“I am startled at the price of Madoc, not that it is dear compared with other books, but it is too much money; and I vehemently suspect that in consequence, the sale will be just sufficient for the publisher not to lose anything, and for me not to gain anything. What will be its critical reception I cannot anticipate. There is neither metre nor politics to offend any body, and it may pass free for any matter that it contains, unless, indeed, some wiseacre should suspect me of favouring the Roman Catholic religion.
“And this catch-word leads me to the great po-
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 323 |
“You will laugh at me, but I believe there is more
need to check Popery in England than to encourage it in Ireland. It was highly
proper to let the immigrant monastics associate together here, and live in
their old customs; but it is not proper to let them continue their
establishments, nor proper that the children of Protestant parents should be
inveigled into nunneries. You will tell me their vows are not binding in
England; but they are binding in foro
conscientiæ; and, believe me, whatever romances have
related of the artifices of the Romish priesthood, does not and cannot exceed
the truth. This, by God’s blessing, I will one day prove irrefragably to
the world. The Protestant Dissenters will die away. Destroy the Test Act and
you kill them. They affect to appeal wholly to reason, and bewilder themselves
in the miserable snare of materialism. Besides, their creed is not reasonable;
it is a vile mingle mangle which a Catholic may well laugh at. But Catholicism
having survived the first flood of reformation, will stand, perhaps, to the end
of all things. It would yield either to a general
| 324 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 30. |
“Coleridge is coming home full of Mediterranean politics. Oh, for a vigorous administration! but that wish implies so much, that Algernon Sidney suffered for less direct high treason. If I were not otherwise employed, almost I should like to write upon the duty and policy of introducing Christianity into our East Indian possessions, only that it can be done better at the close of the Asiatic part of my History. Unless that policy be adopted, I prophesy that by the year 2000 there will be more remains of the Portuguese than of the English Empire in the East. . . . .
“We go on badly in the East, and badly in the West.
You will see in the Review that I
have been crying out for the Cape. We want a port in the Mediterranean just
now; for if Gibraltar is to be besieged, certainly Lisbon will be shut against
us. Perhaps Tangiers could be recovered; that coast of Africa is again becoming
of importance: but above all things Egypt, Egypt. This country is strong enough
to conquer, and populous enough to colonise;
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 325 |
“God bless you!
