When it was proposed to
raise this grant from L8000 to L13,000, its present amount, this sum
was objected to by that most indulgent of Christians, Mr. Spencer
Perceval, as enormous; he himself having secured for his own eating
and drinking, and the eating and drinking of the Master and Miss
Percevals, the reversionary sum of L21,000 a year of the public
money,[48] and having just failed in a desperate and rapacious attempt
to secure to himself for life the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster;
and the best of it is, that this Minister, after abusing his
predecessors for their impious bounty to the Catholics, has found
himself compelled, from the apprehension of immediate danger, to grant
the sum in question."
Abraham now goes on to plead that our present relations with the Roman
Catholics date from the Revolution of 1688, and that laws passed at that
period are unalterable. To this Peter replies:--
"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it
produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool....
Besides, it happens that, to the principal incapacities under which
the Irish suffer, they were subjected _after_ that great and
glorious Revolution, to which we are indebted for so many
blessings.... The Catholics were not excluded from the Irish House of
Commons, or military commands, before the 3rd and 4th of William and
Mary, and the 1st and 2nd of Queen Anne.
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