being Dissenters. The Catholics could not bring into Parliament
half the number of the Scotch members; and yet one exclusion is of
such immense importance, because it has taken place; and the other
no human being thinks of, because no one is accustomed to it. I
have often thought, if the WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS had excluded all
persons with red hair from the House of Commons, of the throes and
convulsions it would occasion to restore them to their natural
rights. What mobs and riots would it produce! To what infinite
abuse and obloquy would the capillary patriot be exposed; what
wormwood would distil from Mr. Perceval, what froth would drop from
Mr. Canning; how (I will not say MY, but OUR Lord Hawkesbury, for he
belongs to us all)--how our Lord Hawkesbury would work away about
the hair of King William and Lord Somers, and the authors of the
great and glorious Revolution; how Lord Eldon would appeal to the
Deity and his own virtues, and to the hair of his children: some
would say that red-haired men were superstitious; some would prove
they were atheists; they would be petitioned against as the friends
of slavery, and the advocates for revolt; in short, such a corruptor
of the heart and understanding is the spirit of persecution, that
these unfortunate people (conspired against by their fellow-subjects
of every complexion), if they did not emigrate to countries where
hair of another colour was persecuted, would be driven to the
falsehood of perukes, or the hypocrisy of the Tricosian fluid.

As for the dangers of the Church (in spite of the staggering events
which have lately taken place), I have not yet entirely lost my
confidence in the power of common sense, and I believe the Church to
be in no danger at all; but if it is, that danger is not from the
Catholics, but from the Methodists, and from that patent
Christianity which has been for some time manufacturing at Clapham,