government of Ireland has been to sacrifice
the civil prosperity of the nation to its religious improvement. But if
people in power there are at length come to entertain other ideas, they
will consider the good order, decorum, virtue, and morality of every
description of men among them as of infinitely greater importance than
the struggle (for it is nothing better) to change those descriptions by
means which put to hazard objects which, in my poor opinion, are of more
importance to religion and to the state than all the polemical matter
which has been agitated among men from the beginning of the world to
this hour.

On this idea, an education fitted _to each order and division of men,
such as they are found_, will be thought an affair rather to be
encouraged than discountenanced; and until institutions at home,
suitable to the occasions and necessities of the people, are
established, and which are armed, as they are abroad, with authority to
coerce the young men to be formed in them by a strict and severe
discipline, the means they have at present of a cheap and effectual
education in other countries should not continue to be prohibited by
penalties and modes of inquisition not fit to be mentioned to ears that
are organized to the chaste sounds of equity and justice.

Before I had written thus far, I heard of a scheme of giving to the
Castle the patronage of the presiding members of the Catholic clergy. At
first I could scarcely credit it; for I believe it is the first time
that the presentation to other people's alms has been desired in any
country. If the state provides a suitable maintenance and temporality
for the governing members of the Irish Roman Catholic Church, and for
the clergy under them, I should think the project, however improper in
other respects, to be by no means unjust. But to deprive a poor people,
who maintain a second set of clergy, out of the miserable remains of
what is left after taxing and tithing, to deprive them of the
disposition of their own charities among their own communion, would, in
my opinion, be an intolerable hardship. Never were the members of one
religious sect fit to appoint the pastors to another. Those who have no
regard for their welfare, reputation, or internal quiet will not appoint
such as are proper. The seraglio of Constantinople is as equitable as we
are, whether Catholics or Protestants,--and where their own sect is
concerned, full as religious. But the sport which t