YOU must observe that all I have said of the effects which will be
produced by giving salaries to the Catholic clergy, only proceeds upon
the supposition that the emanciptaion of the laity is effected:—without
that, I am sure there is not a clergyman in Ireland who would receive a
shilling from government; he could not do so, without an entire loss of
credit among the members of his own persuasion.
What you say of the moderation of the Irish Protestant clergy in
collecting tithes, is, I believe, strictly true. Instead of collecting
what the law enables them to collect, I believe they seldom or ever
collect more than two-thirds; and I entirely agree with you, that the
abolition of agistment tithe in Ireland by a vote of the Irish House of
Commons, and without any remuneration to the Church, was a most
scandalous and Jacobinical measure. I do not blame the Irish clergy; but
I submit to your common sense, if it be possible to explain to an Irish
peasant upon what principle of justice, or common sense, he is to pay
every tenth potato in his little garden to a clergyman in whose religion
nobody believes for twenty miles around him, and who has nothing to
preach to but bare walls? It is true, if the tithes are bought up, the
cottager must pay more rent to his landlord; but the same thing done in
the shape of rent is less odious than when it is done in the shape of
tithe. I do not want to take a shilling out of the pockets of the
clergy, but to leave the substance of things, and to change their names.
I cannot see the slightest reason why the Irish labourer is to be
relieved from the real onus, or from anything else but the name of tithe.
At present he rents only nine-tenths of the produce of the land, which is
all that belongs to the owner; this he has at the market price; if the
landowner purchase the other tenth of the Church, of course he has a
right to make a correspondent advance upon his tenant.
I very much doubt, if you were to lay open all civil offices to the
Catholics, and to grant salaries to their clergy, in the manner I have
stated, if the Catholic laity would give themselves much trouble about
the advance of their Church; for they would pay the same tithes under one
system that they do under another. If you were to bring the Catholics
into the daylight of the world, to the high situations of the army, the
navy, and the bar, numbers of them would come over to the Established
Church, and do as other people do; instead of that, you set a mark of
infamy upon them, rouse every passion of our nature in favour of their
creed, and then wonder that men are blind to the follies of the Catholic
religion. There are hardly any instances of old and rich families among
the Protestant Dissenters: when a man keeps a coach, and lives in good
company, he comes to church, and gets ashamed of the meeting-house; if
this is not the case with the father, it is almost always the case with
the son. These things would never be so if the Dissenters were in
_practice_ as much excluded from all the concerns of civil life as the
Catholics are. If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would
belong to White’s and to Brookes’s, would keep race-horses, would walk up
and down Pall Mall, be exonerated of his ready money and his
constitution, become as totally devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge,
and civility as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall, and return home with a
supreme contempt for Father O’Leary and Father O’Callaghan. I am
astonished at the madness of the Catholic clergy in not perceiving that
Catholic emancipation is Catholic infidelity; that to entangle their
people in the intrigues of a Protestant parliament, and a Protestant
court, is to ensure the loss of every man of fashion and consequence in
their community. The true receipt for preserving their religion, is Mr.
Perceval’s receipt for destroying it: it is to deprive every rich
Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him from the
Protestant, and to shut him up in his castle with priests and relics.
We are told, in answer to all our arguments, that this is not a fit
period—that a period of universal war is not the proper time for
dangerous innovations in the constitution: this is as much as to say,
that the worst time for making friends is the period when you have made
many enemies; that it is the greatest of all errors to stop when you are
breathless, and to lie down when you are fatigued. Of one thing I am
quite certain: if the safety of Europe is once completely restored, the
Catholics may for ever bid adieu to the slightest probability of
effecting their object. Such men as hang about a court not only are deaf
to the suggestions of mere justice, but they despise justice; they detest
the word _right_; the only word which rouses them is _peril_; where they
can oppress with impunity, they oppress for ever, and call it loyalty and
wisdom.
