Bath Fields he saw
A solitary cell;
And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving his prisons in hell.

General Gascoigne's burning face
He saw with consternation;
And back to hell his way did take,
For the Devil thought by a slight mistake
It was a general conflagration.

SYDNEY SMITH.

(1771-1845.)

LV. THE LETTERS OF PETER PLYMLEY--ON "NO POPERY".

In 1807 the _Letters of Peter Plymley_ to his brother Abraham on
the subject of the Irish Catholics were published. "The letters",
as Professor Henry Morley says, "fell like sparks on a heap of
gunpowder. All London, and soon all England, were alive to the
sound reason recommended by a lively wit." The example of his
satiric force and sarcastic ratiocination cited below is the Second
Letter in the Series.

DEAR ABRAHAM,

The Catholic not respect an oath! why not? What upon earth has kept him
out of Parliament, or excluded him from all the offices whence he is
excluded, but his respect for oaths? There is no law which prohibits a
Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be no such law; because it
is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of any man's
mind. Suppose it were in contemplation to exclude all men from certain
offices who contended for the legality of taking tithes: the only mode
of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to
possess would be to tender you an oath "against that damnable doctrine,
that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, abstract, appropriate,
subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck",
&c., and every other animal that ever existed, which of course the
lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now this oath I am sure you would
rather die than take; and so the Catholic is excluded from Parliament
because he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of
his religion! The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress
him; your answer is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject
him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why,
then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are
nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are;
but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of
being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when
he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything in