gion is brought into a question of civil and political
arrangement, it must be considered more politically than theologically,
at least by us, who are nothing more than mere laymen. In that light,
the case of the Catholics of Ireland is peculiarly hard, whether they be
laity or clergy. If any of them take part, like the gentleman you
mention, with some of the most accredited Protestants of the country, in
projects which cannot be more abhorrent to your nature and disposition
than they are to mine,--in that case, however few these Catholic
factions who are united with factious Protestants may be, (and very few
they are now, whatever shortly they may become,) on their account the
whole body is considered as of suspected fidelity to the crown, and as
wholly undeserving of its favor. But if, on the contrary, in those
districts of the kingdom where their numbers are the greatest, where
they make, in a manner, the whole body of the people, (as, out of
cities, in three fourths of the kingdom they do,) these Catholics show
every mark of loyalty and zeal in support of the government, which at
best looks on them with an evil eye, then their very loyalty is turned
against their claims. They are represented as a contented and happy
people, and that it is unnecessary to do anything more in their favor.
Thus the factious disposition of a few among the Catholics and the
loyalty of the whole mass are equally assigned as reasons for not
putting them on a par with those Protestants who are asserted by the
government itself, which frowns upon Papists, to be in a state of
nothing short of actual rebellion, and in a strong disposition to make
common cause with the worst foreign enemy that these countries have ever
had to deal with. What in the end can come of all this?

As to the Irish Catholic clergy, their condition is likewise most
critical. If they endeavor by their influence to keep a dissatisfied
laity in quiet, they are in danger of losing the little credit they
possess, by being considered as the instruments of a government adverse
to the civil interests of their flock. If they let things take their
course, they will be represented as colluding with sedition, or at least
tacitly encouraging it. If they remonstrate against persecution, they
propagate rebellion. Whilst government publicly avows hostility to that
people, as a part of a regular system, there is no road they can take
which does not lead to their ruin.

If nothing can be