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. Every
one 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 thirty Catholic gentl