(1771-1845.)

LV.  THE LETTERS OF PETER PLYMLEY—­ON “NO POPERY”.

In 1807 the Letters of Peter Plymley to his brother Abraham on the subject of the Irish Catholics were published.  “The letters”, as Professor Henry Morley says, “fell like sparks on a heap of gunpowder.  All London, and soon all England, were alive to the sound reason recommended by a lively wit.”  The example of his satiric force and sarcastic ratiocination cited below is the Second Letter in the Series.

DEAR ABRAHAM,

The Catholic not respect an oath! why not?  What upon earth has kept him out of Parliament, or excluded him from all the offices whence he is excluded, but his respect for oaths?  There is no law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament.  There could be no such law; because it is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of any man’s mind.  Suppose it were in contemplation to exclude all men from certain offices who contended for the legality of taking tithes:  the only mode of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess would be to tender you an oath “against that damnable doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, abstract, appropriate, subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck”, &c., and every other animal that ever existed, which of course the lawyers would take care to enumerate.  Now this oath I am sure you would rather die than take; and so the Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of his religion!  The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is that he does not respect oaths.  Then why subject him to the test of oaths?  The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them.  Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything in favour of a dissenter.

I will not dispute with you whether the Pope be or be not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon.  I hope it is not so; because I am afraid it will induce His Majesty’s Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce several severe bills against popery, if that is the case; and though he will have the decency to appoint a previous committee of inquiry as to the fact, the committee will be garbled, and the report inflammatory.  Leaving this to be settled as he pleases to settle it, I wish to inform you, that, previously to the bill last passed in favour of the Catholics, at the suggestion of Mr. Pitt, and for his satisfaction, the opinions of six of the most celebrated of the foreign Catholic universities were taken as to the right of the Pope to interfere in the temporal concerns of any country.  The answer cannot possibly leave the shadow of a doubt, even in the mind of Baron Maseres; and Dr. Rennel would be compelled to admit it, if three Bishops lay dead at the very moment the question were put to him.  To this answer might be added also the solemn declaration and signature of all the Catholics in Great Britain.