of a little money, than to preserve
enough of the ostensible appointment in the hands of the Pope to
satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination
remained with the Crown. But, as I have before said, the moment the
very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to
common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the
barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.

Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic
religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human
beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth, and intelligence, who,
if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the power of
France, and if once wrested from their alliance with England, would in
three years render its existence as an independent nation absolutely
impossible. You speak of danger to the Establishment: I request to
know when the Establishment was ever so much in danger as when Hoche
was in Bantry Bay, and whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts
of the Jesuits, were half so terrible? Mr. Perceval and his parsons
forget all this, in their horror lest twelve or fourteen old women may
be converted to holy water and Catholic nonsense. They never see that,
while they are saving these venerable ladies from perdition, Ireland
may be lost, England broken down, and the Protestant Church, with all
its deans, prebendaries, Percevals, and Rennels, be swept into the
vortex of oblivion.

Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me again the name of Dr.
Duigenan. I have been in every corner of Ireland, and have studied its
present strength and condition with no common labour. Be assured
Ireland does not contain at this moment less than five millions of
people. There were returned in the year 1791 to the hearth tax 701,000
houses, and there is no kind of question that there were about 50,000
houses omitted in that return. Taking, however, only the number
returned for the tax, and allowing the average of six to a house (a
very small average for a potato-fed people), this brings the
population to 4,200,000 people in the year 1791: and it can be shown
from the clearest evidence (and Mr. Newenham in his book shows it),
that Ireland for the last fifty years has increased in its population
at the rate of 50 or 60,000 per annum; which leaves the present
population of Ireland at about five millions, after every possible
deduction for _existing circumstances, just