The friends of the Catholic question are, I observe, extremely embarrassed in arguing when they come to the loyalty of the Irish Catholics.  As for me, I shall go straight forward to my object, and state what I have no manner of doubt, from an intimate knowledge of Ireland, to be the plain truth.  Of the great Roman Catholic proprietors, and of the Catholic prelates, there may be a few, and but a few, who would follow the fortunes of England at all events:  there is another set of men who, thoroughly detesting this country, have too much property and too much character to lose, not to wait for some very favourable event before they show themselves; but the great mass of Catholic population, upon the slightest appearance of a French force in that country, would rise upon you to a man.  It is the most mistaken policy to conceal the plain truth.  There is no loyalty among the Catholics:  they detest you as their worst oppressors, and they will continue to detest you till you remove the cause of their hatred.  It is in your power in six months’ time to produce a total revolution of opinions among this people; and in some future letter I will show you that this is clearly the case.  At present, see what a dreadful state Ireland is in.  The common toast among the low Irish is, the feast of the passover.  Some allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately acted at Dublin, produced thunders of applause from the pit and the galleries; and a politician should not be inattentive to the public feelings expressed in theatres.  Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish:  he has no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his own public emoluments.  An Irish peasant fills the barrel of his gun full of tow dipped in oil, butters up the lock, buries it in a bog, and allows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at pleasure.  Be just and kind to the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them; rescue them from the degraded servitude in which they are held by a handful of their own countrymen, and you will add four millions of brave and affectionate men to your strength.  Nightly visits, Protestant inspectors, licenses to possess a pistol, or a knife and fork, the odious vigour of the evangelical Perceval—­acts of Parliament, drawn up by some English attorney, to save you from the hatred of four millions of people—­the guarding yourselves from universal disaffection by a police; a confidence in the little cunning of Bow Street, when you might rest your security upon the eternal basis of the best feelings:  this is the meanness and madness to which nations are reduced when they lose sight of the first elements of justice, without which a country can be no more secure than it can be healthy without air.  I sicken at such policy and such men.  The fact is, the Ministers know nothing about the present state of Ireland; Mr. Perceval sees a few clergymen, Lord Castlereagh a few general officers, who take care, of course, to report