And then Peter disclaims the reproach of unfriendliness to the Established
Church.—

"I love the Church as well as you do; but you totally mistake the nature of an Establishment, when you contend that it ought to be connected with the military and civil careers of every individual in the state. It is quite right that there should be one clergyman in every parish interpreting the Scriptures after a particular manner, ruled by a regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of haycocks and wheat sheaves. When I have laid this foundation for a national religion in the state—when I have placed ten thousand well-educated men in different parts of the kingdom to preach it up, and compelled every one to pay them, whether they hear them or not—I have taken such measures as I know must always procure an immense majority in favour of the Established Church; but I can go no farther. I cannot set up a civil inquisition, and say to one—'You shall not be a butcher, because you are not orthodox'; and prohibit another from brewing, and a third from administering the law, and a fourth from defending the country. If common justice did not prohibit me from such a conduct, common sense would."

Persecution, Peter goes on to say, makes martyrs. Fanatics delight in the feeling that they are persecuted for righteousness' sake; and, the more they are harried, the more tenaciously they cling to their misbeliefs.—

"This is just the effect your disqualifying laws have produced. They have fed Dr. Rees and Dr. Kippis;[41] crowded the congregation of the Old Jewry[42] to suffocation; and enabled every sublapsarian, and supralapsarian, and semipelagian, clergyman to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live with some distant resemblance to the state of a gentleman."

But, says Abraham, the King is bound by his Coronation Oath to resist the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Peter replies—

"Suppose Bonaparte were to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to succeed, after repeated trials, in making an impression upon Ireland, do you think we should bear anything of the impediment of a Coronation Oath? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour such ministers and such unheard-of nonsense, if the most distant prospect existed of conciliating the Catholics by every species even of the most abject concession? And yet, if your argument is good for anything, the Coronation Oath ought to reject, at such a moment, every tendency to conciliation, and to bind Ireland for ever to the Crown of France."

After a cursory reference to Abraham's fears about Popish fires and faggots, and a reminder that "there were as many persons put to death for religious opinions under the mild Elizabeth as under the bloody Mary," Peter concludes with these vigorous sentences—

"You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my country in the hands of a pert London joker[43] and a second-rate lawyer.[44] Of the first, no other good is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses; the second seems to me to have the head of a country parson and the tongue of an Old Bailey barrister. If I could see good measures pursued, I care not who is in power; but I have a passionate love for common justice and for common sense, and I abhor and despise every man who builds up his political fortune upon their ruin."

Abraham's next objection to emancipation appears to have been that a Roman Catholic will not respect an oath. "Why not?" asks Peter in Letter II. "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…. 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."

From Roman Catholics in general, Peter now turns to the Roman Catholics of
Ireland.—