I am so far from conceiving the legitimate strength of the Crown would be
diminished by these abolitions of civil incapacities in consequence of
religious opinions, that my only objection to the increase of religious
freedom is, that it would operate as a diminution of political freedom;
the power of the Crown is so overbearing at this period, that almost the
only steady opposers of its fatal influence are men disgusted by
religious intolerance. Our establishments are so enormous, and so
utterly disproportioned to our population, that every second or third man
you meet in society gains something from the public; my brother the
commissioner,—my nephew the police justice,—purveyor of small beer to the
army in Ireland,—clerk of the mouth,—yeoman to the left hand,—these are
the obstacles which common sense and justice have now to overcome. Add
to this that the King, old and infirm, excites a principle of very
amiable generosity in his favour; that he has led a good, moral, and
religious life, equally removed from profligacy and methodistical
hypocrisy; that he has been a good husband, a good father, and a good
master; that he dresses plain, loves hunting and farming, fates the
French, and is in all his opinions and habits, quite English:—these
feelings are heightened by the present situation of the world, and the
yet unexploded clamour of Jacobinism. In short, from the various sources
of interest, personal regard, and national taste, such a tempest of
loyalty has set in upon the people that the 47th proposition in Euclid
might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics;
and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as
much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for
getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure
upon the pretensions of the _hypotenuse_. Such is the history of English
parties at this moment: you cannot seriously suppose that the people care
for such men as Lord Hawkesbury, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Perceval on their
own account; you cannot really believe them to be so degraded as to look
to their safety from a man who proposes to subdue Europe by keeping it
without Jesuit’s Bark. The people at present have one passion, and but
one—
“A Jove principium, Jovis omnia plena.”
They care no more for the ministers I have mentioned, than they do for
those sturdy royalists who for £60 per annum stand behind his Majesty’s
carriage, arrayed in scarlet and in gold. If the present ministers
opposed the Court instead of flattering it, they would not command twenty
votes.
Do not imagine by these observations that I am not loyal; without joining
in the common cant of the best of kings, I respect the King most
sincerely as a good man. His religion is better than the religion of Mr.
Perceval, his old morality very superior to the old morality of Mr.
Canning, and I am quite certain he has a safer understanding than both of
them put together. Loyalty within the bounds of reason and moderation is
one of the great instruments of human happiness; but the love of the king
may easily become more strong than the love of the kingdom, and we may
lose sight of the public welfare in our exaggerated admiration of him who
is appointed to reign only for its promotion and support. I detest
Jacobinism; and if I am doomed to be a slave at all, I would rather be
the slave of a king than a cobbler. God save the King, you say, warms
your heart like the sound of a trumpet. I cannot make use of so violent
a metaphor; but I am delighted to hear it, when it is the cry of genuine
affection; I am delighted to hear it when they hail not only the
individual man, but the outward and living sign of all English blessings.
These are noble feelings, and the heart of every good man must go with
them; but God save the King, in these times, too often means God save my
pension and my place, God give my sisters an allowance out of the privy
purse—make me clerk of the irons, let me survey the meltings, let me live
upon the fruits of other men’s industry, and fatten upon the plunder of
the public.
What is it possible to say to such a man as the Gentleman of Hampstead,
who really believes it feasible to convert the four million Irish
Catholics to the Protestant religion, and considers this as the best
remedy for the disturbed state of Ireland? It is not possible to answer
such a man with arguments; we must come out against him with beads and a
cowl, and push him into an hermitage. It is really such trash, that it
is an abuse of the privilege of reasoning to reply to it. Such a project
is well worthy the statesman who would bring the French to reason by
keeping them without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle
of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild
apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy
of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits; but it is the
sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public
safety is intrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a
masterpiece of political sagacity. What a sublime thought, that no purge
can now be taken between the Weser and the Garonne; that the bustling
pestle is still, the canorous mortar mute, and the bowels of mankind
locked up for fourteen degrees of latitude! When, I should be curious to
know, were all the powers of crudity and flatulence fully explained to
his Majesty’s ministers? At what period was this great plan of conquest
and constipation fully developed? In whose mind was the idea of
destroying the pride and the plasters of France first engendered?
Without castor oil they might for some months, to be sure, have carried
on a lingering war! but can they do without bark? Will the people live
under a government where antimonial powders cannot be procured? Will
they bear the loss of mercury? “There’s the rub.” Depend upon it, the
absence of the materia medica will soon bring them to their senses, and
the cry of _Bourbon and bolus_ burst forth from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean.
You ask me for any precedent in our history where the oath of supremacy
has been dispensed with. It was dispensed with to the Catholics of
Canada in 1774. They are only required to take a simple oath of
allegiance. The same, I believe, was the case in Corsica. The reason of
such exemption was obvious; you could not possibly have retained either
of these countries without it. And what did it signify, whether you
retained them or not? In cases where you might have been foolish without
peril you were wise; when nonsense and bigotry threaten you with
destruction, it is impossible to bring you back to the alphabet of
justice and common sense. If men are to be fools, I would rather they
were fools in little matters than in great; dulness turned up with
temerity is a livery all the worse for the facings; and the most
tremendous of all things is the magnanimity of the dunce.
