Dear Abraham--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 further, 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 respectable as
well as a 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
cares about the fly; the only question is, How the devil did it get
there? Nor do I attack him for the love of glory, but from the love of
utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke for fear it
should flood a province.
The friends of the Catholic question are, I observe, extremely
embarrassed in arguing when they come to the loyalty of the Irish
Catholics. As for me, I shall go straight forward to my object, and
state what I have no manner of doubt, from an intimate knowledge of
Ireland, to be the plain truth. Of the great Roman Catholic
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 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 thunders 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 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 a handful of their own countrymen, and you will add
four millions of brave and affectionate men to your strength. Nightly
visits, Protestant inspectors, licenses 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 millions of 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 and such men. The fact
is, the Ministers know nothing about the present state of Ireland; Mr.
Perceval sees a few clergymen, Lord Castlereagh 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 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
powerful 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 furthest 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 inhabitants. 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 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 Mr. Perceval for continuing to expose his country day after day
to such tremendous perils as these; cursing the men who would have
given up a question in theology to have saved 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 Minister 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 down the crater of
Mount Ætna, not the conduct of a wise and sober people deciding upon
their best and dearest interests: and in the name, the much-injured
name, of heaven, what is it all for that we expose ourselves 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'Callaghan may
continue to whip Sir Toby M'Tackle, his next door neighbour, and
continue to ravish his Catholic daughters; and these are the measures
which the honest and consistent Secretary supports; and this is the
Secretary whose genius in the estimation of Brother Abraham is to
extinguish the genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave,
Goliath smitten by a stripling. Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman;
tremble, thou great Gaul, from whose head an armed Minerva leaps forth
in the hour of danger; tremble, thou scourge of God, a pleasant man is
come out against thee, and thou shall be laid low by a joker of jokes,
and he shall talk his pleasant talk against thee, and thou shall 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 mistake. He has not ships and
sailors to contest the empire of the seas with Great Britain, but
there remains quite sufficient of the navies of France, Spain,
Holland, and Denmark, for these short excursions and invasions. Do you
think, too, that Bonaparte does not add to his navy every year? Do
you suppose, with all Europe at his feet, that he can find any
difficulty in obtaining timber, and that money will not procure for
him any quantity of naval stores he may want? The mere machine, the
empty ship, he can build as well, and as quickly, as you can; and
though he may not find enough of practised sailors to man large
fighting-fleets--it is not possible to conceive that he can want
sailors for such sort of purposes as I have stated. He is at present
the despotic monarch of above twenty thousand miles of sea-coast, and
yet you suppose he 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
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. 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
French fleet sailed out of Brest Harbour, Admiral Colpoys was cruising
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 impunity to set
justice and common sense at defiance. Such is the miserable and
precarious state of an anemocracy, of a people who put their trust in
hurricanes, and are governed by wind. In August, 1798, three forty-gun
frigates landed 1100 men 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 engagement, by Sir John Warren.
If you despise the little troop which, in these numerous experiments,
did make good its landing, take with you, if you please, this _précis_
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 force of 150,000 men, and
at last surrendered to the Viceroy, an experienced general, gravely
and cautiously advancing at the head of all his chivalry and of an
immense army to 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 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 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 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.