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, 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
meantime, 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 Government 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 £8,000 to £13,000, its present amount, this sum was objected to by
that most indulgent of Christians, Mr. Spencer Perceval, as enormous; he
himself 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 immediate 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 man talk of an unalterable law, the only
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
anything 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 Hawkesbury 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 by
praising the Reformation, and the Reformation 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
influence human affairs against that wisdom and courage which living men
would employ for present happiness. Besides, it happens unfortunately
for the Warden of the Cinque Ports, that to the principal incapacities
under which the Irish suffer, they were subjected after that great and
glorious revolution, to which we are indebted for so many blessings, and
his Lordship for the termination of so many periods. The Catholics were
not excluded from the Irish House of Commons, or military commands,
before the 3rd 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 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 metaphysical 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 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, or privation. No lightning descended from
heaven: the country was not ruined; the world is not yet come to an end;
the dignitaries 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 it is necessary. It is not necessary in Greece,
where the Turks are masters.
Are you aware that there is at this moment a 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 disliked the Union before are quite furious against it now; those who
doubted doubt no more; those who were friendly to it have exchanged that
friendship for the most rooted aversion; in the midst of all this (which
is by far the most alarming symptom), there is the strongest disposition
on the part of the northern Dissenters to unite with the Catholics,
irritated by the faithless injustice with which they have been treated.
If this combination 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 be
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 rhymne; 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.
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 Protestant Irish towards the Catholics, then a much
more insignificant and powerless body than they now are. The Catholic
and the Dissenter have since combined together against you. Last war,
the winds, those ancient and unsubsidised allies of England; the winds,
upon which English ministers depend as much for saving kingdoms as
washerwomen do for drying clothes; the winds stood your friends: the
French could only get into Ireland in small numbers, and the rebels were
defeated. Since then, all the remaining kingdoms of Europe have been
destroyed; and the Irish see that their national independence is gone,
without having received any single 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 anything. 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 examining chaplain to a bishop, may believe these things
can last; but every man of the world, whose understanding has been
exercised in the business of life, must see (and see with a breaking
heart) that they will soon come to a fearful termination.
Our conduct to Ireland during the whole of this war has been that of a
man who subscribes 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 immediately provided with lodging,
soap, crucifix, missal, chapel-beads, relics, and holy water; if Turks
had landed, Turks would have received an order from the Treasury for
coffee, opium, korans, and seraglios. In the midst of all this fury of
saving and defending this crusade for conscience and Christianity, there
was a 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 occupied in making right angles
upon the breast 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 alarming degree?
The late question concerning military rank did not individually affect
the lowest persons of the Catholic persuasion; but do you imagine they do
not sympathise with the honour and disgrace of their superiors? Do you
think that satisfaction and dissatisfaction do not travel down from Lord
Fingal to the most potato-less 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_
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
heart-felt satisfaction over the larcenous and burglarious world.
Observe, I do not say because the lower Catholics are affected by what
concerns their superiors, that they are not affected 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 untouched, and are not
ultimately fatal to the destinies of America; 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 before any alteration is made; 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
Bonaparte 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 elapse without some serious concession made to the
Catholics, 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 give you a respite, it will only
be to get ready the gallows on which he means to hang 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 a 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; 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 talk 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 Grenville, or the
servile drawl of Lord Castlereagh, 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 unconstitutional.
Whoever retains his situation in the ministry while the incapacities of
the Catholics remain, is the advocate for those incapacities; and to him,
and to him only, am I to look for responsibility. But waive this
question of the Catholics, and put a general 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 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 English 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 constitutional provisions, by the term
conscience. There is no fantasy, however wild, that a man may not
persuade himself that he cherishes 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 English Monarch may,
from scruples of conscience, wish to abolish every trait of religious
persecution; 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 conscientious 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 sorts of
discussions I beg leave to decline. What I have said upon constitutional
topics, I mean of course for general, 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 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 importance,
but universally considered to be of no further 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 surprise. Are you moved by the arrival of the Irish Brigade at
Antwerp, and the amorous violence which awaits Mrs. Plymley?