an occasional conformity:  a thing I believe singular, where tests are admitted.  The act, called the Test Act, itself, is, with regard to them, grown to be hardly anything more than a dead letter.  Whenever the Dissenters cease by their conduct to give any alarm to the government, in Church and State, I think it very probable that even this matter, rather disgustful than inconvenient to them, may be removed, or at least so modified as to distinguish the qualification to those offices which really guide the state from those which are merely instrumental, or that some other and better tests may be put in their place.

So far as to England.  In Ireland you have outran us.  Without waiting for an English example, you have totally, and without any modification whatsoever, repealed the test as to Protestant Dissenters.  Not having the repealing act by me, I ought not to say positively that there is no exception in it; but if it be what I suppose it is, you know very well that a Jew in religion, or a Mahometan, or even a public, declared atheist and blasphemer, is perfectly qualified to be Lord-Lieutenant, a lord-justice, or even keeper of the king’s conscience, and by virtue of his office (if with you it be as it is with us) administrator to a great part of the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown.

Now let us deal a little fairly.  We must admit that Protestant Dissent was one of the quarters from which danger was apprehended at the Revolution, and against which a part of the coronation oath was peculiarly directed.  By this unqualified repeal you certainly did not mean to deny that it was the duty of the crown to preserve the Church against Protestant Dissenters; or taking this to be the true sense of the two Revolution acts of King William, and of the previous and subsequent Union acts of Queen Anne, you did not declare by this most unqualified repeal, by which you broke down all the barriers, not invented, indeed, but carefully preserved, at the Revolution,—­you did not then and by that proceeding declare that you had advised the king to perjury towards God and perfidy towards the Church.  No! far, very far from it!  You never would have done it, if you did not think it could be done with perfect repose to the royal conscience, and perfect safety to the national established religion.  You did this upon a full consideration of the circumstances of your country.  Now, if circumstances required it, why should it be contrary to the king’s oath, his Parliament judging on those circumstances, to restore to his Catholic people, in such measure and with such modifications as the public wisdom shall think proper to add, some part in these franchises which they formerly had held without any limitation at all, and which, upon no sort of urgent reason at the time, they were deprived of?  If such means can with any probability be shown, from circumstances, rather to add strength to our mixed ecclesiastical and secular