; and a politician should not be inat-tence is scarcely credible: it is the action of a mad tentive to the public feelings expressed in theatres. young fool standing upon one foot, and peeping down Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish; he the crater of Mount Etna, not the conduct of a wise has no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned and sober people deciding upon their best and dearest a shilling of his own public emoluments. An Irish interests: and in the name, the much injured name, of peasant fills the barrel of his gun full of tow dipped Heaven, what is it all for that we expose ourselves to in oil, butters up the lock, buries it in a bog, and al- these dangers? Is it that we may sell more muslin ? lows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at Is it that we may acquire more territory? Is it that pleasure. Be just and be kind to the Irish, and you will we may strengthen what we have already acquired? indeed disarm them; rescue them from the degraded No: nothing of all this; but that one set of Irishmen servitude in which they are held by an handful of their may torture another set of Irishmen-that Sir Phelim own countrymen, and you will add four millions of O'Callagan may continue to whip Sir Toby M'Tackle, brave and affectionate men to your strength. Nightly his next door neighbour, and continue to ravish his visits, Protestant inspectors, licenses to posses a pis- Catholic daughters; and these are the measures which tol or a knife and fork, the odious vigour of the evan- the honest and consistent secretary supports; and this gelical Perceval-acts of Parliament, drawn up by is the secretary whose genius in the estimation of some English attorney, to save you from the hatred of Brother Abraham, is to extinguish the genuis of Bofour million people-the guarding yourselves from uni- naparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliath smitversal disaffection by a police; a confidence in the ten by a stripling, Pyrrhus died by the hand of a wolittle cunning of Bow Street, when you might rest your man; tremble, thou great Gaul, from whose head an security upon the eternal basis of the best feelings; armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of danger ; this is the meanness and madness to which nations tremble, thou scourge of God, a pleasant man is come are reduced when they lose sight of the first elements out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of justice, without which a country can be no more of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk against secure than it can be healthy without air. I sicken at thee, and thou shalt be no more! such policy and such men. The fact is, the ministers You tell me, in spite of all this parade of sea-coast, know nothing about the present state of Ireland; Mr. Bonaparte has neither ships nor sailors: but this is a Perceval sees a few clergymen, Lord Castlereagh a mistake. He has not ships nor sailors to contest the few general officers, who take care, of course, to re-empire of the seas with Great Britain, but there report what is pleasant rather than what is true. As mains quite sufficient of the navies of France, Spain, for the joyous and lepid consul, he jokes upon neutral Holland and Denmark, for these short excursions and flags and feuds, jokes upon Irish rebels, jokes upon invasions. Do you think, too, that Bonaparte does not northern, and southern foes, and gives himself no add to this navy every year? Do you suppose, with trouble upon any subject; nor is the mediocrity of the all Europe at his feet, that he can find any difficulty idolatrous deputy of the slightest use. Dissolved in in obtaining timber, and that money will not procure grins, he reads no memorials upon the state of Ireland, for him any quantity of naval stores he may want? listens to no reports, asks no questions, and is the 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 fight. The danger of an immediate insurrection is now, I ing fleets-it is not possible to conceive that he can

'Bourn from whom no traveller returns.'

want sailors for such purposes as I have stated. He

* No man who is not intimately acquainted with the Irish, can tell to what a curious extent this concealment of arms is * I know too much, however, of the state of Ireland not carried. I have stated the exact mode in which it is done. to speak tremblingly about this. I hope to God I am right.

If

In

ning, but that he rides 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 has writ ten The Needy Knife-Grinder,' and the German play? Adieu only for the present; you shall soon hear from me again; it is a subject upon which I cannot long be silent.

LETTER VIII.

NOTHING can be more erroneous than to suppose that Ireland is no bigger than the Isle of Wight, or of more consequence than Guernsey or Jersey; and yet I am which prevails here respecting the dangerous state of almost inclined to believe, from the general supineness that country, that such is the rank which it holds in our statistical tables. I have been writing to you a great deal about Ireland, and perhaps it may be of some use to state to you concisely the nature and resources of the country which has been the subject of our long and strange correspondence. There were returned, as I have before observed, to the hearth tax, in 1791, 701, 132* houses, which Mr. Newenham shows below the real number of houses in that country. from unquestionable documents to be nearly 80,000 than five millions of people. There are 27,457 square miles in Ireland,† and more

