It
is true that time, experience, and that weariness which attends even the
exercise of barbarity, have taught you to flog a little more gently; but
still you continue to lay on the lash, and will so continue, till
perhaps the rod may be wrested from your hands, and applied to the backs
of yourselves and your posterity.
It was said by somebody in a former debate, (I forget by whom, and am
not very anxious to remember,) if the Catholics are emancipated, why not
the Jews? If this sentiment was dictated by compassion for the Jews, it
might deserve attention, but as a sneer against the Catholic, what is it
but the language of Shylock transferred from his daughter's marriage to
Catholic emancipation:
"Would any of the tribe of Barabbas
Should have it rather than a Christian!"
I presume a Catholic is a Christian, even in the opinion of him whose
taste only can be called in question for his preference of the Jews.
It is a remark often quoted of Dr. Johnson, (whom I take to be almost as
good authority as the gentle apostle of intolerance, Dr. Duigenan,) that
he who could entertain serious apprehensions of danger to the church in
these times, would have "cried fire in the deluge." This is more than a
metaphor; for a remnant of these antediluvians appear actually to have
come down to us, with fire in their mouths and water in their brains, to
disturb and perplex mankind with their whimsical outcries. And as it is
an infallible symptom of that distressing malady with which I conceive
them to be afflicted (so any doctor will inform your Lordships), for the
unhappy invalids to perceive a flame perpetually flashing before their
eyes, particularly when their eyes are shut (as those of the persons to
whom I allude have long been), it is impossible to convince these poor
creatures that the fire against which they are perpetually warning us
and themselves is nothing but an 'ignis fatuus' of their own drivelling
imaginations.
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