I do not pretend to take pride in an extravagant attachment to any sect.  Some gentlemen in Ireland affect that sort of glory.  It is to their taste.  Their piety, I take it for granted, justifies the fervor of their zeal, and may palliate the excess of it.  Being myself no more than a common layman, commonly informed in controversies, leading only a very common life, and having only a common citizen’s interest in the Church or in the State, yet to you I will say, in justice to my own sentiments, that not one of those zealots for a Protestant interest wishes more sincerely than I do, perhaps not half so sincerely, for the support of the Established Church in both these kingdoms.  It is a great link towards holding fast the connection of religion with the State, and for keeping these two islands, in their present critical independence of constitution, in a close connection of opinion and affection.  I wish it well, as the religion of the greater number of the primary land-proprietors of the kingdom, with whom all establishments of Church and Stats, for strong political reasons, ought in my opinion to be firmly connected.  I wish it well, because it is more closely combined than any other of the church systems with the crown, which is the stay of the mixed Constitution,—­because it is, as things now stand, the sole connecting political principle between the constitutions of the two independent kingdoms.  I have another and infinitely a stronger reason for wishing it well:  it is, that in the present time I consider it as one of the main pillars of the Christian religion itself.  The body and substance of every religion I regard much more than any of the forms and dogmas of the particular sects.  Its fall would leave a great void, which nothing else, of which I can form any distinct idea, might fill.  I respect the Catholic hierarchy and the Presbyterian republic; but I know that the hope or the fear of establishing either of them is, in these kingdoms, equally chimerical, even if I preferred one or the other of them to the Establishment, which certainly I do not.

These are some of my reasons for wishing the support of the Church of Ireland as by law established.  These reasons are founded as well on the absolute as on the relative situation of that kingdom.  But is it because I love the Church, and the King, and the privileges of Parliament, that I am to be ready for any violence, or any injustice, or any absurdity, in the means of supporting any of these powers, or all of them together?  Instead of prating about Protestant ascendencies, Protestant Parliaments ought, in my opinion, to think at last of becoming patriot Parliaments.