greater than the force
of the Danish fleet? Was there no other way of protecting Ireland but
by bringing eternal shame upon Great Britain, and by making the earth
a den of robbers? See what the men whom you have supplanted would have
done. They would have rendered the invasion of Ireland impossible, by
restoring to the Catholics their long-lost rights: they would have
acted in such a manner that the French would neither have wished for
invasion nor dared to attempt it: they would have increased the
permanent strength of the country while they preserved its reputation
unsullied. Nothing of this kind your friends have done, because they
are solemnly pledged to do nothing of this kind; because, to tolerate
all religions, and to equalise civil rights to all sects, is to oppose
some of the worst passions of our nature--to plunder and to oppress is
to gratify them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, and they have for
ever blasted the fame of England to obtain them. Were the fleets of
Holland, France, and Spain destroyed by larceny? You resisted the
power of 150 sail of the line by sheer courage, and violated every
principle of morals from the dread of fifteen hulks, while the
expedition itself cost you three times more than the value of the
larcenous matter brought away. The French trample on the laws of God
and man, not for old cordage, but for kingdoms, and always take care
to be well paid for their crimes. We contrive, under the present
administration, to unite moral with intellectual deficiency, and to
grow weaker and worse by the same action. If they had any evidence of
the intended hostility of the Danes, why was it not produced? Why have
the nations of Europe been allowed to feel an indignation against this
country beyond the reach of all subsequent information? Are these
times, do you imagine, when we can trifle with a year of universal
hatred, dally with the curses of Europe, and then regain a lost
character at pleasure, by the parliamentary perspirations of the
Foreign Secretary, or the solemn asseverations of the pecuniary Rose?
Believe me, Abraham, it is not under such ministers as these that the
dexterity of honest Englishmen will ever equal the dexterity of French
knaves; it is not in their presence that the serpent of Moses will
ever swallow up the serpents of the magician.

Lord Hawkesbury says that nothing is to be granted to the Catholics
from fear. What! not even justice? Why not? There are four millions o