ars
to me that the Protestant Directory of Paris, as statesmen, and the
Protestant hero, Buonaparte, as a general, have done more to destroy
the said Pope and all his adherents, in all their capacities, than the
junto in Ireland have ever been able to effect. You must submit your
_fasces_ to theirs, and at best be contented to follow with songs of
gratulation, or invectives, according to your humor, the triumphal car
of those great conquerors. Had that true Protestant, Hoche, with an army
not infected with the slightest tincture of Popery, made good his
landing in Ireland, he would have saved you from a great deal of the
trouble which is taken to keep under a description of your
fellow-citizens obnoxious to you from their religion. It would not have
a month's existence, supposing his success. This is the alliance which,
under the appearance of hostility, we act as if we wished to promote.
All is well, provided we are safe from Popery.

It was not necessary for you, my dear Sir, to explain yourself to _me_
(in justification of your good wishes to your fellow-citizens)
concerning your total alienation from the principles of the Catholics. I
am more concerned in what we agree than in what we differ. You know the
impossibility of our forming any judgment upon the opinions, religious,
moral, or political, of those who in the largest sense are called
Protestants,--at least, as these opinions and tenets form a
qualification for holding any civil, judicial, military, or even
ecclesiastical situation. I have no doubt of the orthodox opinion of
many, both of the clergy and laity, professing the established religion
in Ireland, and of many even amongst the Dissenters, relative to the
great points of the Christian faith: but that orthodoxy concerns them
only as _individuals_. As a _qualification_ for employment, we all know
that in Ireland it is not necessary that they should profess any
religion at all: so that the war that we make is upon certain
theological tenets, about which scholastic disputes are carried on _aequo
Marte_, by controvertists, on their side, as able and as learned, and
perhaps as well-intentioned, as those are who fight the battle on the
other part. To them I would leave those controversies. I would turn my
mind to what is more within its competence, and has been more my study,
(though, for a man of the world, I have thought of those things,)--I
mean, the moral, civil, and political good of the countries we bel