that shield on
account of their speculative opinions. The Protestants of Ireland feel
well and naturally on the hardship of being bound by laws in the
enacting of which they do not directly or indirectly vote. The bounds of
these matters are nice, and hard to be settled in theory, and perhaps
they have been pushed too far. But how they can avoid the necessary
application of the principles they use in their disputes with others to
their disputes with their fellow-citizens, I know not.

It is true, the words of this act do not create a disability; but they
clearly and evidently suppose it. There are few _Catholic_ freeholders
to take the benefit of the privilege, if they were permitted to partake
it; but the manner in which this very right in freeholders at large is
defended is not on the idea that the freeholders do really and truly
represent the people, but that, all people being capable of obtaining
freeholds, all those who by their industry and sobriety merit this
privilege have the means of arriving at votes. It is the same with the
corporations.

The laws against foreign education are clearly the very worst part of
the old code. Besides your laity, you have the succession of about four
thousand clergymen to provide for. These, having no lucrative objects in
prospect, are taken very much out of the lower orders of the people. At
home they have no means whatsoever provided for their attaining a
clerical education, or indeed any education at all. When I was in Paris,
about seven years ago, I looked at everything, and lived with every kind
of people, as well as my time admitted. I saw there the Irish college of
the Lombard, which seemed to me a very good place of education, under
excellent orders and regulations, and under the government of a very
prudent and learned man (the late Dr. Kelly). This college was possessed
of an annual fixed revenue of more than a thousand pound a year, the
greatest part of which had arisen from the legacies and benefactions of
persons educated in that college, and who had obtained promotions in
France, from the emolument of which promotions they made this grateful
return. One in particular I remember, to the amount of ten thousand
livres annually, as it is recorded on the donor's monument in their
chapel.

It has been the custom of poor persons in Ireland to pick up such
knowledge of the Latin tongue as, under the general discouragements, and
occasional pursuits of magistracy, they wer