ircumstances, just and necessary wars, monstrous and
unnatural rebellions_, and all other sources of human destruction. Of
this population, two out of ten are Protestants; and the half of the
Protestant population are dissenters, and as inimical to the Church as
the Catholics themselves. In this state of things thumbscrews and
whipping--admirable engines of policy as they must be considered to
be--will not ultimately avail. The Catholics will hang over you; they
will watch for the moment, and compel you hereafter to give them ten
times as much, against your will, as they would now be contented with,
if it were voluntarily surrendered. Remember what happened in the
American war, when Ireland compelled you to give her everything she
asked, and to renounce, in the most explicit manner, your claim of
sovereignty over her. God Almighty grant the folly of these present men
may not bring on such another crisis of public affairs!

What are your dangers which threaten the Establishment? Reduce this
declamation to a point, and let us understand what you mean. The most
ample allowance does not calculate that there would be more than twenty
members who were Roman Catholics in one house, and ten in the other, if
the Catholic emancipation were carried into effect. Do you mean that
these thirty members would bring in a bill to take away the tithes from
the Protestant, and to pay them to the Catholic clergy? Do you mean
that a Catholic general would march his army into the House of Commons,
and purge it of Mr. Perceval and Dr. Duigenan? or, that the
theological writers would become all of a sudden more acute or more
learned, if the present civil incapacities were removed? Do you fear
for your tithes, or your doctrines, or your person, or the English
Constitution? Every fear, taken separately, is so glaringly absurd,
that no man has the folly or the boldness to state it. Everyone
conceals his ignorance, or his baseness, in a stupid general panic,
which, when called on, he is utterly incapable of explaining. Whatever
you think of the Catholics, there they are--you cannot get rid of them;
your alternative is to give them a lawful place for stating their
grievances, or an unlawful one: if you do not admit them to the House
of Commons, they will hold their parliament in Potatoe Place, Dublin,
and be ten times as violent and inflammatory as they would be in
Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea of security as to see
twenty or thirt