Chapter VIII: Letter VI: begins with one of those vivacious apologues in which Sydney

Smith excelled. Abraham Plymley has been talking of the concessions which Roman Catholics hare already received, and their shameless ingratitude in asking for more. To the cry of ingratitude Peter thus replies.--There is a village, he says, in which, once a year, the inhabitants sit down to a dinner provided at the common expense. A hundred years ago the inhabitants of three of the streets seized the inhabitants of the fourth street, bound them hand and foot, laid them on their backs, and compelled them to look on while the majority were stuffing themselves with beef and beer--and this, although they had contributed an equal quota to the expense. Next year the same assault was perpetrated. It soon grew into a custom; and, as years went on, the village came to look on the annual act of tyranny as the most sacred of its institutions. Unfortunately, however, for the tyrannical majority, the inhabitants of the persecuted street increased in numbers, determination, and public spirit. They murmured, protested, and resisted, till the oppressors, "more afraid of injustice, were now disposed to be just." On the next occasion of the annual dinner, the victims were unbound. The year after, they were allowed to sit upright. Then they got a bit of bread and a glass of water. Finally, after a long series of small concessions, they grew so bold as to ask that they might sit down at the bottom of the table, and feast with their grander neighbours. Forthwith, a general cry of shame and scandal.--

"Ten years ago, were you not laid upon your backs? Don't you remember
what a great thing you thought it to get a piece of bread? How
thankful you were for cheese-parings? Have you forgotten that
memorable æra, when the lord of the manor interfered to obtain for you
a slice of the public pudding? And now, with an audacity only equalled
by your ingratitude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and
forks, and to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that you may
sit down to table with the rest, and be indulged even with beef and
beer. There are not more than half a dozen dishes which we have
reserved for ourselves; the rest has been thrown open to you in the
utmost profusion; you have potatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops
in the pan, and delicious toast-and-water, in incredible quantities.
Beef, mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours; and, if you were not the
most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, you would never think
of aspiring to enjoy them."

Is not this, says Peter, the very nonsense and the very insult which you daily practise on the Roman Catholics? I, though I am an inhabitant of the village and live in one of the three favoured streets, have retained some sense of justice, and I most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to persevere in their just demands, till they are admitted to their just share of a dinner for which they pay as much as the others.

"And, if they see a little attenuated lawyer[50] squabbling at the
head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and
to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding which he has
filched from the public feasts, to carry home to his wife and
children."

Before ending his letter, Peter has a fling at the Home Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, "the lesser of the two Jenkinsons."[51] Lord Hawkesbury has said that "nothing is to be granted to the Catholics from fear." Why not, asks Peter, if the thing demanded is just?

"The only true way to make the mass of mankind see the beauty of
justice is by showing them in pretty plain terms the consequences of
injustice. If any body of French troops land in Ireland, the whole
population of that country will rise against you to a man, and you
could not possibly survive such an event three years. Such, from the
bottom of my heart, do I believe to be the present state of that
country; and so little does it appear to me to be impolitic and
unstatesmanlike to concede anything to such a danger, that if the
Catholics, in addition to their present just demands, were to petition
for the perpetual removal of the said Lord Hawkesbury from his
Majesty's councils, I think the prayer of the petition should be
instantly complied with. Canning's crocodile tears should not move me;
the hoops of the Maids of Honour should not hide him. I would tear him
from the banisters of the Back Stairs, and plunge him in the fishy
fumes of the dirtiest of all his Cinque Ports."[52]