judgments of mankind.  I detest that state of society which extends unequal degrees of protection to different creeds and persuasions; and I cannot describe to you the contempt I feel for a man who, calling himself a statesman, defends a system which fills the heart of every Irishman with treason.”

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.—­