Dissenters. Perhaps, after all, this is the best method--to
continue the persecuting law, and to suspend it every year--a method
which, while it effectually destroys the persecution itself, leaves
to the great mass of mankind the exquisite gratification of
supposing that they are enjoying some advantage from which a
particular class of their fellow creatures are excluded. We manage
the Corporation and Test Acts at present much in the same manner as
if we were to persuade parish boys who had been in the habit of
beating an ass to spare the animal, and beat the skin of an ass
stuffed with straw; this would preserve the semblance of tormenting
without the reality, and keep boy and beast in good humour.

How can you imagine that a provision for the Catholic clergy affects
the 5th article of the Union? Surely I am preserving the Protestant
Church in Ireland if I put it in a better condition than that in
which it now is. A tithe proctor in Ireland collects his tithes
with a blunderbuss, and carries his tenth hay-cock by storm, sword
in hand: to give him equal value in a more pacific shape cannot, I
should imagine, be considered as injurious to the Church of Ireland;
and what right has that Church to complain if Parliament chooses to
fix upon the empire the burden of supporting a double ecclesiastical
establishment? Are the revenues of the Irish Protestant clergy in
the slightest degree injured by such provision? On the contrary, is
it possible to confer a more serious benefit upon that Church than
by quieting and contenting those who are at work for its
destruction?

It is impossible to think of the affairs of Ireland without being
forcibly struck with the parallel of Hungary. Of her seven millions
of inhabitants, one half were Protestants, Calvinists, and