If all these schemes of conciliation were rejected as dangerous and impracticable, there remained of course the time-honoured remedy of Coercion. This had been demanded by Spencer Perceval, when attacking the conciliatory administration of "All the Talents," and it provoked Peter Plymley to a characteristic outburst:—

"I cannot describe the horror and disgust which I felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call for measures of vigour in Ireland. If I lived at Hampstead[56] upon stewed meats and claret; if I walked to church every Sunday morning before eleven young gentlemen of my own begetting, with their faces washed, and their hair pleasingly combed; if the Almighty had blessed me with every earthly comfort—how awfully would I pause before I sent forth the flame and the sword over the cabins of the poor, brave, generous, open-hearted peasants of Ireland! How easy it is to shed human blood! How easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle! How much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind! How difficult it is to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection!"

Letter X. begins with some observations on the Law of Tithe in Ireland. "I submit to your common sense, if it is possible to explain to an Irish peasant upon what principle of justice he is to pay every tenth potato in his little garden to a clergyman in whose religion nobody believes for twenty miles round him, and who has nothing to preach to but bare walls." Let the landowner pay the tithe, and charge the labourer a higher rent. This, Peter seems to think, will meet all the difficulties of the case, and yet not impoverish the Established clergy. And he is more than ever persuaded that the best way to check the predominance of the Roman Church in Ireland is to deliver the Romanists from every species of religious disability. On this theme Peter harps in a vein which, if he were a clergyman writing over his own name, would be justly described as cynical.—

"If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would belong to White's and to Brookes's; would keep race-horses; would walk up and down Pall Mall; be exonerated of his ready money and his constitution; become as totally devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge, and civility, as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall; and return home with a supreme contempt for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan…. The true receipt for preserving the Roman Catholic religion is Mr. Perceval's receipt for destroying it: it is to deprive every rich Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him from the Protestants, and to shut him up in his castle with priests and relics."

However sound this estimate of theological results may be, Abraham thinks that a period of universal war is not the proper time for innovations in the Constitution. This, replies Peter, "is as much as to say that the worst time for making friends is the period when you have made many enemies; that it is the greatest of all errors to stop when you are breathless, and to lie down when you are fatigued."

Abraham, and those who think with him, hold that concession to Roman Catholics ought to be refused, if for no other reason, because King George III. dislikes it. This is an argument which Peter cannot away with. He respects the King as a good man, and holds that loyalty is one of the great instruments of English happiness.—

"But the love of the King may easily become more strong than the love of the Kingdom, and we may lose sight of the public welfare in our exaggerated admiration of him who is appointed to reign only for its promotion and support…. God save the King, you say, warms your heart like the sound of a trumpet. I cannot make use of so violent a metaphor; but I am delighted to hear it, when it is a cry of genuine affection: I am delighted to hear it when they hail not only the individual man, but the outward and living sign of all English blessings. These are noble feelings, and the heart of every good man must go with them; but God save the King, in these times, too often means—God save my pension and my place, God give my sisters an allowance out of the Privy Purse—make me Clerk of the Irons, let me survey the Meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public."

This brings us again to the "sepulchral Spencer Perceval," as he is called in another place, with his enormous emoluments from the public purse, his dream of pacifying Ireland by converting its inhabitants to Protestantism, and his fantastic policy of the Orders in Council.—

"He would bring the French to reason by keeping them without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits—but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a masterpiece of political sagacity."

And now, having exhausted the "Catholic Question" as it presents itself in England and Ireland, Peter Plymley (who has already called attention to the religious liberty established in France) cites the cases of Switzerland and Hungary as illustrating the civil strength of nations free from the legalized animosities of religion. Did Frederick the Great ever refuse the services of a Catholic soldier? There is a Catholic Secretary of State at St. Petersburgh. There was a Greek Patriarch associated with a Vicar-Apostolic in the government of Venice. A Catholic Emperor has entrusted the command of his guard to a Protestant Prince. But what signifies all this to Spencer Perceval? He looks at human nature from the top of Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the sphere of his own vision. And so we reach the conclusion of the whole matter.—