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. experience has taught us anything, 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. 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 French fleet sailed out of Brest harbour, Admiral Colpoys was cruising off there with a powerful squadron, and still, from the particular circumstance of the weather, found it inpossible 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 houses in England and Wales amounted to 1,574,902, By the last survey, it appears that the inhabited could not stir to the assistance of Ireland. Admiral and the population to 9,343,578, which gives an average Colpoys, totally unable to find the French fleet, came of 5% to each house, in a country where the density of home. Lord Bridport, at the change of the wind, population is certainly less considerable than in Ire cruised for them in vain, and they got safe back to land. It is commonly supposed that two-fifths of the Brest, without having seen a single one of these floating bulwarks, the possession of which we believe will army and navy are Irishmen, at periods when political disaffection does not avert the Catholics from the enable us with impunity to set justice and common service. The current value of Irish exports in 1807 sense at defiance. Such is the miserable and precarious state of an anemocracy, of a people who put their was 9,314,8547. 17s. 7d.; a state of commerce about trust in hurricanes, and are governed by wind. In equal to the commerce of England in the middle of August, 1798, three forty-gun frigates landed 1,100 inward and cleared outward in the trade of Ireland, in the reign of George II. The tonnage of ships entered men under Humbert, making the passage from Rochelle to Killala, without seeing any English ship. home spirits exported amounted to 10,284 gallons in 1807, amounted to 1,567,430 tons. The quantity of In October of the same year, four French frigates an-1796, and to 930,800 gallons in 1804. Of the exports, chored in Killala Bay with 2,000 troops; and though which I have stated, provisions amounted to four mil they did not land their troops, they returned to France lions, and linen to about four millions and a half. in safety. In the same month a line of battle ship; There was exported from Ireland, upon an average of eight stout frigates, and a brig, all full of troops and two years ending in January, 1804, 591,274 barrels of stores, reached the coast of Ireland, and were fortunately, in sight of land, destroyed, after an obstinate barley, oats and wheat; and by weight 910,848 cwts. of flour, oatmeal, barley, oats and wheat. The amount engagement, by Sir John Warren. of butter exported in 1804, from Ireland, was worth, If you despise the little troop which, in these nume-in money, 1,704.6801. sterling. The importation of rous experiments, did make good its landing, take with ale and beer from the immense manufactures now you, if you please, this precis of its exploits: eleven carrying on of these articles, was diminished to 3209 hundred men, commanded by a soldier raised from the barrels, in the year 1804, from 111,920 barrels, which ranks, put to route a select army of 6,000 men, com- was the average importation per annum, taking from manded by General Lake, seized their ordnance, am-three years ending in 1792; and at present there is an munition, and stores, advanced 150 miles into a coun- export trade of porter. Ou an average of the three try containing an armed force of 150,000 men, and at years, ending March, 1783, there were imported into last surrendered to the viceroy, an experienced gene-freland, of cotton wool, 3326 cwts. of cotton yarn, ral, gravely and cautiously advancing at the head of 5405 lbs.: but on an average of three years, ending all his chivalry and of an immense army to oppose January, 1803, there were imported, of the first article, him. You must excuse these details about Ireland, 13,159 cwts., and of the latter, 628,406 lbs. It is im 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 incredible 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 torment every eminent dissenter in Great Britain; Lord Camden shall have large boxes of plums; Mr. Rose receive permission to prefix to his name the appellative of virtuous; and to the Viscount Castlereagh a round sum of ready money shall be well and truly paid into his hands. Lastly, what remains to Mr. George Can

* This is a very unjust imputation on Lord Castlereagh.

possible to conceive any manufacture more flourishing. The export of linen has increased in Ireland from 17,776,862 yards, the average in 1770, to 43,534,971 yards, the amount in 1805. The tillage of Ireland has more than trebled within the last twenty-one years. The importation of coals has increased from 230,000 tons in 1783, to 417,030 in 1804; of tobacco, from 3,459,861 lbs. in 1783, to 6,611,543 in 1804; of tea, from 1,703,855 lbs. in 1783, to 3,358,256, in 1804; of sugar, from 143,117 cwts. in 1782, to 309,076, in 1804. Ireland now supports a funded debt of above 64 mil. lions, and it is computed that more than three millions of money are annually remitted to Irish absentees resi

The checks to population were very trifling from the rebellion. It lasted two months: of his majesty's Irish forces there perished about 1,600; of the rebels, 11,000 were killed in the field, and 2,000 hanged or exported; 400 loyal persons

were assassinated.

