382 - • ~ STATISTICAL ACCOUiS'T OF THE 



A British military invasion proclaims a kind of fair, whicb 

 is welcome in the West Indies. The variety of things ar- 

 riving for sale, and the wider markets opened to produce, in-^ 

 crease circulation, and raise the value of rentable property. 

 Martinique has had every reason to rejoice even in the tem- 

 porary sway of Great Britain. And so would any Spanish set- 

 tlement. But the Spaniards entertain perhaps as yet some pre- 

 judices against the religion of the English. Irish regiments, 

 with a visible accompaniment of catholic priests, ought there- 

 fore preferably to be sent among Spaniards. Not many years 

 ago, the protestant planters at Grenada, made a conspiracy to 

 pull down the catholic churches in that island. A similar in- 

 tolerance is feared from any other heretical conquest. I be- 

 lieve that the English people are become very tolerant; I 

 never saw an instance of insult offered to the religion of a 

 neighbour ; I never heard a murmur at the state's distributing 

 in Canada its ecclesiastic patronage among catholics. But the 

 government has, nevertheless, not the reputation of being to- 

 lerant; and this is what operates at a distance, and in colonial 

 provinces. The repeated parliamentary refusals of Irish eman- 

 cipation, and the declamatory indignation of the friends of the 

 catholics, are the chief facts which reach the popish clergy 

 of South America. To place ostentatiously a catholic arch- 

 bishop, a domestic pope, in the house of lords, and to employ 

 some Irish missionaries in visiting Guyana, are the expedient 

 preparatory steps for acquiring the entire confidence of the ec- 



