Now, I appeal to any human being, except Spencer Perceval, Esq., of
the parish of Hampstead, what the disaffection of a clergy would
amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the Crown, and
whether Ignatius Loyala himself, if he were a living blockhead
instead of a dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing
from 100 pounds a year at Sligo, to 300 pounds in Tipperary? This
is the miserable sum of money for which the merchants and landowners
and nobility of England are exposing themselves to the tremendous
peril of losing Ireland. The sinecure places of the Roses and the
Percevals, and the "dear and near relations," put up to auction at
thirty years' purchase, would almost amount to the money.

I admit that nothing can be more reasonable than to expect that a
Catholic priest should starve to death, genteelly and pleasantly,
for the good of the Protestant religion; but is it equally
reasonable to expect that he should do so for the Protestant pews,
and Protestant brick and mortar? On an Irish Sabbath, the bell of a
neat parish church often summons to church only the parson and an
occasionally conforming clerk; while, two hundred yards off, a
thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and
pelted by all the storms of heaven. Can anything be more
distressing than to see a venerable man pouring forth sublime truths
in tattered breeches, and depending for his food upon the little
offal he gets from his parishioners? I venerate a human being who
starves for his principles, let them be what they may; but starving
for anything is not at all to the taste of the honourable
flagellants: strict principles, and good pay, is the motto of Mr.
Perceval: the one he keeps in great measure for the faults of his
enemies, the other for himself.