begins with some observations on the Law of Tithe in Ireland. "I
submit to your common sense, if it is possible to explain to an Irish
peasant upon what principle of justice he is to pay every tenth potato in
his little garden to a clergyman in whose religion nobody believes for
twenty miles round him, and who has nothing to preach to but bare walls."
Let the landowner pay the tithe, and charge the labourer a higher rent.
This, Peter seems to think, will meet all the difficulties of the case, and
yet not impoverish the Established clergy. And he is more than ever
persuaded that the best way to check the predominance of the Roman Church
in Ireland is to deliver the Romanists from every species of religious
disability. On this theme Peter harps in a vein which, if he were a
clergyman writing over his own name, would be justly described as
cynical.--
"If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would belong to
White's and to Brookes's; would keep race-horses; would walk up and
down Pall Mall; be exonerated of his ready money and his constitution;
become as totally devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge, and
civility, as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall; and return home with a
supreme contempt for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan.... The
true receipt for preserving the Roman Catholic religion is Mr.
Perceval's receipt for destroying it: it is to deprive every rich
Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him from
the Protestants, and to shut him up in his castle with priests and
relics.
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