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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, w