Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Clergy -- England -- Biography; Smith, Sydney, 1771-1845
If then the Courts of Assize are, by the very nature of the case,
instruments of injustice, it is the Grand Juries which are the great scene
of Jobbery. They have the power of levying a county rate for roads,
bridges, and other public accommodations. Milesian gentlemen, attendant on
the Grand Inquest of Justice, arrange these little matters for their mutual
convenience.--
"You suffer the road to be brought through my park, and I will have
the bridge constructed in a situation where it will make a beautiful
object to your house. You do my job, and I will do yours."
And so, as far as the Protestant gentry are concerned, all is well. But
there is a religion even in jobs; "and it will be highly gratifying to Mr.
Perceval to learn that no man in Ireland who believes in Seven Sacraments
can carry a public road, or bridge, one yard out of its way, and that
nobody can cheat the public who does not expound the Scriptures in the
purest and most orthodox manner.... I ask if the human mind can experience
a more dreadful sensation than to see its own jobs refused, and the jobs of
another religion perpetually succeeding?"
And then again there is the grievance which consists in exclusion from the
higher posts of the Professions.--
"Look at human nature. Your boy Joel is to be brought up to the Bar:
has Mrs. Plymley the slightest doubt of his being Chancellor? Do not
his two shrivelled aunts live in the certainty of seeing him in that
situation, and of cutting-out with their own hands his equity
habiliments? And I could name a certain Minister of the Gospel who
does not, in the bottom of his heart, much differ from these opinions.
Do you think that the fathers and mothers of the holy Catholic church
are not as absurd as Protestant papas and mammas? The probability I
admit to be, in each case, that the sweet little blockhead will in
fact never get a brief. But I venture to say that there is not a
parent from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay, who does not conceive
that his child is the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and that
nothing short of positive law could prevent his own dear, pre-eminent
Paddy from rising to the highest honours of the State. So with the
army, and Parliament. In fact, few are excluded; but, in imagination,
all. You keep twenty or thirty Catholics out, and lose the affections
of four millions."
And then Peter turns to the war-cry of No Popery, which had been so
vigorously and successfully raised at the General Election of 1807, and
derides the loyal indignation then directed against the Ministers who had
the heart to worry George III. with plans of redress for Roman Catholics.--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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