Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Clergy -- England -- Biography; Smith, Sydney, 1771-1845
"The general cry in the country was, that they would not see their beloved
monarch used ill in his old age, and that they would stand by him to the
last drop of their blood." This ebullition of ill-judging loyalty reminds
Peter of an accident which once befell the Russian Ambassador in London.
His Excellency fell down in a fit when paying a morning call. A doctor was
summoned, who declared that the patient must be instantly bled; and he
prepared to perform the operation. "But the barbarous servants of the
Embassy, when they saw the gleaming lancet, drew their swords, threw
themselves into an attitude of defiance, and swore they would kill the man
who dared to hurt their beloved master."
Peter's own remedy for Irish disaffection was, first, to remove all civil
penalties for religious faith, and then to subsidize the Roman Catholic
bishops and clergy in Ireland, and pay for the maintenance of their schools
and churches. He calculated that this would cost £250,000 a year. The
clergy should all receive their salaries through the Bank of Ireland; the
salaries were to be proportioned to the size of the congregations; and all
patronage should be lodged in the hands of the Crown.--
"Now I appeal to any human being, what the disaffection of a clergy
would amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the Crown; and
whether Ignatius Loyola himself, if he were a living blockhead instead
of a dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing from £100
a year in Sligo, to £300 in Tipperary. This is the miserable sum of
money for which the merchants, and landowners, and nobility of
England, are exposing themselves to the tremendous peril of losing
Ireland."
If all these schemes of conciliation were rejected as dangerous and
impracticable, there remained of course the time-honoured remedy of
Coercion. This had been demanded by Spencer Perceval, when attacking the
conciliatory administration of "All the Talents," and it provoked Peter
Plymley to a characteristic outburst:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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