"You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my country in the hands of a pert London joker[43] and a second-rate lawyer.[44] Of the first, no other good is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses; the second seems to me to have the head of a 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.--