allowance out of the privy purse--make me clerk of the irons, let me
survey the meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's
industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public.

What is it possible to say to such a man as the Gentleman of
Hampstead, who really believes it feasible to convert the four
million Irish Catholics to the Protestant religion, and considers
this as the best remedy for the disturbed state of Ireland? It is
not possible to answer such a man with arguments; we must come out
against him with beads and a cowl, and push him into an hermitage.
It is really such trash, that it is an abuse of the privilege of
reasoning to reply to it. Such a project is well worthy the
statesman who would bring the French to reason by keeping them
without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a
nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild
apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered
fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits;
but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to
whom the public safety is intrusted, and whose appointment is
considered by many as a masterpiece of political sagacity. What a
sublime thought, that no purge can now be taken between the Weser
and the Garonne; that the bustling pestle is still, the canorous
mortar mute, and the bowels of mankind locked up for fourteen
degrees of latitude! When, I should be curious to know, were all
the powers of crudity and flatulence fully explained to his
Majesty's ministers? At what period was this great plan of conquest
and constipation fully developed? In whose mind was the idea of
destroying the pride and the plasters of France first engendered?
Without castor oil they might for some months, to be sure, have
carried on a lingering war! but can they do without bark? Will the