It is not by any means necessary, as you contend, to repeal the Test Act
if you give relief to the Catholic: what the Catholics ask for is to be
put on a footing with the Protestant Dissenters, which would be done by
repealing that part of the law which compels them to take the oath of
supremacy and to make the declaration against transubstantiation: they
would then come into Parliament as all other Dissenters are allowed to
do, and the penal laws to which they were exposed for taking office would
be suspended every year, as they have been for this half century past
towards Protestant Dissenters. Perhaps, after all, this is the best
method—to continue the persecuting law, and to suspend it every year—a
method which, while it effectually destroys the persecution itself,
leaves to the great mass of mankind the exquisite gratification of
supposing that they are enjoying some advantage from which a particular
class of their fellow creatures are excluded. We manage the Corporation
and Test Acts at present much in the same manner as if we were to
persuade parish boys who had been in the habit of beating an ass to spare
the animal, and beat the skin of an ass stuffed with straw; this would
preserve the semblance of tormenting without the reality, and keep boy
and beast in good humour.
How can you imagine that a provision for the Catholic clergy affects the
5th article of the Union? Surely I am preserving the Protestant Church
in Ireland if I put it in a better condition than that in which it now
is. A tithe proctor in Ireland collects his tithes with a blunderbuss,
and carries his tenth hay-cock by storm, sword in hand: to give him equal
value in a more pacific shape cannot, I should imagine, be considered as
injurious to the Church of Ireland; and what right has that Church to
complain if Parliament chooses to fix upon the empire the burden of
supporting a double ecclesiastical establishment? Are the revenues of
the Irish Protestant clergy in the slightest degree injured by such
provision? On the contrary, is it possible to confer a more serious
benefit upon that Church than by quieting and contenting those who are at
work for its destruction?
It is impossible to think of the affairs of Ireland without being
forcibly struck with the parallel of Hungary. Of her seven millions of
inhabitants, one half were Protestants, Calvinists, and Lutherans, many
of the Greek Church, and many Jews: such was the state of their religious
dissensions that Mahomet had often been called in to the aid of Calvin,
and the crescent often glittered on the walls of Buda and Presburg. At
last, in 1791, during the most violent crisis of disturbance, a Diet was
called, and by a great majority of voices a decree was passed, which
secured to all the contending sects the fullest and freest exercise of
religious worship and education; ordained—let it be heard in
Hampstead—that churches and chapels should be erected for all on the most
perfectly equal terms; that the Protestants of both confessions should
depend upon their spiritual superiors alone; liberated them from swearing
by the usual oath, “the Holy Virgin Mary, the saints, and chosen of God;”
and then the decree adds, “that _public offices and honours_, _high or
low_, _great or small_, _shall be given to natural-born Hungarians who
deserve well of their country_, _and possess the other qualifications_,
_let their religion be what it may_.” Such was the line of policy
pursued in a Diet consisting of four hundred members, in a state whose
form of government approaches nearer to our own than any other, having a
Roman Catholic establishment of great wealth and power, and under the
influence of one of the most bigoted Catholic Courts in Europe. This
measure has now the experience of eighteen years in its favour; it has
undergone a trial of fourteen years of revolution such as the world never
witnessed, and more than equal to a century less convulsed: What have
been its effects? When the French advanced like a torrent within a few
days’ march of Vienna, the Hungarians rose in a mass; they formed what
they called the sacred insurrection, to defend their sovereign, their
rights and liberties, now common to all; and the apprehension of their
approach dictated to the reluctant Bonaparte the immediate signature of
the treaty of _Leoben_. The Romish hierarchy of Hungary exists in all
its former splendour and opulence; never has the slightest attempt been
made to diminish it; and those revolutionary principles, to which so
large a portion of civilised Europe has been sacrificed, have here failed
in making the smallest successful inroad.
