NOTHING can be more erroneous than to suppose that Ireland is not bigger
than the Isle of Wight, or of more consequence than Guernsey or Jersey;
and yet I am almost inclined to believe, from the general supineness
which prevails here respecting the dangerous state of that country, that
such is the rank which it holds in our statistical tables. I have been
writing to you a great deal about 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,
701,102 houses, which Mr. Newenham shows from unquestionable documents to
be nearly 80,000 below the real number of houses in that country. There
are 27,457 square English miles in Ireland, and more than five millions
of people.
By the last survey it appears that the inhabited houses in England and
Wales amount to 1,574,902, and the population to 9,343,578, which gives
an average of 5.875 to each house, in a country where the density of
population is certainly less considerable than in Ireland. It is
commonly supposed that two-fifths of the army and navy are Irishmen, at
periods when political disaffection does not avert the Catholics from the
service. The current value of Irish exports in 1807 was £9,314,854 17s.
7d.; a state of commerce about equal to the commerce of England in the
middle of the reign of George II. The tonnage of ships entered inward
and cleared outward in the trade of Ireland, in 1807, amounted to
1,567,430 tons. The quantity of home spirits exported amounted to 10,284
gallons in 1796, and to 930,800 gallons in 1804. Of the exports which I
have stated, provisions amounted to four millions, and linen to about
four millions and a half. There was exported from Ireland, upon an
average of two years ending in January, 1804, 591,274 barrels of barley,
oats, and wheat; and by weight 910,848 cwts. of flour, oatmeal, barley,
oats, and wheat. The amount of butter exported in 1804, from Ireland,
was worth, in money, £1,704,680 sterling. The importation of ale and
beer, from the immense manufactures now carrying on of these articles,
was diminished to 3,209 barrels, in the year 1804, from 111,920 barrels,
which was the average importation per annum, taking from three years
ending in 1792; and at present there is an export trade of porter. On an
average of three years, ending March, 1783, there were imported into
Ireland, of cotton wool, 3,326 cwts., of cotton yarn, 5,405 lbs.; but on
an average of three years, ending January, 1803, there were imported, of
the first article, 13,159 cwts., and of the latter, 628,406 lbs. It is
impossible 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 millions, and it is computed that more than three millions’ of
money are annually remitted to Irish absentees resident in this country.
In Mr. Foster’s report, of 100 folio pages, presented to the House of
Commons in the year 1806, the total expenditure of Ireland is stated at
£9,760,013. Ireland has increased about two-thirds in its population
within twenty-five years, and yet, and in about the same space of time,
its exports of beef, bullocks, cows, pork, swine, butter, wheat, barley,
and oats, collectively taken, have doubled; and this, in spite of two
years’ famine, and the presence of an immense army, that is always at
hand to guard the most valuable appanage of our empire from joining our
most inveterate enemies. Ireland has the greatest possible facilities
for carrying on commerce with the whole of Europe. It contains, within a
circuit of 750 miles, 66 secure harbours, and presents a western frontier
against Great Britain, reaching from the Firth of Clyde north to the
Bristol Channel south, and varying in distance from 20 to 100 miles; so
that the subjugation of Ireland would compel us to guard with ships and
soldiers a new line of coast, certainly amounting, with all its
sinuosities, to more than 700 miles—an addition of polemics, in our
present state of hostility with all the world, which must highly gratify
the vigorists, and give them an ample opportunity of displaying that
foolish energy upon which their claims to distinction are founded. Such
is the country which the Right Reverend the Chancellor of the Exchequer
would drive into the arms of 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.
You say Bonaparte is not in earnest upon the subject of religion, and
that this is the cause of his tolerant spirit; but is it possible you can
intend to give us such dreadful and unamiable notions of religion. Are
we to understand that the moment a man is sincere he is narrow-minded;
that persecution is the child of belief; and that a desire to leave all
men in the quiet and unpunished exercise of their own creed can only
exist in the mind of an infidel? Thank God! I know many men whose
principles are as firm as they are expanded, who cling tenaciously to
their own modification of the Christian faith, without the slightest
disposition to force that modification upon other people. If Bonaparte
is liberal in subjects of religion because he has no religion, is this a
reason why we should be illiberal because we are Christians? If he owes
this excellent quality to a vice, is that any reason why we may not owe
it to a virtue? Toleration is a great good, and a good to be imitated,
let it come from whom it will. If a sceptic is tolerant, it only shows
that he is not foolish in practice as well as erroneous in theory. If a
religious man is tolerant, it evinces that he is religious from thought
and inquiry, because he exhibits in his conduct one of the most beautiful
and important consequences of a religious mind—an inviolable charity to
all the honest varieties of human opinion.
