If a gentleman chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds of
gunpowder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter of my roof, I may
at least be permitted to exclude him from the seat next to the
fire."[49] And in relation to the year 1825, when Scott visited
Ireland, Mr. Lockhart writes, "He on all occasions expressed manfully
his belief that the best thing for Ireland would have been never to
relax the strictly _political_ enactments of the penal laws, however
harsh these might appear. Had they been kept in vigour for another
half-century, it was his conviction that Popery would have been all
but extinguished in Ireland. But he thought that after admitting
Romanists to the elective franchise, it was a vain notion that they
could be permanently or advantageously deterred from using that
franchise in favour of those of their own persuasion."
In his diary in 1829 he puts the same view still more strongly:--"I
cannot get myself to feel at all anxious about the Catholic question.
I cannot see the use of fighting about the platter, when you have let
them snatch the meat off it.
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