On the subject of Catholic Emancipation he took a
peculiar view. As he justly said, he hated bigotry, and would have
left the Catholics quite alone, but for the great claims of their
creed to interfere with political life. And even so, when the penal
laws were once abolished, he would have abolished also the
representative disabilities, as quite useless, as well as very
irritating when the iron system of effective repression had ceased.
But he disapproved of the abolition of the political parts of the
penal laws. He thought they would have stamped out Roman Catholicism;
and whether that were just or unjust, he thought it would have been a
great national service. "As for Catholic Emancipation," he wrote to
Southey in 1807, "I am not, God knows, a bigot in religious matters,
nor a friend to persecution; but if a particular set of religionists
are _ipso facto_ connected with foreign politics, and placed under the
spiritual direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dexterity
and activity are increased by the rules which detach them from the
rest of the world--I humbly think that we may be excused from
entrusting to them those places in the State where the influence of
such a clergy, who act under the direction of a passive tool of our
worst foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal consequences.
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