to heed it? or when had common sense much influence with my poor dear Irish?  Mr. Perceval does not know the Irish; but I know them, and I know that, at every rash and mad hazard, they will break the Union, revenge their wounded pride and their insulted religion, and fling themselves into the open arms of France, sure of dying in the embrace....  In the six hundredth year of our Empire over Ireland, have we any memorial of ancient kindness to refer to? any people, any zeal, any country, on which we can depend?  Have we any hope, but in the winds of heaven and the tides of the sea? any prayer to prefer to the Irish, but that they should forget and forgive their oppressors, who, in the very moment that they are calling upon them for their exertions, solemnly assure them that the oppression shall still remain?”

Letter VI. begins with one of those vivacious apologues in which Sydney Smith excelled.  Abraham Plymley has been talking of the concessions which Roman Catholics hare already received, and their shameless ingratitude in asking for more.  To the cry of ingratitude Peter thus replies.—­There is a village, he says, in which, once a year, the inhabitants sit down to a dinner provided at the common expense.  A hundred years ago the inhabitants of three of the streets seized the inhabitants of the fourth street, bound them hand and foot, laid them on their backs, and compelled them to look on while the majority were stuffing themselves with beef and beer—­and this, although they had contributed an equal quota to the expense.  Next year the same assault was perpetrated.  It soon grew into a custom; and, as years went on, the village came to look on the annual act of tyranny as the most sacred of its institutions.  Unfortunately, however, for the tyrannical majority, the inhabitants of the persecuted street increased in numbers, determination, and public spirit.  They murmured, protested, and resisted, till the oppressors, “more afraid of injustice, were now disposed to be just.”  On the next occasion of the annual dinner, the victims were unbound.  The year after, they were allowed to sit upright.  Then they got a bit of bread and a glass of water.  Finally, after a long series of small concessions, they grew so bold as to ask that they might sit down at the bottom of the table, and feast with their grander neighbours.  Forthwith, a general cry of shame and scandal.—­

“Ten years ago, were you not laid upon your backs?  Don’t you remember what a great thing you thought it to get a piece of bread?  How thankful you were for cheese-parings?  Have you forgotten that memorable aera, when the lord of the manor interfered to obtain for you a slice of the public pudding?  And now, with an audacity only equalled by your ingratitude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, and to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that you may sit down to table with the rest, and be indulged even with beef and beer.