of its
doctrine. Against this new, this growing, this exterminatory system, all
these churches have a common concern to defend themselves. How the
enthusiasts of this rising sect rejoice to see you of the old churches
play their game, and stir and rake the cinders of animosities sunk in
their ashes, in order to keep up the execution of their plan for your
common ruin!

I suppress all that is in my mind about the blindness of those of our
clergy who will shut their eyes to a thing which glares in such manifest
day. If some wretches amongst an indigent and disorderly part of the
populace raise a riot about tithes, there are of these gentlemen ready
to cry out that this is an overt act of a treasonable conspiracy. Here
the bulls, and the pardons, and the crusade, and the Pope, and the
thunders of the Vatican are everywhere at work. There is a plot to bring
in a foreign power to destroy the Church. Alas! it is not about popes,
but about potatoes, that the minds of this unhappy people are agitated.
It is not from the spirit of zeal, but the spirit of whiskey, that these
wretches act. Is it, then, not conceived possible that a poor clown can
be unwilling, after paying three pounds rent to a gentleman in a brown
coat, to pay fourteen shillings to one in a black coat, for his acre of
potatoes, and tumultuously to desire some modification of the charge,
without being supposed to have no other motive than a frantic zeal for
being thus double-taxed to another set of landholders and another set of
priests? Have men no self-interest, no avarice, no repugnance to public
imposts? Have they no sturdy and restive minds, no undisciplined habits?
Is there nothing in the whole mob of irregular passions, which might
precipitate some of the common people, in some places, to quarrel with a
legal, because they feel it to be a burdensome imposition? According to
these gentlemen, no offence can be committed by Papists but from zeal to
their religion. To make room for the vices of Papists, they clear the
house of all the vices of men. Some of the common people (not one,
however, in ten thousand) commit disorders. Well! punish them as you do,
and as you ought to punish them, for their violence against the just
property of each individual clergyman, as each individual suffers.
Support the injured rector, or the injured impropriator, in the
enjoyment of the estate of which (whether on the best plan or not) the
laws have put him in possession. Let th