If anything could astonish one at this time, it is the war that the rulers in Ireland think it proper to carry on against the person whom they call the Pope, and against all his adherents, whenever they think they have the power of manifesting their hostility.  Without in the least derogating from the talents of your theological politicians, or from the military abilities of your commanders (who act on the same principles) in Ireland, and without derogating from the zeal of either, it appears to me that the Protestant Directory of Paris, as statesmen, and the Protestant hero, Buonaparte, as a general, have done more to destroy the said Pope and all his adherents, in all their capacities, than the junto in Ireland have ever been able to effect.  You must submit your fasces to theirs, and at best be contented to follow with songs of gratulation, or invectives, according to your humor, the triumphal car of those great conquerors.  Had that true Protestant, Hoche, with an army not infected with the slightest tincture of Popery, made good his landing in Ireland, he would have saved you from a great deal of the trouble which is taken to keep under a description of your fellow-citizens obnoxious to you from their religion.  It would not have a month’s existence, supposing his success.  This is the alliance which, under the appearance of hostility, we act as if we wished to promote.  All is well, provided we are safe from Popery.

It was not necessary for you, my dear Sir, to explain yourself to me (in justification of your good wishes to your fellow-citizens) concerning your total alienation from the principles of the Catholics.  I am more concerned in what we agree than in what we differ.  You know the impossibility of our forming any judgment upon the opinions, religious, moral, or political, of those who in the largest sense are called Protestants,—­at least, as these opinions and tenets form a qualification for holding any civil, judicial, military, or even ecclesiastical situation.  I have no doubt of the orthodox opinion of many, both of the clergy and laity, professing the established religion in Ireland, and of many even amongst the Dissenters, relative to the great points of the Christian faith:  but that orthodoxy concerns them only as individuals.  As a qualification for employment, we all know that in Ireland it is not necessary that they should profess any religion at all:  so that the war that we make is upon certain theological tenets, about which scholastic disputes are carried on aequo Marte, by controvertists, on their side, as able and as learned, and perhaps as well-intentioned, as those are who fight the battle on the other part.  To them I would leave those controversies.  I would turn my mind to what is more within its competence, and has been more my study, (though, for a man of the world, I have thought of those things,)—­I mean, the moral, civil, and political good of the countries we belong to,