Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Clergy -- England -- Biography; Smith, Sydney, 1771-1845
Is not this, says Peter, the very nonsense and the very insult which you
daily practise on the Roman Catholics? I, though I am an inhabitant of the
village and live in one of the three favoured streets, have retained some
sense of justice, and I most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to
persevere in their just demands, till they are admitted to their just share
of a dinner for which they pay as much as the others.
"And, if they see a little attenuated lawyer[50] squabbling at the
head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and
to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding which he has
filched from the public feasts, to carry home to his wife and
children."
Before ending his letter, Peter has a fling at the Home Secretary, Lord
Hawkesbury, "the lesser of the two Jenkinsons."[51] Lord Hawkesbury has
said that "nothing is to be granted to the Catholics from fear." Why not,
asks Peter, if the thing demanded is just?
"The only true way to make the mass of mankind see the beauty of
justice is by showing 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 heart, do I believe to be the present state of that
country; and so little does it appear to me to be impolitic and
unstatesmanlike to concede 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 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."[52]
Letter VII. begins with a rebuke to brother Abraham for placing all his
hopes for the salvation of England in the "discretion" and "sound sense" of
Mr. Secretary Canning.--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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