hey make of the
miserable dignities of the Greek Church, the little factions of the
harem to which they make them subservient, the continual sale to which
they expose and reexpose the same dignity, and by which they squeeze all
the inferior orders of the clergy, is (for I have had particular means
of being acquainted with it) nearly equal to all the other oppressions
together, exercised by Mussulmen over the unhappy members of the
Oriental Church. It is a great deal to suppose that even the present
Castle would nominate bishops for the Roman Church of Ireland with a
religious regard for its welfare. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps they dare
not do it.

But suppose them to be as well inclined as I know that I am to do the
Catholics all kind of justice, I declare I would not, if it were in my
power, take that patronage on myself. I know I ought not to do it. I
belong to another community, and it would be intolerable usurpation for
me to affect such authority, where I conferred no benefit, or even if I
did confer (as in some degree the seraglio does) temporal advantages.
But allowing that the _present_ Castle finds itself fit to administer
the government of a church which they solemnly forswear, and forswear
with very hard words and many evil epithets, and that as often as they
qualify themselves for the power which is to give this very patronage,
or to give anything else that they desire,--yet they cannot insure
themselves that a man like the late Lord Chesterfield will not succeed
to them. This man, while he was duping the credulity of Papists with
fine words in private, and commending their good behavior during a
rebellion in Great Britain, (as it well deserved to be commended and
rewarded,) was capable of urging penal laws against them in a speech
from the throne, and of stimulating with provocatives the wearied and
half-exhausted bigotry of the then Parliament of Ireland. They set to
work, but they were at a loss what to do; for they had already almost
gone through every contrivance which could _waste the vigor_ of their
country: but, after much struggle, they produced a child of their old
age, the shocking and unnatural act about marriages, which tended to
finish the scheme for making the people not only two distinct parties
forever, but keeping them as two distinct species in the same land. Mr.
Gardiner's humanity was shocked at it, as one of the worst parts of that
truly barbarous system, if one could well settle the