be easier, with the expenditure of a little money, than to preserve
enough of the ostensible appointment in the hands of the Pope to
satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination
remained with the Crown. But, as I have before said, the moment the
very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to
common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with
the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.

Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic
religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human
beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth, and intelligence,
who, if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the
power of France, and if once wrested from their alliance with
England, would in three years render its existence as an independent
nation absolutely impossible. You speak of danger to the
Establishment: I request to know when the Establishment was ever so
much in danger as when Hoche was in Bantry Bay, and whether all the
books of Bossuet, or the arts of the Jesuits, were half so terrible?
Mr. Perceval and his parsons forget all this, in their horror lest
twelve or fourteen old women may be converted to holy water and
Catholic nonsense. They never see that, while they are saving these
venerable ladies from perdition, Ireland may be lost, England broken
down, and the Protestant Church, with all its deans, prebendaries,
Percevals, and Rennels, be swept into the vortex of oblivion.

Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me again the name of Dr.
Duigenan. I have been in every corner of Ireland, and have studied
its present strength and condition with no common labour. Be
assured Ireland does not contain at this moment less than five
millions of people. There were returned in the year 1791 to the