other. Those,
Sir, are now living who can well remember how the revenues of
the richest see in Ireland were squandered on the shores of the
Mediterranean by a bishop, whose epistles, very different compositions
from the epistles of Saint Peter and Saint John, may be found in the
correspondence of Lady Hamilton. Such abuses as these called forth
no complaint, no reprimand. And all this time the true pastors of the
people, meanly fed and meanly clothed, frowned upon by the law,
exposed to the insults of every petty squire who gloried in the name
of Protestant, were to be found in miserable cabins, amidst filth, and
famine, and contagion, instructing the young, consoling the miserable,
holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Is it strange
that, in such circumstances, the Roman Catholic religion should have
been constantly becoming dearer and dearer to an ardent and sensitive
people, and that your Established Church should have been constantly
sinking lower and lower in their estimation? I do not of course hold
the living clergy of the Irish Church answerable for the faults of
their predecessors. God forbid! To do so would be the most flagitious
injustice. I know that a salutary change has taken place. I have no
reason to doubt that in learning and regularity of life the Protestant
clergy of Ireland are on a level with the clergy of England. But in the
way of making proselytes they do as little as those who preceded them.
An enmity of three hundred years separates the nation from those who
should be its teachers. In short, it is plain that the mind of Ireland
has taken its ply, and is not to be bent in a different direction, or,
at all events, is not to be so bent by your present machinery.

Well, then, this Church is inefficient as a missionary Church. But there
is yet another end which, in the opinion of some eminent men, a Church
is meant to serve. That end has been often in the minds of practical
politicians. But the first speculative politician who distinctly pointed
it out was Mr Hume. Mr Hume, as might have been expected from his known
opinions, treated the question merely as it related to the temporal
happiness of mankind; and, perhaps, it may be doubted whether he took
quite a just view of the manner in which even the temporal happiness of
mankind is affected by the restraints and consolations of religion. He
reasoned thus:--It is dangerous to the peace of society that the public
mind should be violen