The whole history of this proceeding of the Hungarian Diet is so
extraordinary, and such an admirable comment upon the Protestantism of
Mr. Spencer Perceval, that I must compel you to read a few short extracts
from the law itself:—“The Protestants of both confessions shall, in
religious matters, depend upon their own spiritual superiors alone. The
Protestants may likewise retain their trivial and grammar schools. The
Church dues which the Protestants have hitherto paid to the Catholic
parish priests, schoolmasters, or other such officers, either in money,
productions, or labour, shall in future entirely cease, and after three
months from the publishing of this law, be no more anywhere demanded. In
the building or repairing of churches, parsonage-houses, and schools, the
Protestants are not obliged to assist the Catholics with labour, nor the
Catholics the Protestants. The pious foundations and donations of the
Protestants which already exist, or which in future may be made for their
churches, ministers, schools and students, hospitals, orphan houses, and
poor, cannot be taken from them under any pretext, nor yet the care of
them; but rather the unimpeded administration shall be intrusted to those
from among them to whom it legally belongs, and those foundations which
may have been taken from them under the last government shall be returned
to them without delay. All affairs of marriage of the Protestants are
left to their own consistories; all landlords and masters of families,
under the penalty of public prosecution, are ordered not to prevent their
subjects and servants, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, from the
observance of the festivals and ceremonies of their religion,” etc. etc.
etc.—By what strange chances are mankind influenced! A little Catholic
barrister of Vienna might have raised the cry of _No Protestantism_, and
Hungary would have panted for the arrival of a French army as much as
Ireland does at this moment; arms would have been searched for; Lutheran
and Calvinist houses entered in the dead of the night; and the strength
of Austria exhausted in guarding a country from which, under the present
liberal system, she may expect in the moment of danger the most powerful
aid: and let it be remembered that this memorable example of political
wisdom took place at a period when many great monarchies were yet
unconquered in Europe; in a country where the two religious parties were
equal in number; and where it is impossible to suppose indifference in
the party which relinquished its exclusive privileges. Under all these
circumstances the measure was carried in the Hungarian Diet by a majority
of 280 to 120. In a few weeks we shall see every concession denied to
the Catholics by a much larger majority of Protestants, at a moment when
every other power is subjugated but ourselves, and in a country where the
oppressed are four times as numerous as their oppressors. So much for
the wisdom of our ancestors—so much for the nineteenth century—so much
for the superiority of the English over all the nations of the Continent.
Are you not sensible, let me ask you, of the absurdity of trusting the
lowest Catholics with offices correspondent to their situation in life,
and of denying such privileges to the higher. A Catholic may serve in
the militia, but a Catholic cannot come into Parliament; in the latter
case you suspect combination, and in the former case you suspect no
combination; you deliberately arm ten or twenty thousand of the lowest of
the Catholic people; and the moment you come to a class of men whose
education, honour, and talents seem to render all mischief less probable,
then you see the danger of employing a Catholic, and cling to your
investigating tests and disabling laws. If you tell me you have enough
of members of Parliament and not enough of militia without the Catholics,
I beg leave to remind you that, by employing the physical force of any
sect at the same time when you leave them in a state of utter
disaffection, you are not adding strength to your armies, but weakness
and ruin. If you want the vigour of their common people, you must not
disgrace their nobility and insult their priesthood.
I thought that the terror of the Pope had been confined to the limits of
the nursery, and merely employed as a means to induce young master to
enter into his small-clothes with greater speed and to eat his breakfast
with greater attention to decorum. For these purposes the name of the
Pope is admirable; but why push it beyond? Why not leave to Lord
Hawkesbury all further enumeration of the Pope’s powers? For a whole
century you have been exposed to the enmity of France, and your
succession was disputed in two rebellions: what could the Pope do at the
period when there was a serious struggle whether England should be
Protestant or Catholic, and when the issue was completely doubtful?
Could the Pope induce the Irish to rise in 1715? Could he induce them to
rise in 1745? You had no Catholic enemy when half this island was in
arms; and what did the Pope attempt in the last rebellion in Ireland?
But if he had as much power over the minds of the Irish as Mr.
Wilberforce has over the mind of a young Methodist converted the
preceding quarter, is this a reason why we are to disgust men who may be
acted upon in such a manner by a foreign power? or is it not an
additional reason why we should raise up every barrier of affection and
kindness against the mischief of foreign influence? But the true answer
is, the mischief does not exist. Gog and Magog have produced as much
influence upon human affairs as the Pope has done for this half century
past; and by spoiling him of his possessions, and degrading him in the
eyes of all Europe, Bonaparte has not taken quite the proper method of
increasing his influence.
