twenty thousand of the lowest of the Catholic people; and the moment
you come to a class of men whose education, honour, and talents seem
to render all mischief less probable, then you see the danger of
employing a Catholic, and cling to your investigating tests and
disabling laws. If you tell me you have enough of members of
Parliament and not enough of militia without the Catholics, I beg
leave to remind you that, by employing the physical force of any
sect at the same time when you leave them in a state of utter
disaffection, you are not adding strength to your armies, but
weakness and ruin. If you want the vigour of their common people,
you must not disgrace their nobility and insult their priesthood.

I thought that the terror of the Pope had been confined to the
limits of the nursery, and merely employed as a means to induce
young master to enter into his small-clothes with greater speed and
to eat his breakfast with greater attention to decorum. For these
purposes the name of the Pope is admirable; but why push it beyond?
Why not leave to Lord Hawkesbury all further enumeration of the
Pope's powers? For a whole century you have been exposed to the
enmity of France, and your succession was disputed in two
rebellions: what could the Pope do at the period when there was a
serious struggle whether England should be Protestant or Catholic,
and when the issue was completely doubtful? Could the Pope induce
the Irish to rise in 1715? Could he induce them to rise in 1745?
You had no Catholic enemy when half this island was in arms; and
what did the Pope attempt in the last rebellion in Ireland? But if
he had as much power over the minds of the Irish as Mr. Wilberforce
has over the mind of a young Methodist converted the preceding
quarter, is this a reason why we are to disgust men who may be acted
upon in such a manner by a foreign power? or is it not an additional