a party. I love
the king, but I love the people as well as the king; and if I am sorry
to see his old age molested, I am much more sorry to see four millions
of Catholics baffled in their just expectations. If I love Lord
Grenville, and Lord Howick, it is because they love their country; if
I abhor ... it is because I know there is but one man among them who
is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country,
and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and
frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly,
learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the
breaking-up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them
for a place; and if they had survived twenty-four hours longer, he
would have been now declaiming against the cry of No Popery! instead
of inflaming it. With this practical comment on the baseness of human
nature, I bid you adieu!

LETTER VI.

Dear Abraham--What amuses me the most is to hear of the _indulgences_
which the Catholics have received, and their exorbitance in not being
satisfied with those indulgences: now if you complain to me that a
man is obtrusive and shameless in his requests, and that it is
impossible to bring him to reason, I must first of all hear the whole
of your conduct towards him; for you may have taken from him so much
in the first instance that, in spite of a long series of restitution,
a vast latitude for petition may still remain behind.

There is a village, no matter where, in which the inhabitants, on one
day in the year, sit down to a dinner prepared at the common expense:
by an extraordinary piece of tyranny, which Lord Hawkesbury would call
the wisdom of the village ancestors, the inhabitants of three of the
streets, about a hundred years ago, seized upon the inhabitants of the
fourth street, bound them hand and foot, laid them upon their backs,
and compelled them to look on while the rest were stuffing themselves
with beef and beer; the next year the inhabitants of the persecuted
street, though they contributed an equal quota of the expense, were
treated precisely in the same manner. The tyranny grew into a custom;
and, as the manner of our nature is, it was considered as the most
sacred of all duties to keep these poor fellows without their annual
dinner. The village was so tenacious of this practice, that nothing
could induce them to resign it; every enemy to it was looked upon as