Burke, Edmund

rebuffing Hippisley's repeated suggestion that the Pope should call for the loyalty of Irish Catholics to the crown, complaining of false claims that unrest in Ireland originated in the Catholic community, asserting that discontent had its source in radical ideas coming from France, and that "Jacobinised Catholicks ... pay very little or no regard to his Holiness" ("...Jacobins, in reality, though they happen to remain outwardly in there [sic] Communions in which they are bred, are not Christians of any description..."), also expressing his pessimism about European affairs following the fall of Toulon, 3 pages, 4to, Beaconsfield, 8 January 1794, docketed by recipient, minor discolouration at margins of first page

[with:] "Titus Vispasianus", address "To the Roman Catholics of Meath", scribal copy, 4 pages, 4to, dated 22 December 1780; contemporary press cuttings relating to Burke and an engraved portrait, laid down on two folio sheets 

Pierse Loftus (1877-1956), MP, Chairman of The Burke Club

Correspondence of Edmund Burke: Volume 7, eds Marshall and Woods (Cambridge, 1968), pp.512-13

"...Where I cannot help things I shall suppress my lamentations about them. Europe must grow wise, before she can hope to be safe or prosperous..."

John Coxe Hippisley (1745-1825) was the semi-official British representative at the court of Pope Pius VI from 1793 to 1795. He suggested papal intervention in response to reports circulating in Rome that the Irish Catholics had come out in revolt. Burke, a lifelong defender of Irish Catholics and their rights, had first rejected this suggestion in a letter of 3 October 1793. The United Irishmen, around whom this unrest coalesced, were primarily members of the Presbyterian community.