But why not a Catholic king as well as a Catholic member of Parliament,
or of the Cabinet?—Because it is probable that the one would be
mischievous and the other not. A Catholic king might struggle against
the Protestantism of the country, and if the struggle were not successful
it would at least be dangerous; but the efforts of any other Catholic
would be quite insignificant, and his hope of success so small, that it
is quite improbable the effort would ever be made: my argument is, that
in so Protestant a country as Great Britain, the character of her
parliaments and her cabinet could not be changed by the few Catholics who
would ever find their way to the one or the other. But the power of the
Crown is immeasurably greater than the power which the Catholics could
obtain from any other species of authority in the state; and it does not
follow because the lesser degree of power is innocent that the greater
should be so too. As for the stress you lay upon the danger of a
Catholic chancellor, I have not the least hesitation in saying that his
appointment would not do a ten thousandth part of the mischief to the
English Church that might be done by a Methodistical chancellor of the
true Clapham breed; and I request to know if it is really so very
necessary that a chancellor should be of the religion of the Church of
England, how many chancellors you have had within the last century who
have been bred up in the Presbyterian religion? And again, how many you
have had who notoriously have been without any religion at all?
Why are you to suppose that eligibility and election are the same thing,
and that all the cabinet _will_ be Catholics whenever all the cabinet
_may_ be Catholics? You have a right, you say, to suppose an extreme
case, and to argue upon it—so have I: and I will suppose that the hundred
Irish members will one day come down in a body and pass a law compelling
the King to reside in Dublin. I will suppose that the Scotch members, by
a similar stratagem, will lay England under a large contribution of meal
and sulphur: no measure is without objection if you sweep the whole
horizon for danger; it is not sufficient to tell me of what may happen,
but you must show me a rational probability that it will happen: after
all, I might, contrary to my real opinion, admit all your dangers to
exist; it is enough for me to contend that all other dangers taken
together are not equal to the danger of losing Ireland from disaffection
and invasion.
I am astonished to see you, and many good and well-meaning clergymen
beside you, painting the Catholics in such detestable colours;
two-thirds, at least, of Europe are Catholics—they are Christians, though
mistaken Christians; how can I possibly admit that any sect of
Christians, and, above all, that the oldest and the most numerous sect of
Christians are incapable of fulfilling the common duties and relations of
life: though I do differ from them in many particulars, God forbid I
should give such a handle to infidelity, and subscribe to such blasphemy
against our common religion?
Do you think mankind never change their opinions without formally
expressing and confessing that change? When you quote the decisions of
ancient Catholic councils, are you prepared to defend all the decrees of
English convocations and universities since the reign of Queen Elizabeth?
I could soon make you sick of your uncandid industry against the
Catholics, and bring you to allow that it is better to forget times past,
and to judge and be judged by present opinions and present practice.
I must beg to be excused from explaining and refuting all the mistakes
about the Catholics made by my Lord Redesdale; and I must do that
nobleman the justice to say, that he has been treated with great
disrespect. Could anything be more indecent than to make it a morning
lounge in Dublin to call upon his Lordship, and to cram him with
Arabian-night stories about the Catholics? Is this proper behaviour to
the representative of Majesty, the child of Themis, and the keeper of the
conscience in West Britain? Whoever reads the Letters of the Catholic
Bishops, in the appendix to Sir John Hippesly’s very sensible book, will
see to what an excess this practice must have been carried with the
pleasing and Protestant nobleman whose name I have mentioned, and from
thence I wish you to receive your answer about excommunication, and all
the trash which is talked against the Catholics.
A sort of notion has, by some means or another, crept into the world that
difference of religion would render men unfit to perform together the
offices of common and civil life: that Brother Wood and Brother Grose
could not travel together the same circuit if they differed in creed, nor
Cockell and Mingay be engaged in the same cause, if Cockell was a
Catholic and Mingay a Muggletonian. It is supposed that Huskisson and
Sir Harry Englefield would squabble behind the Speaker’s chair about the
council of Lateran, and many a turnpike bill miscarry by the sarcastical
controversies of Mr. Hawkins Brown and Sir John Throckmorton upon the
real presence. I wish I could see some of these symptoms of earnestness
upon the subject of religion; but it really seems to me that, in the
present state of society, men no more think about inquiring concerning
each other’s faith than they do concerning the colour of each other’s
skins. There may have been times in England when the quarter sessions
would have been disturbed by theological polemics; but now, after a
Catholic justice had once been seen on the bench, and it had been clearly
ascertained that he spoke English, had no tail, only a single row of
teeth, and that he loved port wine—after all the scandalous and infamous
reports of his physical conformation had been clearly proved to be
false—he would be reckoned a jolly fellow, and very superior in flavour
to a sly Presbyterian. Nothing, in fact, can be more uncandid and
unphilosophical than to say that a man has a tail, because you cannot
agree within him upon religious subjects; it appears to be ludicrous: but
I am convinced it has done infinite mischief to the Catholics, and made a
very serious impression upon the minds of many gentlemen of large landed
property.
