But it
is not all religion; it is, in great part, the narrow and exclusive
spirit which delights to keep the common blessings of sun and air and
freedom from other human beings. "Your religion has always been
degraded; you are in the dust, and I will take care you never rise
again. I should enjoy less the possession of an earthly good by every
additional person to whom it was extended." You may not be aware of it
yourself, most reverend Abraham, but you deny their freedom to the
Catholics upon the same principle that Sarah, your wife, refuses to
give the receipt for a ham or a gooseberry dumpling: she values her
receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because
they remind her that her neighbours want it:--a feeling laughable in a
priestess, shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings
of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of
religious freedom.
You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the present prime
minister. Grant you all that you write--I say, I fear he will ruin
Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interest
of his country: and then you tell me, he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval,
and kind to the Master Percevals! These are, undoubtedly, the first
qualifications to be looked to in a time of the most serious public
danger; but somehow or another (if public and private virtues must
always be incompatible), I should prefer that he destroyed the domestic
happiness of Wood or Cockell, owed for the veal of the preceding year,
whipped his boys, and saved his country.
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