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Peter Plymley's Letters, and selected essays by Sydney Smith
page 97 of 166 (58%)
people live under a government where antimonial powders cannot be
procured? Will they bear the loss of mercury? "There's the rub."
Depend upon it, the absence of the materia medica will soon bring
them to their senses, and the cry of Bourbon and bolus burst forth
from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.

You ask me for any precedent in our history where the oath of
supremacy has been dispensed with. It was dispensed with to the
Catholics of Canada in 1774. They are only required to take a
simple oath of allegiance. The same, I believe, was the case in
Corsica. The reason of such exemption was obvious; you could not
possibly have retained either of these countries without it. And
what did it signify, whether you retained them or not? In cases
where you might have been foolish without peril you were wise; when
nonsense and bigotry threaten you with destruction, it is impossible
to bring you back to the alphabet of justice and common sense. If
men are to be fools, I would rather they were fools in little
matters than in great; dulness turned up with temerity is a livery
all the worse for the facings; and the most tremendous of all things
is the magnanimity of the dunce.

It is not by any means necessary, as you contend, to repeal the Test
Act if you give relief to the Catholic: what the Catholics ask for
is to be put on a footing with the Protestant Dissenters, which
would be done by repealing that part of the law which compels them
to take the oath of supremacy and to make the declaration against
transubstantiation: they would then come into Parliament as all
other Dissenters are allowed to do, and the penal laws to which they
were exposed for taking office would be suspended every year, as
they have been for this half century past towards Protestant
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