LETTER X. AND LAST.



You must observe that all I have said of the effects which will be
produced by giving salaries to the Catholic clergy, only proceeds
upon the supposition that the emanciptaion of the laity is effected:
--without that, I am sure there is not a clergyman in Ireland who
would receive a shilling from government; he could not do so,
without an entire loss of credit among the members of his own
persuasion.

What you say of the moderation of the Irish Protestant clergy in
collecting tithes, is, I believe, strictly true. Instead of
collecting what the law enables them to collect, I believe they
seldom or ever collect more than two-thirds; and I entirely agree
with you, that the abolition of agistment tithe in Ireland by a vote
of the Irish House of Commons, and without any remuneration to the
Church, was a most scandalous and Jacobinical measure. I do not
blame the Irish clergy; but I submit to your common sense, if it be
possible to explain to an Irish peasant upon what principle of
justice, or common sense, he is to pay every tenth potato in his
little garden to a clergyman in whose religion nobody believes for
twenty miles around him, and who has nothing to preach to but bare
walls? It is true, if the tithes are bought up, the cottager must
pay more rent to his landlord; but the same thing done in the shape
of rent is less odious than when it is done in the shape of tithe.
I do not want to take a shilling out of the pockets of the clergy,
but to leave the substance of things, and to change their names. I
cannot see the slightest reason why the Irish labourer is to be