that case, however few these Catholic factions who are united with factious Protestants may be, (and very few they are now, whatever shortly they may become,) on their account the whole body is considered as of suspected fidelity to the crown, and as wholly undeserving of its favor.  But if, on the contrary, in those districts of the kingdom where their numbers are the greatest, where they make, in a manner, the whole body of the people, (as, out of cities, in three fourths of the kingdom they do,) these Catholics show every mark of loyalty and zeal in support of the government, which at best looks on them with an evil eye, then their very loyalty is turned against their claims.  They are represented as a contented and happy people, and that it is unnecessary to do anything more in their favor.  Thus the factious disposition of a few among the Catholics and the loyalty of the whole mass are equally assigned as reasons for not putting them on a par with those Protestants who are asserted by the government itself, which frowns upon Papists, to be in a state of nothing short of actual rebellion, and in a strong disposition to make common cause with the worst foreign enemy that these countries have ever had to deal with.  What in the end can come of all this?

As to the Irish Catholic clergy, their condition is likewise most critical.  If they endeavor by their influence to keep a dissatisfied laity in quiet, they are in danger of losing the little credit they possess, by being considered as the instruments of a government adverse to the civil interests of their flock.  If they let things take their course, they will be represented as colluding with sedition, or at least tacitly encouraging it.  If they remonstrate against persecution, they propagate rebellion.  Whilst government publicly avows hostility to that people, as a part of a regular system, there is no road they can take which does not lead to their ruin.

If nothing can be done on your side of the water, I promise you that nothing will be done here.  Whether in reality or only in appearance I cannot positively determine, but you will be left to yourselves by the ruling powers here.  It is thus ostensibly and above-board; and in part, I believe, the disposition is real.  As to the people at large in this country, I am sure they have no disposition to intermeddle in your affairs.  They mean you no ill whatever; and they are too ignorant of the state of your affairs to be able to do you any good.  Whatever opinion they have on your subject is very faint and indistinct; and if there is anything like a formed notion, even that amounts to no more than a sort of humming that remains on their ears of the burden of the old song about Popery.  Poor souls, they are to be pitied, who think of nothing but dangers long passed by, and but little of the perils that actually surround them.

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