In talking of the impossibility of Catholic and Protestant living
together with equal privilege under the same government, do you forget
the Cantons of Switzerland? You might have seen there a Protestant
congregation going into a church which had just been quitted by a
Catholic congregation; and I will venture to say that the Swiss Catholics
were more bigoted to their religion than any people in the whole world.
Did the kings of Prussia ever refuse to employ a Catholic? Would
Frederick the Great have rejected an able man on this account? We have
seen Prince Czartorinski, a Catholic Secretary of State in Russia; in
former times a Greek patriarch and an apostolic vicar acted together in
the most perfect harmony in Venice; and we have seen the Emperor of
Germany in modern times intrusting the care of his person and the command
of his guard to a Protestant Prince, Frederick of Wittenberg. But what
are all these things to Mr. Perceval? He has looked at human nature from
the top of Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the little sphere
of his own vision. “The snail,” say the Hindoos, “sees nothing but his
own shell, and thinks it the grandest palace in the universe.”
I now take a final leave of this subject of Ireland; the only difficulty
in discussing it is a want of resistance, a want of something difficult
to unravel, and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question
is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar; it is
a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man say, I
have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it, this mode of arguing
upon the Catholic question I can well understand; but that any human
being with an understanding two degrees elevated above that of an
Anabaptist preacher, should conscientiously contend for the expediency
and propriety of leaving the Irish Catholics in their present state, and
of subjecting us to such tremendous peril in the present condition of the
world, it is utterly out of my power to conceive. Such a measure as the
Catholic question is entirely beyond the common game of politics; it is a
measure in which all parties ought to acquiesce, in order to preserve the
place where and the stake for which they play. If Ireland is gone, where
are jobs? where are reversions? where is my brother Lord Arden? where are
my dear and near relations? The game is up, and the Speaker of the house
of Commons will be sent as a present to the menagerie at Paris. We talk
of waiting from particular considerations, as if centuries of joy and
prosperity were before us: in the next ten years our fate must be
decided; we shall know, long before that period, whether we can bear up
against the miseries by which we are threatened or not; and yet, in the
very midst of our crisis, we are enjoined to abstain from the most
certain means of increasing our strength, and advised to wait for the
remedy till the disease is removed by death or health. And now, instead
of the plain and manly policy of increasing unanimity at home, by
equalising rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and
wicked system which has been pursued? Such a career of madness and of
folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the
ministry is like the vigour of a grave-digger—the tomb becomes more ready
and more wide for every effort which they make. There is nothing which
it is worth while either to take or to retain, and a constant train of
ruinous expeditions have been kept up. Every Englishman felt proud of
the integrity of his country; the character of the country is lost for
ever. It is of the utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with
the greatest part of Europe, that there should be a free entry of
neutrals into the enemy’s ports; the neutrals who earned our manufactures
we have not only excluded, but we have compelled them to declare war
against us. It was our interest to make a good peace, or convince our
own people that it could not be obtained; we have not made a peace, and
we have convinced the people of nothing but of the arrogance of the
Foreign Secretary: and all this has taken place in the short space of a
year, because a King’s Bench barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned
into Ministers of State, were determined to show country gentlemen that
the late administration had no vigour. In the meantime commerce stands
still, manufactures perish, Ireland is more and more irritated, India is
threatened, fresh taxes are accumulated upon the wretched people, the war
is carried on without it being possible to conceive any one single object
which a rational being can propose to himself by its continuation; and in
the midst of this unparalleled insanity we are told that the Continent is
to be reconquered by the want of rhubarb and plums. A better spirit than
exists in the English people never existed in any people in the world: it
has been misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes in the most
degrading and scandalous manner; they have been led to believe that they
were benefiting the commerce of England by destroying the commerce of
America, that they were defending their Sovereign by perpetuating the
bigoted oppression of their fellow-subjects; their rulers and their
guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of France by
equalling her atrocity; and they have gone on wasting that opulence,
patience, and courage, which, if husbanded by prudent and moderate
counsels, might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of
turning the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruction, which
made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power to those who resemble him
only in his vices; advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen to
make them meanly submissive; their piety is turned into persecution,
their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered
because they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because
they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, so
let it be: that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our tears
and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that
it should perish waging war against lazar houses and hospitals; that it
should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry; that it should calmly
give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the
narrow fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human
beings, and I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever
stoop to such degradations.
_Longum Vale!_