Ireland is their exclusion from the offices of Sheriff and Deputy
Sheriff. Nobody who is unacquainted with Ireland can conceive the
obstacles which this opposes to the fair administration of justice.
The formation of juries is now entirely in the hands of the
Protestants; the lives, liberties, and properties of the Catholics
in the hands of the juries; and this is the arrangement for the
administration of justice in a country where religious prejudices
are inflamed to the greatest degree of animosity! In this country,
if a man be a foreigner, if he sell slippers, and sealing wax, and
artificial flowers, we are so tender of human life that we take care
half the number of persons who are to decide upon his fate should be
men of similar prejudices and feelings with himself: but a poor
Catholic in Ireland may be tried by twelve Percevals, and destroyed
according to the manner of that gentleman in the name of the Lord,
and with all the insulting forms of justice. I do not go the length
of saying that deliberate and wilful injustice is done. I have no
doubt that the Orange Deputy Sheriff thinks it would be a most
unpardonable breach of his duty if he did not summon a Protestant
panel. I can easily believe that the Protestant panel may conduct
themselves very conscientiously in hanging the gentlemen of the
crucifix; but I blame the law which does not guard the Catholic
against the probable tenor of those feelings which must
unconsciously influence the judgments of mankind. I detest that
state of society which extends unequal degrees of protection to
different creeds and persuasions; and I cannot describe to you the
contempt I feel for a man who, calling himself a statesman, defends
a system which fills the heart of every Irishman with treason, and
makes his allegiance prudence, not choice.

I request to know if the vestry taxes in Ireland are a mere matter