410 CAULFIELD. yearly tenants, privileges which served to keep them in good humour, but which might be abrogated at the discretion of parliament, so that proscription was still suspended over their heads, like the sword of Dionysius, quamdiù se bene gesserint, i. e. during good behaviour. But the mutual religious antipathy between them and the catholics, who viewed them as enemies of a deeper blue than the high church, was a clencher for the system of divide et impera. To the system of the penal laws, although many liberal and enlightened men in and out of parliament were long hostile, yet the great majority of the protestants retained the prejudices absorbed with their mother's milk. Lord Char lemont himself, even with all his education, liberality, and travelled experience in other countries, was never friendly to a total, and certainly not to a rapid, abrogation of the system, although his most intimate and confidential friends were the strenuous advocates for the total abolition. But even the catholics, from the knowledge of his character, respected his prejudices, and considered him a zealous and conscientious friend to his country. Bat though he resisted every motion of influence or aggrandisement to the wealthier catholic, he was desirous to alleviate the suffer- ings of the peasantry; and, in 1768, he had brought a bill into the house of lords, to enable the poor labourer to take a lease for ninety years of so much ground as might serve him for a cottage and potatoe garden:-which, however, was then rejected. This measure was frequently moved in the commons, and as often failed. In 1772 he tried it again in the lords, and during some thin atten- dances, succeeded as far as the second reading and com- mittal: -but, to use his lordship's own language, " the trumpet of bigotry had sounded the alarm; to give the wretched cottager ส permanent interest in his miserable habitation was said to be an infringement on the penal code, which threatened the destruction of church and state! A cry was raised that the protestant interest was in danger. The lords were summoned, the house was crouded
