risk in foretelling that whatever order, quiet, and morality you have in the country will be lost.  A Popish clergy who are not restrained by the most austere subordination will become a nuisance, a real public grievance of the heaviest kind, in any country that entertains them; and instead of the great benefit which Ireland does and has long derived from them, if they are educated without any idea of discipline and obedience, and then put under bishops who do not owe their station to their good opinion, and whom they cannot respect, that nation will see disorders, of which, bad as things are, it has yet no idea.  I do not say this, as thinking the leading men in Ireland would exercise this trust worse than others.  Not at all.  No man, no set of men living are fit to administer the affairs or regulate the interior economy of a church to which they are enemies.

As to government, if I might recommend a prudent caution to them, it would be, to innovate as little as possible, upon speculation, in establishments from which, as they stand, they experience no material inconvenience to the repose of the country,—­quieta non movere.

I could say a great deal more; but I am tired, and am afraid your Lordship is tired too.  I have not sat to this letter a single quarter of an hour without interruption.  It has grown long, and probably contains many repetitions, from my total want of leisure to digest and consolidate my thoughts; and as to my expressions, I could wish to be able perhaps to measure them more exactly.  But my intentions are fair, and I certainly mean to offend nobody.

* * * * *

Thinking over this matter more maturely, I see no reason for altering my opinion in any part.  The act, as far as it goes, is good undoubtedly.  It amounts, I think, very nearly to a toleration, with respect to religious ceremonies; but it puts a new bolt on civil rights, and rivets it to the old one in such a manner, that neither, I fear, will be easily loosened.  What I could have wished would be, to see the civil advantages take the lead; the other, of a religious toleration, I conceive, would follow, (in a manner,) of course.  From what I have observed, it is pride, arrogance, and a spirit of domination, and not a bigoted spirit of religion, that has caused and kept up those oppressive statutes.  I am sure I have known those who have oppressed Papists in their civil rights exceedingly indulgent to them in their religious ceremonies, and who really wished them to continue Catholics, in order to furnish pretences for oppression.  These persons never saw a man (by converting) escape out of their power, but with grudging and regret.  I have known men to whom I am not uncharitable in saying (though they are dead) that they would have become Papists in order to oppress Protestants, if, being Protestants, it was not in their power to oppress Papists.  It is injustice, and not a mistaken conscience, that has been the principle