easier, with the
expenditure of a little money, than to preserve enough of the
ostensible appointment in the hands of the Pope to satisfy the scruples
of the Catholics, while the real nomination remained with the Crown.
But, as I have before said, the moment the very name of Ireland is
mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common
prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants
and the fatuity of idiots.

Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic
religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human
beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth, and intelligence, who,
if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the power of
France, and if once wrested from their alliance with England, would in
three years render its existence as an independent nation absolutely
impossible. You speak of danger to the Establishment: I request to know
when the Establishment was ever so much in danger as when Hoche was in
Bantry Bay, and whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts of the
Jesuits, were half so terrible? Mr. Perceval and his parsons forget all
this, in their horror lest twelve or fourteen old women may be
converted to holy water and Catholic nonsense. They never see that,
while they are saving these venerable ladies from perdition, Ireland
may be lost, England broken down, and the Protestant Church, with all
its deans, prebendaries, Percevals, and Rennels, be swept into the
vortex of oblivion.

Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me again the name of Dr.
Duigenan. I have been in every corner of Ireland, and have studied its
present strength and condition with no common labour. Be assured
Ireland does not contain at this moment less than 5,000,000 people.
There were returned in the year 1791 to the hearth tax 701,000 houses,
and there is no kind of question that there were about 50,000 houses
omitted in that return. Taking, however, only the number returned for
the tax, and allowing the average of six to a house (a very small
average for a potato-fed people), this brings the population to
4,200,000 people in the year 1791: and it can be shown from the
clearest evidence (and Mr. Newenham in his book shows it), that Ireland
for the last 50 years has increased in its population at the rate of
50,000 or 60,000 per annum; which leaves the present population of
Ireland at about 5,000,000, after every possible deduction for
_existing c