f
disaffected people within twenty miles of your own coast. I fairly
confess that the dread which I have of their physical power is with me
a very strong motive for listening to their claims. To talk of not
acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant. From what motive but
fear, I should be glad to know, have all the improvements in our
constitution proceeded? I question if any justice has ever been done
to large masses of mankind from any other motive. By what other
motives can the plunderers of the Baltic suppose nations to be
governed in their intercourse _with each other_? If I say, Give this
people what they ask because it is just, do you think I should get ten
people to listen to me? Would not the lesser of the two Jenkinsons be
the first to treat me with contempt? The only true way to make the
mass of mankind see the beauty of justice is by showing to them, in
pretty plain terms, the consequences of injustice. If any body of
French troops land in Ireland, the whole population of that country
will rise against you to a man, and you could not possibly survive
such an event three years. Such, from the bottom of my soul, do I
believe to be the present state of that country; and so far does it
appear to me to be impolitic and unstatesman-like to conceed anything
to such a danger, that if the Catholics, in addition to their present
just demands, were to petition for the perpetual removal of the said
Lord Hawkesbury from his Majesty's councils, I think, whatever might
be the effect upon the destinies of Europe, and however it might
retard our own individual destruction, that the prayer of the petition
should be instantly complied with. Canning's crocodile tears should
not move me; the hoops of the maids of honour should not hide him. I
would tear him from the banisters of the back stairs, and plunge him
in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque Ports.

LETTER VII.

Dear Abraham--In the correspondence which is passing between us, you
are perpetually alluding to the Foreign Secretary; and in answer to
the dangers of Ireland, which I am pressing upon your notice, you have
nothing to urge but the confidence which you repose in the discretion
and sound sense of this gentleman. I can only say, that I have
listened to him long and often with the greatest attention; I have
used every exertion in my power to take a fair measure of him, and it
appears to me impossible to hear him upon any arduous topic without
perc