g can be more reasonable than to expect that a
Catholic priest should starve to death, genteelly and pleasantly, for
the good of the Protestant religion; but is it equally reasonable to
expect that he should do so for the Protestant pews, and Protestant
brick and mortar? On an Irish Sabbath the bell of a neat parish
church often summons to church only the parson and an occasionally
conforming clerk; while, two hundred yards off, a thousand Catholics
are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and pelted by all the
storms of heaven. Can anything be more distressing than to see a
venerable man pouring forth sublime truths in tattered breeches, and
depending for his food upon the little offal he gets from his
parishioners? I venerate a human being who starves for his principles,
let them be what they may; but starving for anything is not at all to
the taste of the honourable flagellants: strict principles, and good
pay, is the motto of Mr. Perceval: the one he keeps in great measure
for the faults of his enemies, the other for himself.

There are parishes in Connaught in which a Protestant was never
settled nor even seen. In that province, in Munster, and in parts of
Leinster, the entire peasantry for sixty miles are Catholics; in these
tracts the churches are frequently shut for want of a congregation, or
opened to an assemblage of from six to twenty persons. Of what
Protestants there are in Ireland, the greatest part are gathered
together in Ulster, or they live in towns. In the country of the other
three provinces the Catholics see no other religion but their own, and
are at the least as fifteen to one Protestant. In the diocese of Tuam
they are sixty to one; in the parish of St. Mulins, diocese of
Leghlin, there are four thousand Catholics and one Protestant; in the
town of Grasgenamana, in the county of Kilkenny, there are between
four and five hundred Catholic houses, and three Protestant houses. In
the parish of Allen, county Kildare, there is no Protestant, though it
is very populous. In the parish of Arlesin, Queen's County, the
proportion is one hundred to one. In the whole county of Kilkenny, by
actual enumeration, it is seventeen to one; in the diocese of
Kilmacduagh, province of Connaught, fifty-two to one, by ditto. These
I give you as a few specimens of the present state of Ireland; and yet
there are men impudent and ignorant enough to contend that such evils
require no remedy, and that mild family man who dw