512 Letters on Affairs iti general. [MAY, 



to the degradation of serving under a man without ancestors, and they are 

 in consequence left upon the strand friendless and unpiticd, whilst he is 

 carried with a flowing tide into the harbour of royal and popular appro- 

 bation. Still he is surrounded with appalling difficulties, and, for my own 

 part, I cannot conceive how he will be able to form an effective permanent 

 administration either with or without the aid of whiggery.* If the whigs 

 join him, there must be, as in the case of Fox arid Lord North, such a 

 sacrifice of principle on one side or the other, as would deprive the coalition 

 ministry of all public confidence, inasmuch as they are pledged over and 

 over again to support many of the measures, which he is quite as strongly 

 pledged to oppose and counteract; and if they do not join him, his adver- 

 saries will, I am afraid, be too strong for him to resist ; and he will there- 

 fore be obliged, either to try the chance of another general election, or to 

 resign into their hands the premiership, which he has so unexpectedly 

 wrested from their clutch. As to the failure of an administration purely 

 Catholic at this moment, there cannot be the slightest doubt, except in Ire- 

 land. The last division on the Catholic question is sufficient to convince 

 any man of cool judgment of the loss which the cause of emancipation 

 sustained by the late elections ; and T am sure that nothing has occurred 

 since they were holden to diminish, though many circumstances have 

 occurred to aggravate the reluctance which the people of England feel to 

 grant that measure of expediency and justice. 



I am sorry to observe, from an announcement in the Chronicle, that the 

 forthcoming Number of the Edinburgh Review, contains an article on the 

 Catholic Question, in which the writer gravely maintains, "that it is the 

 bounden duty of the Irish Catholics to bully the English government and 

 people, as they will never grant Emancipation unless they are bullied into 

 it. As far as the "sensitive" people of Ireland are concerned, this is a 

 dangerous doctrine to inculcate, on account of its intimate connection with 

 outrage and bloodshed, with insurrection and rebellion ; and, as far as the 

 high-spirited people of England are concerned, it is an erroneous doctrine, 

 contradicted by that notorious disregard of personal consequences, which 

 induced Voltaire to liken them to their own mastiffs, which run blindly on 

 lions, and get their heads crushed for their pains. The Catholics of Ireland 

 may depend upon it, that we shall never yield to force that which we 

 refuse to solicitation ; and that their prospect of success is removed to an 

 infinite distance, if they seek to work upon our fears, instead of aiming to 

 convince our reason. We have the consciousness of feeling, and they ought 

 to have the prudent caution of recollecting, that in the last great struggle 

 between us at the revolution, we reduced them to a slavery so abject, as to 

 dishonour the conqueror more than the conquered, though they had been, 

 for some time previously, in almost undisputed possession of all the resour- 

 ces of Ireland, and were supported by the unbroken power of Louis the 

 XlVth., and we were contending with a disappointed faction, arid discon- 



* Mr. Tierney declared, on the 6th of February, 1821, amid the cheers of the Whigs, 

 in tie House of Commons, that there were THRKE conditions, without which he would 

 never accept of office the first was, that Catholic Emancipation should be granted ; the 

 second, that the six acts all of which bave now expired, except that which punishes with 

 transportation a man twice convicted of libel should be repealed ; and the third, that 

 Parliamentary Reform, "which he declared to be the object nearest to his hearf," should 

 be immediately carried into execution. Mr. Canning stands pledged to oppose Parlia- 

 mentary Reform, in every shape, and cannot well agree to the repeal of the Libel Act, 

 since, by the manner in which he undertook the defence of it, he identified himself with it 

 at the time of its proposal. Mr. Brougham's ooinion of Mr. Canning's qualifications, to 

 uct as first minister of this country, is on record, ana can never be 