Lord Sidmouth, and all the anti-Catholic people, little foresee that they
will hereafter be the sport of the antiquary; that their prophecies of
ruin and destruction from Catholic emancipation will be clapped into the
notes of some quaint history, and be matter of pleasantry even to the
sedulous housewife and the rural dean. There is always a copious supply
of Lord Sidmouths in the world; nor is there one single source of human
happiness against which they have not uttered the most lugubrious
predictions. Turnpike roads, navigable canals, inoculation, hops,
tobacco, the Reformation, the Revolution—there are always a set of worthy
and moderately-gifted men, who bawl out death and ruin upon every
valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and
imperiously requires. I have often thought that it would be extremely
useful to make a collection of the hatred and abuse that all those
changes have experienced, which are now admitted to be marked
improvements in our condition. Such a history might make folly a little
more modest, and suspicious of its own decisions.
Ireland, you say, since the Union is to be considered as a part of the
whole kingdom; and therefore, however Catholics may 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 incapacities to which they are exposed, you will
lose them; or you must employ great strength and much treasure in
watching over them. In the present state of the world you can afford to
do neither the one nor the other. Having stated this, I shall leave you
to be ruined, Puffendorf in hand (as Mr. Secretary Canning says), and to
lose Ireland, just as you have found out what proportion the aggrieved
people should bear to the whole population before their calamities meet
with redress. As for your parallel cases, I am no more afraid of
deciding upon them than I am upon their prototype. If ever any one
heresy should so far spread itself over the principality of Wales that
the 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 a 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 the world.
I admit that, to a certain degree, the Government will lose the
affections of the Orangemen by emancipating the Catholics; much less,
however, at present, than three years past. The few men, who have
ill-treated the whole crew, live in constant terror that the oppressed
people will rise upon them and carry the ship into Brest:—they begin to
find that it is a very tiresome thing to sleep every night with cocked
pistols under their pillows, and to breakfast, dine, and sup with drawn
hangers. They suspect that the privilege of beating and kicking the rest
of the sailors is hardly worth all this anxiety, and that if the ship
does ever fall into the hands of the disaffected, all the cruelties which
they have experienced will be thoroughly remembered and amply repaid. To
a short period of disaffection among the Orangemen I confess I should not
much object: my love of poetical justice does carry me as far as that;
one summer’s whipping, only one: the thumb-screw for a short season; a
little light easy torturing between Ladyday and Michaelmas; a short
specimen of Mr. Perceval’s rigour. I have malice enough to ask this
slight atonement for the groans and shrieks of the poor Catholics,
unheard by any human tribunal, but registered by the Angel of God against
their Protestant and enlightened oppressors.
Besides, if you who count ten so often can count five, you must perceive
that it is better to have four friends and one enemy than four enemies
and one friend; and the more violent the hatred of the Orangemen, the
more certain the reconciliation of the Catholics. The disaffection of
the Orangemen will be the Irish rainbow: when I see it I shall be sure
that the storm is over.
If these incapacities, from which the Catholics ask to be relieved, were
to the mass of them only a mere feeling of pride, and if the question
were respecting the attainment of privileges which could be of importance
only to the highest of the sect, I should still say that the pride of the
mass was very naturally wounded by the degradation of their superiors.
Indignity to George Rose would be felt by the smallest nummary gentleman
in the king’s employ; and Mr. John Bannister could not be indifferent to
anything which happened to Mr. Canning. But the truth is, it is a most
egregious mistake to suppose that the Catholics are contending merely for
the fringes and feathers of their chiefs. I will give you a list in my
next Letter of those privations which are represented to be of no
consequence to anybody but Lord Fingal, and some twenty or thirty of the
principal persons of their sect. In the meantime, adieu, and be wise.