scandalous abuse of all principle) for sixty-four years, and not
found it necessary to strike once, is not that the best of all
reasons why the rod should be laid aside? You talk to me of a very
valuable hedge running across your fields which you would not part
with on any account. I go down, expecting to find a limit
impervious to cattle, and highly useful for the preservation of
property; but, to my utter astonishment, I find that the hedge was
cut down half a century ago, and that every year the shoots are
clipped the moment they appear above ground: it appears, upon
further inquiry, that the hedge never ought to have existed at all;
that it originated in the malice of antiquated quarrels, and was cut
down because it subjected you to vast inconvenience, and broke up
your intercourse with a country absolutely necessary to your
existence. If the remains of this hedge serve only to keep up an
irritation in your neighbours, and to remind them of the feuds of
former times, good nature and good sense teach you that you ought to
grub it up, and cast it into the oven. This is the exact state of
these two laws; and yet it is made a great argument against
concession to the Catholics, that it involves their repeal; which is
to say, Do not make me relinquish a folly that will lead to my ruin;
because, if you do, I must give up other follies ten times greater
than this.

I confess, with all our bulwarks and hedges, it mortifies me to the
quick to contrast with our matchless stupidity and inimitable folly
the conduct of Bonaparte upon the subject of religious persecution.
At the moment when we are tearing the crucifixes from the necks of
the Catholics, and washing pious mud from the foreheads of the
Hindoos; at that moment this man is assembling the very Jews at
Paris, and endeavouring to give them stability and importance. I