and cruel disappointments.  These are a few of many dreadful inconveniences which the Catholics of all ranks suffer from the laws by which they are at present oppressed.  Besides, look at human nature:  what is the history of all professions?  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 particular case, that the sweet little blockhead will in fact never get a brief;—­but I will venture to say 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 you lose the affections of four millions; and, let me tell you, that recent circumstances have by no means tended to diminish in the minds of men that hope of elevation beyond their own rank which is so congenial to our nature:  from pleading for John Roe to taxing John Bull, from jesting for Mr. Pitt and writing in the Anti-Jacobin, to managing the affairs of Europe—­these are leaps which seem to justify the fondest dreams of mothers and of aunts.

I do not say that the disabilities to which the Catholics are exposed amount to such intolerable grievances, that the strength and industry of a nation are overwhelmed by them:  the increasing prosperity of Ireland fully demonstrates to the contrary.  But I repeat again, what I have often stated in the course of our correspondence, that your laws against the Catholics are exactly in that state in which you have neither the benefits of rigour nor of liberality:  every law which prevented the Catholic from gaining strength and wealth is repealed; every law which can irritate remains; if you were determined to insult the Catholics you should have kept them weak; if you resolved to give them strength, you should have ceased to insult them—­at present your conduct is pure, unadulterated folly.

Lord Hawkesbury says, ’We heard nothing about the Catholics till we began to mitigate the laws against them; when we relieved them in part from this oppression they began to be disaffected.’  This is very true; but it proves just what I have said, that you have either done too much or too little; and as there lives not, I hope, upon earth, so depraved a courtier that he would load the Catholics with their ancient chains, what absurdity it is, then, not to render their dispositions friendly, when you leave their arms and legs free!