On this idea, an education fitted to each order and division of men, such as they are found, will be thought an affair rather to be encouraged than discountenanced; and until institutions at home, suitable to the occasions and necessities of the people, are established, and which are armed, as they are abroad, with authority to coerce the young men to be formed in them by a strict and severe discipline, the means they have at present of a cheap and effectual education in other countries should not continue to be prohibited by penalties and modes of inquisition not fit to be mentioned to ears that are organized to the chaste sounds of equity and justice.

Before I had written thus far, I heard of a scheme of giving to the Castle the patronage of the presiding members of the Catholic clergy.  At first I could scarcely credit it; for I believe it is the first time that the presentation to other people’s alms has been desired in any country.  If the state provides a suitable maintenance and temporality for the governing members of the Irish Roman Catholic Church, and for the clergy under them, I should think the project, however improper in other respects, to be by no means unjust.  But to deprive a poor people, who maintain a second set of clergy, out of the miserable remains of what is left after taxing and tithing, to deprive them of the disposition of their own charities among their own communion, would, in my opinion, be an intolerable hardship.  Never were the members of one religious sect fit to appoint the pastors to another.  Those who have no regard for their welfare, reputation, or internal quiet will not appoint such as are proper.  The seraglio of Constantinople is as equitable as we are, whether Catholics or Protestants,—­and where their own sect is concerned, full as religious.  But the sport which they make of the miserable dignities of the Greek Church, the little factions of the harem to which they make them subservient, the continual sale to which they expose and reexpose the same dignity, and by which they squeeze all the inferior orders of the clergy, is (for I have had particular means of being acquainted with it) nearly equal to all the other oppressions together, exercised by Mussulmen over the unhappy members of the Oriental Church.  It is a great deal to suppose that even the present Castle would nominate bishops for the Roman Church of Ireland with a religious regard for its welfare.  Perhaps they cannot, perhaps they dare not do it.

But suppose them to be as well inclined as I know that I am to do the Catholics all kind of justice, I declare I would not, if it were in my power, take that patronage on myself.  I know I ought not to do it.  I belong to another community, and it would be intolerable usurpation for me to affect such authority, where I conferred no benefit, or even if I did confer (as in some degree the seraglio does) temporal advantages.  But allowing that the present Castle finds itself fit to administer the government