mark, _vote for a
free altar_; give what the law compels you to give to the
Establishment; (that done,) no chains, no prisons, no bonfires for a
man's faith; and, above all, no modern chains and prisons under the
names of disqualifications and incapacities, which _are only the
cruelty and tyranny of a more civilized age_; civil offices open to
all, a Catholic or a Protestant alderman, a Moravian or a Church of
England or a Wesleyan justice, _no oppression, no tyranny in belief: a
free altar, an open road to heaven; no human insolence, no human
narrowness, hallowed by the name of God_.

* * * * *

"Our Government is called essentially Protestant; but, if it be
essentially Protestant in the distribution of office, it should be
essentially Protestant in the imposition of taxes. The Treasury is
open to all religions, Parliament only to one. The tax-gatherer is the
most indulgent and liberal of human beings; he excludes no creed,
imposes no articles; but counts Catholic cash, pockets Protestant
paper, and is candidly and impartially oppressive to every description
of the Christian world. Can anything be more base than when you want
the blood or the money of Catholics, to forget that they are
Catholics, and to remember only that they are British subjects; and,
when they ask for the benefits of the British Constitution, to
remember only that they are Catholics, and to forget that they are
British subjects?

"_No Popery_ was the cry of the great English Revolution, because the
increase and prevalence of Popery in England would, at that period,
have rendered this island tributary to France. The Irish Catholics
were, at that period, broken to pieces by the severity and military
execution of Cromwell, and by the Penal Laws. They are since become a
great and formidable people. The same dread of foreign influence makes
it now necessary that they should be restored to political rights.
Must the friends of rational liberty join in a clamour against the
Catholics now, because, in a very different state of the world, they
excited that clamour a hundred years ago? I remember a house near
Battersea Bridge which caught fire, and there was a great cry of
'Water, water!' Ten years after, the Thames rose, and the people of
the house were nearly drowned. Would it not have b