--
"Look at human nature. Your boy Joel is to be brought up to the Bar:
has Mrs. Plymley the slightest doubt of his being Chancellor? Do not
his two shrivelled aunts live in the certainty of seeing him in that
situation, and of cutting-out with their own hands his equity
habiliments? And I could name a certain Minister of the Gospel who
does not, in the bottom of his heart, much differ from these opinions.
Do you think that the fathers and mothers of the holy Catholic church
are not as absurd as Protestant papas and mammas? The probability I
admit to be, in each case, that the sweet little blockhead will in
fact never get a brief. But I venture to say that there is not a
parent from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay, who does not conceive
that his child is the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and that
nothing short of positive law could prevent his own dear, pre-eminent
Paddy from rising to the highest honours of the State. So with the
army, and Parliament. In fact, few are excluded; but, in imagination,
all. You keep twenty or thirty Catholics out, and lose the affections
of four millions."
And then Peter turns to the war-cry of No Popery, which had been so
vigorously and successfully raised at the General Election of 1807, and
derides the loyal indignation then directed against the Ministers who had
the heart to worry George III.
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