me considerable degree to accomplish.

This learning, which I believe to be pretty general, together with an
higher situation, and more chastened by the opinion of mankind, forms a
sufficient security for the morals of the established clergy, and for
their sustaining their clerical character with dignity. It is not
necessary to observe, that all these things are, however, collateral to
their function, and that, except in preaching, which may be and is
supplied, and often best supplied, out of printed books, little else is
necessary for a Protestant minister than to be able to read the English
language,--I mean for the exercise of his function, not to the
qualification of his admission to it. But a Popish parson in Ireland may
do very well without any considerable classical erudition, or any
proficiency in pure or mixed mathematics, or any knowledge of civil
history. Even if the Catholic clergy should possess those acquisitions,
as at first many of them do, they soon lose them in the painful course
of professional and parochial duties: but they must have all the
knowledge, and, what is to them more important than the knowledge, the
discipline, necessary to those duties. All modes of education conducted
by those whose minds are cast in another mould, as I may say, and whose
original ways of thinking are formed upon the reverse pattern, must be
to them not only useless, but mischievous. Just as I should suppose the
education in a Popish ecclesiastical seminary would be ill fitted for a
Protestant clergyman. To educate a Catholic priest in a Protestant
seminary would be much worse. The Protestant educated amongst Catholics
has only something to reject: what he keeps may be useful. But a
Catholic parish priest learns little for his peculiar purpose and duty
in a Protestant college.

All this, my Lord, I know very well, will pass for nothing with those
who wish that the Popish clergy should be illiterate, and in a situation
to produce contempt and detestation. Their minds are wholly taken up
with party squabbles, and I have neither leisure nor inclination to
apply any part of what I have to say to those who never think of
religion or of the commonwealth in any other light than as they tend to
the prevalence of some faction in either. I speak on a supposition that
there is a disposition _to take the state in the condition in which it
is found_, and to improve it _in that state_ to the best advantage.
Hitherto the plan for the