Chapter IX: Letter VII: begins with a rebuke to brother Abraham for placing all his

hopes for the salvation of England in the "discretion" and "sound sense" of Mr. Secretary Canning.--

"To call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the
affairs of a great nation, seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly
were to teach bees to make honey. That he is an extraordinary writer
of small poetry, and a diner-out of the highest lustre, I do most
readily admit.... The Foreign Secretary is a gentleman--a respectable
as well as a highly agreeable man in private life; but you may as well
feed me with decayed potatoes as console me for the miseries of
Ireland by the resources of his 'sense' and his 'discretion.' It is
only the public situation which this gentleman holds that entitles me
or induces me to say so much about him. He is a fly in amber: nobody
cares about the fly; the only question is, How the devil did it get
there? Nor do I attack him from the love of glory, but from the love
of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it
should flood a province."

Under the rule of Canning and his colleagues, Ireland has become utterly disloyal.--

"The great mass of the Catholic population, upon the slightest
appearance of a French force in that country, would rise upon you to a
man. There is no loyalty among the Catholics: they detest you as their
worst oppressors, and they will continue to detest you till you remove
the cause of their hatred. It is in your power in six months' time to
produce a total revolution of opinions among these people.... At
present see what a dreadful state Ireland is in! The common toast
among the low Irish is, 'The Feast of the _Pass-over_.' Some
allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately acted at Dublin, produced
thunders of applause from the pit and the galleries; and _a
politician should not be inattentive to the public feelings expressed
in theatres_. Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish. He has
no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his own
public emoluments. An Irish peasant fills the barrel of his gun full
of tow dipped in oil, butters the lock, buries it in a bog, and allows
the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at pleasure. Be just and
kind to the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them; rescue them from
the degraded servitude in which they are held by an handful of their
own countrymen; and you will add four millions of brave and
affectionate men to your strength."

But instead of these wise remedies, Mr. Secretary Canning only offers the Irish people his incessant, unseasonable, and sometimes indecent jokes.--

"He jokes upon neutral flags and frauds, jokes upon Irish rebels,
jokes upon northern and western and southern foes, and gives himself
no trouble upon any subject.... And this is the Secretary whose
genius, in the estimation of brother Abraham, is to extinguish the
genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliath smitten by
a stripling; Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman. Tremble, thou great
Gaul, from whose head an armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of
danger; tremble, thou scourge of God, for a pleasant man is come out
against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes."

Abraham comforts himself with his reflection that Bonaparte has no ships or sailors. But, says Peter, there are quite enough remains of the navies of France, Spain, Holland, and Denmark, for such a short excursion as would be needed for the capture of Ireland. And Bonaparte can increase his forces every day. With all Europe at his feet, he can get timber and stores and men to any conceivable amount. "He is at present the despotic monarch of above twenty thousand miles of sea-coast, and yet you suppose he cannot procure sailors for the invasion of Ireland." Ireland is still the burden of the song. Conciliate Ireland and all will be well. Tyrannize over her and we are undone.

"If Ireland was friendly, we might equally set at defiance the talents
of Bonaparte and the blunders of his rival Mr. Canning: we could then
support the ruinous and silly bustle of our useless expeditions, and
the almost incredible ignorance of our commercial Orders in
Council.[53] Let the present administration give up but this one
point, and there is nothing which I would not consent to grant them.
Perceval should have full liberty to insult the tomb of Mr. Fox, and
to torment every eminent Dissenter in Great Britain. Lord Camden
should have large boxes of plums; Mr. Rose receive permission to
prefix to his name the appellation of Virtuous; and to the Viscount
Castlereagh a round sum of ready money shall be well and truly paid
into his hand.[54] Lastly, what remains to Mr. George Canning, but
that he ride up and down Pall Mall glorious upon a white horse, and
that they cry out before him, 'Thus shall it be done to the statesman
who hath written _The Needy Knife-Grinder_'?"