I will sacrifice space, time, and identity, to my zeal for
the Protestant Church. Now, in the midst of all this violence,
consider, for a moment, how you are imposed on by words, and what a
serious violation of the rights of your fellow-creatures you are
committing. Mr. Murphy lives in Limerick, and Mr. Murphy and his son
are subjected to a thousand inconveniences and disadvantages because
they are Catholics. Murphy is a wealthy, honourable, excellent man; he
ought to be in the corporation; he cannot get in because he is a
Catholic. His son ought to be King's Counsel for his talents, and his
standing at the Bar; he is prevented from reaching this dignity,
because he is a Catholic. Why, what reasons do you hear for all this?
Because Queen Mary, three hundred years before the natal day of Mr.
Murphy, murdered Protestants in Smithfield; because Louis XIV.
dragooned his Protestant subjects, when the predecessor of Murphy's
predecessor was not in being; because men are confined in prison, in
Madrid, twelve degrees more south than Murphy has ever been in his
life; all ages, all climates, are ransacked to perpetuate the slavery
of Murphy, the ill-fated victim of political anachronisms.
* * * * *
"When are mercy and justice, in fact, ever to return upon the earth,
if the sins of the elders are to be for ever visited on those who are
not even their children! Should the first act of liberated Greece be
to recommence the Trojan war? Are the French never to forget the
Sicilian Vespers; or the Americans the long war waged against their
liberties? Is any rule wise, which may set the Irish to recollect what
they have suffered?
* * * * *
"It is no part of my province to defend every error of the Catholic
Church; I believe it has many errors, though I am sure these errors
are grievously exaggerated and misrepresented.
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