What portion of popularity may have fallen to the share of my noble friends (if such I may presume to call them), I shall not pretend to ascertain; but that of his Majesty’s ministers it were vain to deny.  It is, to be sure, a little like the wind, “no one knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth,” but they feel it, they enjoy it, they boast of it.  Indeed, modest and unostentatious as they are, to what part of the kingdom, even the most remote, can they flee to avoid the triumph which pursues them?  If they plunge into the midland counties, there will they be greeted by the manufacturers, with spurned petitions in their hands, and those halters round their necks recently voted in their behalf, imploring blessings on the heads of those who so simply, yet ingeniously, contrived to remove them from their miseries in this to a better world.  If they journey on to Scotland, from Glasgow to Johnny Groats, every where will they receive similar marks of approbation.  If they take a trip from Portpatrick to Donaghadee, there will they rush at once into the embraces of four Catholic millions, to whom their vote of this night is about to endear them for ever.  When they return to the metropolis, if they can pass under Temple Bar without unpleasant sensations at the sight of the greedy niches over that ominous gateway, they cannot escape the acclamations of the livery, and the more tremulous, but not less sincere, applause, the blessings, “not loud but deep,” of bankrupt merchants and doubting stock-holders.  If they look to the army, what wreaths, not of laurel, but of nightshade, are preparing for the heroes of Walcheren.  It is true, there are few living deponents left to testify to their merits on that occasion; but a “cloud of witnesses” are gone above from that gallant army which they so generously and piously despatched, to recruit the “noble army of martyrs.”

What if in the course of this triumphal career (in which they will gather as many pebbles as Caligula’s army did on a similar triumph, the prototype of their own,) they do not perceive any of those memorials which a grateful people erect in honour of their benefactors; what although not even a sign-post will condescend to depose the Saracen’s head in favour of the likeness of the conquerors of Walcheren, they will not want a picture who can always have a caricature; or regret the omission of a statue who will so often see themselves exalted in effigy.  But their popularity is not limited to the narrow bounds of an island; there are other countries where their measures, and above all, their conduct to the Catholics, must render them preeminently popular.  If they are beloved here, in France they must be adored.  There is no measure more repugnant to the designs and feelings of Bonaparte than Catholic emancipation; no line of conduct more propitious to his projects, than that which has been pursued, is pursuing, and, I fear, will be pursued, towards Ireland.  What is England without Ireland, and what is Ireland without the Catholics?