[Theobald McKenna], An Abstract of the Arguments on the Catholic Question (London: Printed by Cox, Son, and Baylis, 1805)

The case of the Irish Catholics, one of the most comprehensive designations in our Empire, comes before a Tribunal¹ and a Public, who have not hitherto been called upon to discuss it, and to whom it may be therefore supposed not to be familiar. The press of this metropolis presents, indeed, instructors and guides; but they are of that description, who have long misled the Empire, and their efforts are at present so directed, as not to allow an option of passing their arguments in silence. All the clumsy invectives, the hyperbolical conjectures, the fictitious apprehension of the Pope’s overshadowing power; all the legends with which a prejudice, insatiably vindictive, had glutted itself; the gleanings of garrulous anility,² which for some / years back have abused the patience and insulted the feelings of the Sister Nation; all are ostentatiously brought forth, and sedulously pressed upon the British Public. If these matters at the present day be true, they must continue so to be eternally, and bind the country and the Catholics to the most remote posterity. The persons whose interference and mode of reasoning have excited some indignation, and rendered necessary a fair exposition of the matter in question, have not restricted themselves to temporary convenience, but launch into what they suppose to be the nature of the case, and allege to be its merits: it remains then for him, who thinks that the means of augmenting the resources, and improving the strength of the Empire, consist in removing irritation, in drawing closer the bonds of harmony, in offering incentives to exertion, in extinguishing discord, in identifying the people with their government, and enlisting the passions and feelings of the human heart in the cause of established order and the constitution: it remains for him to communicate those observations, which near and local opportunities have enabled him to 298make, and thus contribute, so, far as he is able, to procure a judgment favourable to his / country, from legislative bodies, whose claims to the esteem and approbation of mankind seldom have been equalled, and from a people honourable and gallant, ingenuous and intelligent, who may be misled but are incapable of deliberate injustice. There certainly exist upon this subject honest and candid prepossessions, which I necessarily must respect, and with which I will reason, because I do respect them. I conceive these conclusions to be founded in misapprehension, and erroneous: I shall, therefore, with every possible deference, lay down in the plainest and most simple form, and in the narrowest compass, the scale of argument which produced my own conviction.