country parson and the tongue of an Old Bailey barrister. If I could
see good measures pursued, I care not who is in power; but I have a
passionate love for common justice and for common sense, and I abhor
and despise every man who builds up his political fortune upon their
ruin."

Abraham's next objection to emancipation appears to have been that a Roman
Catholic will not respect an oath. "Why not?" asks Peter in Letter II.
"What upon earth has kept him out of Parliament, or excluded him from all
the offices whence he is excluded, but his respect for oaths? There is no
law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be no such
law; because it is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of
any man's mind.... The Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he will
not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of his religion. The
Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is,
that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths?
The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then he respects them. Turn
which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound
by religious obligations as you are."

From Roman Catholics in general, Peter now turns to the Roman Catholics of
Ireland.--

"The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to
bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to
act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots. Whatever
your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion,
remember they are the follies of four millions of human beings,
increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth and intelligence, who, if firmly
united with this country, would set at defiance the power of France,
and, if once wrested from their alliance with England, would in three
years render its existence as an independent nation absolutely
impossible. You speak of danger to the Establishment; I request to
know when the Establishment was ever so much in danger as when Hoche
was in Bantry Bay, and whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts
of the Jesuits, were half so terrible?... 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