"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."