ALL that I have so often told you, Mr. Abraham Plymley, is now come to
pass. The Scythians, in whom you and the neighbouring country gentleman
placed such confidence, are smitten hip and thigh; their Beningsen 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 doggrel rhymes, by affronting petulance, and by the
tones and gesticulations of Mr. Pitt. But these are not all the
auxiliaries on which we have to depend; to these his colleague will add
the strictest attention to the smaller parts of ecclesiastical
government, to hassocks, to psalters, and to surplices; in the last
agonies of England, he will bring in a bill to regulate Easter-offerings:
and he will adjust the stipends of curates, when the flag of France is
unfurled on the hills of Kent. Whatever can be done by very mistaken
notions of the piety of a Christian, and by a very wretched imitation of
the eloquence of Mr. Pitt, will be done by these two gentlemen. After
all, if they both really were what they both either wish to be, or wish
to be thought; if the one were an enlightened Christian who drew from the
Gospel the toleration, the charity, and the sweetness which it contains;
and if the other really possessed any portion of the great understanding
of his Nisus who guarded him from the weapons of the Whigs, I should
still doubt if they could save us. But I am sure we are not to be saved
by religious hatred, and by religious 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 movement of his
arms, will do nothing for us; when these tones and movements, and voice
brings us always declamation without sense or knowledge, and ridicule
without good humour or conciliation. Oh, Mr. Plymley, this never will
do. Mrs. Abraham Plymley, my sister, will be led away captive by an
amorous Gaul; and Joel Plymley your firstborn, 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 suspended, you conceived the power of
Bonaparte to be at an end, and were setting off for Paris with Lord
Hawkesbury the conqueror. This is precisely the method in which the
English have acted during the whole of the revolutionary war. If Austria
or Prussia armed, doctors of divinity 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 displayed itself in
all its glory. What scenes of infamy did the Society for the Suppression
of Vice lay open to our astonished eyes! tradesmen’s daughters dancing,
pots of beer carried out between the first and second lesson, and dark
and distant rumours of indecent prints. Clouds of Mr. Canning’s cousins
arrived by the waggon; 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, 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 a hurry, or there will be no monarch to flatter, and no country to
pillage; only submit 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
France, and then the jobbers and jesters shall return to their
birthright, and public virtue be called by its own name of fanaticism.”
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 Surveyor of the Meltings.
You ask me, if I think it possible for this country to survive the recent
misfortunes of Europe?—I answer you, without the slightest degree of
hesitation: that if Bonaparte 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
compassion, 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 unprincipled ambition of France.
It is indeed a most silly and affecting spectacle to rage at such a
moment against our own kindred and our own blood; to tell them they
cannot be honourable in war, because they are conscientious 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 emoluments 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 request; it should be granted,
if Lord Hawkesbury had reached Paris, if Mr. Canning’s interpreter had
threatened the Senate in an opening speech, or Mr. Perceval explained to
them the improvements he meant to introduce into the Catholic religion;
but to deny the Irish this justice now, in the present state of Europe,
and in the summer months, just as the season for destroying kingdoms is
coming on, is (beloved Abraham), whatever you may think of it, little
short of positive insanity.
Here is a frigate attacked by a corsair of immense strength and size,
rigging cut, masts in 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, sweethearts, gin,
French prison, wooden shoes, Old England, and hearts of oak; they give
three cheers, rush to their guns, and, after a tremendous conflict,
succeed in beating off the enemy. Not a syllable of all this; this is
not the manner in which the honourable Commander goes to work: the first
thing he does is to secure twenty or thirty of his prime sailors who
happen to be Catholics, to clap them in irons, and set over them a guard
of as many Protestants; having taken this admirable method of defending
himself against his infidel opponents, 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
quartermaster; 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 thirty-nine Articles, and
positively forbids every one to sponge 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 common with many others, against the
Catholics, that their demands complied with would only lead to further
exactions, and that it is better to resist them now, before anything is
conceded, than hereafter, when it is found that all concessions are in
vain. I wish the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who uses this reasoning 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
hereafter be made? Would he not have said, and said truly, Leave such
exorbitant attempts as these to the general indignation of the Commons,
who will take care to defeat them when they do occur; but do not refuse
me the Irons and the Meltings now, because I may totally lose sight of
all moderation hereafter? Leave hereafter to the spirit and the wisdom
of hereafter; and do not be niggardly now from the apprehension that men
as wise as you should be profuse in times to come.
You forget, Brother Abraham, that is a vast art, where quarrels cannot be
avoided, to turn 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
Catholic or Protestant can purchase such refined pleasures) the privilege
of hearing Lord Castlereagh speak for three hours; keep his clergy from
starving, soften some of the most odious powers of the tithing-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 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, however
destitute of common sense, every mob will roar, and every Lord of the
Bedchamber address; but if you are engaged in a war that is to last for
years, and to require important sacrifices, take care to make the justice
of your case so clear and so obvious that it cannot be mistaken by the
most illiterate country gentleman who rides the earth. Nothing, in fact,
can be so grossly absurd as the argument which says I will deny justice
to you now, because I suspect future injustice from you. At this rate,
you may lock a man up in your stable, and refuse to let him out, because
you suspect that he has an intention, at some future period, of robbing
your hen-roost. You may horsewhip him at Lady Day, because you believe
he will affront you at Midsummer. You may commit a greater evil, to
guard against a less which is merely contingent, and may never happen.
You may do what you have done a century ago in Ireland, make 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 four millions of men combined with an invading
French army. If you are to quarrel at last with this enormous
population, still put it off as long as you can; you must gain, and
cannot lose, by the delay. The state of Europe cannot be worse; the
conviction which the Catholics entertain of your 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 certainly will be so, none can be worse;
and after all the evil may never happen.
You have got hold, I perceive, of all the vulgar English stories
respecting the hereditary transmission of forfeited property, and
seriously believe that every Catholic 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 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 desirous of coming
into possession that he resorts 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 anywhere 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 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 Catholics, 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 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 melodrame, opera, pantomime, or other light scenical representation;
in short, we will gratify the love of insolence and power; we will enjoy
the old orthodox sport of witnessing the 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 considerable. Cruelty and injustice must,
of course, exist; but why connect them with danger? Why torture a
bulldog 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 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.