† In England 49,450.

dent in this country. In Mr. Foster's report, of 100 | pleasantry even to the sedulous housewife and the ru folio pages, presented to the House of Commons in ral dean. There is always a copious supply of Lord the year 1806, the total expenditure of Ireland is Sidmouths in the world; nor is there one single stated at 9,760,0131. Ireland has increased about two- source of human happiness against which they have thirds in its population within twenty-five years, and not uttered the most lugubrious predictions. Turnpike yet, and in about the same space of time, its exports roads, navigable canals, inoculation, hops, tobacco, of beef, bullocks, cows, pork, swine, butter, wheat, the Reformation, the Revolution-there are always a barley, and oats, collectively taken, have doubled; set of worthy and moderately gifted men, who bawl and this in spite of two years' famine, and the pre-out death and ruin upon every valuable change which sence of an immense army, that is always at hand to the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and im guard the most valuable appanage of our empire from periously requires. I have often thought that it would joining our most inveterate enemies. Ireland has the be extremely useful to make a collection of the hagreatest possible facilities for carrying on commerce tred and abuse that all those changes have experiwith the whole of Europe. It contains, within a cir-enced, which are now admitted to be marked improve. cuit of 750 miles, 66 secure harbours, and presents a ments in our condition. Such an history might make western frontier against Great Britain, reaching from folly a little more modest, and suspicious of its own the Firth of Clyde north to the Bristol Channel south, decisions. 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 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; 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 his 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 subjects 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 perceived in a moment the kind of man we had to do with. I was well aware of the miserable ignorance and folly of this country upon the subject of toleration; and every year has been adding to the success of that game which it was clear he had the will and the ability to play against us.

Ireland, you say, since the union, is to be considered as a part of the whole kingdom; and therefore, how. ever Catholics may predominate 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 mind-I say in a very few words, if you do not relieve these people from the civil incapaci ties 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, Puff. endorf 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 established church were left in a minority of one to four; if you had subjected these heretics to very severe civil privations; if the consequence of such privations were an universal state of disaffection among that caseous and wrathful people; and if, at the same time, you were at war with all the world, how can you doubt 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

You say Bonaparte is not in earnest upon the sub-the world. ject of religion, and that this is the cause of his tole- I admit that, to a certain degree, the government rant spirit: but is it possible you can intend to give will lose the affections of the Orangemen by emancius such dreadful and unamiable notions of religion pating the Catholics; must less, however, at present Are we to understand that the moment a man is sin- than three years past. The few people, who have illcere he is narrow-minded; that persecution is the child treated the whole crew, live in constant terror that the of belief; and that a desire to leave all men in the quiet oppressed people will rise upon them and carry the and unpunished exercise of their own creed can only ship into Brest :-they begin to find that it is a very exist in the mind of an infidel? Thank God! I know tiresome thing to sleep every night with cocked pistols many men whose principles are as firm as they are ex- under their pillows, and to breakfast, dine, and sup panded, who cling tenaciously to their own modifica with drawn hangers. They suspect that the privilege tion of the Christian faith, without the slightest dispo- of beating and kicking the rest of the sailors is hardsition to force that modification upon other people.-ly worth all this anxiety, and that if the ship does ever If Bonaparte is liberal in subjects of religion because fall into the hands of the disaffected, all the cruelties he has no religion, is this a reason why we should be which they have experienced will be thoroughly reilliberal because we are Christians? If he owes this membered and amply repaid. To a short period of excellent quality to a vice, is that any reason why we disaffection among the Orangemen, I confess I should may not owe it to a virtue? Toleration is a great not much object: my love of poetical justice does good, and a good to be imitated, let it come from carry me as far as that: one summer's whipping, only whom it will. If a sceptic is tolerant, it only shows one; the thumb-screw for a short season; a little that he is not foolish in practice as well as erroneous light easy torturing between Lady-day and Michaelin theory. If a religious man is tolerant, it evinces mas; a short specimen of Mr. Perceval's rigour. I that he is religious from thought and inquiry, because have malice enough to ask this slight atonement for he exhibits in his conduct one of the most beautiful the groans and shrieks of the poor Catholics, unheard and important consequences of a religious mind,-an by any human tribunal, but registered by the angel of inviolable charity to all the honest varieties of human God against their Protestant and enlightened oppresopinion.

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

sors.

Besides, if you who count ten so often can count five, you must perceive that it is better to have four friends and one enemy than four enemies and one friend; and the more violent the hatred of the Orangemen, the more certain the reconciliation of the Catholics. The