A. Because the Catholics pay taxes in the same proportion as Protestants of the same class. If part of these taxes are allocated to education, there is no just reason why they should be exclusively allocated to Protestant establishments.

Q. But are there not some exceptions?

A. Yes: the Royal College of Maynooth, for instance; but the sum allocated to its support, in reference to the Catholic population and taxes, is too insignificant materially to affect this position.

Q. How far is this produced by Protestant individuals?

A. Various systems of education virtually excluding Catholics, because contrary to the known principles of Catholics, have been set on foot by Protestants. In some instances Catholics, because they did not allow their chil dren to adopt them, have been persecuted and oppressed. This, then, is a virtual prohibition of Catholic education, and so far an attack on the rights of opinion.

Q. You think, then, the Catholic is in a great measure deprived, or at least restricted in the enjoyment of the rights of publicity; and that so far he is restricted in the rights to which he is entitled as a British freeman?

A. Yes; such is my opinion.

Q. From what you have said, then, it appears, that in all the great guarantees of British liberty, he stands in an inferior position to every other class of British free

men ?

A. Undoubtedly.

Q. Having therefore a much smaller share of liberty, he cannot have all the advantages which are derived from it, such as tranquillity, consideration, prosperity, &c., which are the great objects of all social institutions?

A. Certainly not.

Q. But is this effect general?

A. So general, that it affects the entire country in every imaginable manner.

Q. How does it affect the entire country?

A. Where one class enjoys this liberty and advantages and the other not, there cannot be any common interest between the two classes; consequently, no harmony; discord and dissension necessarily arise between all the orders of the state and between the individuals of each order: the entire country is in a constant state of internal civil war.

Q. But if one party be strong enough to keep the other in subjection, what evil consequences can result from this? one becomes habituated to command, the other to obey?

A. The relations of the two may alter, and one may become in time balanced, and perhaps superior to the other. Either of these results are to be dreaded. But, placing this aside, the actual evils, even in the above supposition, are to all classes very great.

Q. What are they?

A. Where there rages this perpetual internal civil war, which may at any time burst out into a conflagration, there can be no permanent security for property, and the enjoyment of property.

Q. Well, what then?

A. If there be no security, capital will not be laid out. It will neither come to, nor abide in the country.

Q. But this would affect the capitalists or monied interests only?

A. By no means; it would affect all classes-the entire

nation.

Q. How do you prove that?

A. There being little or no capital to lay out, there will be no manufactures, no commercial establishments, no agricultural improvements-all which immediately depend upon capital-nothing, in fine, which can employ the people,— and if the people are not employed, they must starve.

Q. So it is not in consequence of a surplus of population, but in consequence of the existing population not being employed-that they are ill clothed and ill fed?

A. Precisely so.

Q. And this wretchedness of Ireland is owing to the actual state of the Catholics?

A. To that chiefly, and probably to that alone.

Q. And thus the Irishman is wretched because he is not free, and he is not free because he is a Catholic?

A. Precisely.

Q. And why is not an Irish Catholic a British Freeman ? A. For reasons very different from those generally alleged : but we shall discuss this matter more at length in the ensuing Section.

THIRD SECTION.

WHY IS NOT AN IRISH CATHOLIC A BRITISH FREEMAN?

Question. It is evident, then, that on comparing the franchises which constitute British freedom and those enjoyed by the Irish Catholic, that he is not truly entitled to the designation of a British freeman ?

Answer. Unquestionably.

Q. Was he always in this condition?

A. No.

Q. By whom was he reduced to this condition?

A. By the English and Irish executive and legislature. Q. At what time?

A. At various periods.

Q. But when first?

A. The Irish Catholic, distinctively as such, began to feel the oppression under which he actually labours, at the very outset of the Reformation. The first dawn of Protestantism in Ireland was the signal of his degradation.

Q. But what was the cause of this? It is not to be attributed to Protestantism?

A. By no means; the spirit and principles of Protestantism would rather tend in an opposite direction.

Q. How so?

A. The Protestant reformers began their religious revolu

tion by protesting, as their name designates, against former abuses, and by avowing boldly a resolution to reform them. Q. Well, what was the result?

A. They were, therefore, obliged to assume as principle, in order to justify such a protest, that every man had an inherent right to judge for himself.

Q. What do you deduce from that?

A. That, consistently with such principle, they could not insist on the Irish Catholic changing his religion. If the Calvinist of Geneva had a right to choose his religion, so had the Catholic of Ireland a right to choose his. They were both judging for themselves.

Q. But the Catholic is the slave of authority?

A. In submitting to the authority of others; the Catholic chooses; in choosing, he judges for himself.

Q. You think, then, that the persecutions of Elizabeth were not in the spirit, or according to the principles of Protestantism?

A. According to its real spirit they were not.

Q. What, then, were the motives which dictated them? A. The Irish were but half subdued; arbitrary and tyrannical governors were employed to subdue them; they lived on the prolongation of the war; they encouraged and multiplied the causes which produced it; they prospered on feuds, dissensions, insurrections. From all this sprung confiscations of large tracts of land, honours, dignity, place, and power.

Q. But this was a motive for attacking the Irish indiscriminately?

A. Yes; and the attack had for a long time been conducted indiscriminately.

Q. Then how came it to be directed chiefly against the Catholics?

A. For many centuries the struggle had been between the invaded and the invaders; the natives and the new settlers: