“Your letter comes in aid of a purpose which I had entertained, of putting together what I have said upon the Catholic question in the Edinburgh Annual Register, recasting it, and publishing it, with some needful additions, in the form of a pamphlet. About a week ago, I put down in my note-book the first sketch of an arrangement, and actually began to compose what I have to say, as a letter to some M.P.; not that it was meant to be addressed to any individual one; but having argued with Wilberforce and Sir Thomas Acland, upon the subject, I knew in what light they considered it. The course which affairs have taken in Ireland will, probably, have the good effect of quashing the question for this year; and in that hope I am willing to postpone my own purpose till a season which may be more convenient to myself, and when aid of this kind may be more needed.
| Ætat. 48. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 137 |
“The arguments lie in a nutshell. The restraints which exclude the Catholics from political power are not the cause of the perpetual disorder in Ireland; their removal, therefore, cannot be the cure. Suppose the question carried, two others grow from it, like two heads from the hydra’s neck, when one is amputated:—a Catholic establishment for Ireland, at which Irish Catholics must aim, and which those who desire rebellion and separation will promote,—a rebellion must be the sure consequence of agitating this. The people of Ireland care nothing for emancipation,—why should they? but make it a question for restoring the Catholic church, and they will enter into it as zealously as ever our ancestors did into a crusade.
“The other question arises at home, and brings with it worse consequences than anything which can happen among the potatoes. The repeal of the Test Act will be demanded, and must be granted. Immediately the Dissenters will get into the corporations everywhere. Their members will be returned; men as hostile to the Church and to the monarchy as ever were the Puritans of Charles’s age. The church property will be attacked in Parliament, as it is now at mob-meetings, and in radical newspapers; reform in Parliament will be carried; and then farewell, a long farewell, to all our greatness.
“Our constitution consists of Church and State, and it
is an absurdity in politics to give those persons power in the State, whose duty it is to subvert the Church. This argument is unanswerable. I am in
| 138 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 48. |
