four; if you had subjected these heretics to very severe civil
privations; if the consequence of such privations were a universal
state of disaffection among that caseous and wrathful people; and if
at the same time you were at war with all the world, how can you
doubt for a moment that I would instantly restore them to a state of
the most complete civil liberty? What matters it under what name
you put the same case? Common sense is not changed by appellations.
I have said how I would act to Ireland, and I would act so to all
the world.

I admit that, to a certain degree, the Government will lose the
affections of the Orangemen by emancipating the Catholics; much
less, however, at present, than three years past. The few men, who
have ill-treated the whole crew, live in constant terror that the
oppressed people will rise upon them and carry the ship into Brest:
--they begin to find that it is a very tiresome thing to sleep every
night with cocked pistols under their pillows, and to breakfast,
dine, and sup with drawn hangers. They suspect that the privilege
of beating and kicking the rest of the sailors is hardly worth all
this anxiety, and that if the ship does ever fall into the hands of
the disaffected, all the cruelties which they have experienced will
be thoroughly remembered and amply repaid. To a short period of
disaffection among the Orangemen I confess I should not much object:
my love of poetical justice does carry me as far as that; one
summer's whipping, only one: the thumb-screw for a short season; a
little light easy torturing between Ladyday and Michaelmas; a short
specimen of Mr. Perceval's rigour. I have malice enough to ask this
slight atonement for the groans and shrieks of the poor Catholics,
unheard by any human tribunal, but registered by the Angel of God
against their Protestant and enlightened oppressors.