cause government sets their religious faith, and their military duty, at variance, and the circumstance of there being no Catholic officers in the army, destroys that inclination to enlist, which always arises from serving under officers of the same sect as themselves.

The same injudicious intolerance makes the peasantry disaffected; what follows? you cannot trust in the militia, for they are Catholics. The yeomanry are too few in numbers and as they, from the same infection of intolerance, are partizans, in calling in their aid, you run the risk of exciting a civil war.

You are forced then, in order to prevent the bad effects of your system of government, to bring an army from England. Then comes the fear of invasion, and your difficulties multiply an hundred fold. You want an additional army to keep down the peasantry, you want an army to awe the militia, you want an army to restrain the intemperate zeal of the yeomanry, you want an army to oppose the enemy.

This is no very inaccurate statement of the military necessities of the English go

vernment in Ireland, which arise entirely from the want of wisdom in their political measures. An An army without any facility of recruiting; a people for your enemy; a militia that you place no confidence in; a yeomanry whose very assistance is accompanied with the risk of injuring you; and a foreign enemy, ready to take the first opportunity of turning your mistakes to his own profit.

But for a moment reverse your measures treat the Protestants and Catholics without any discrimination, assuage the wounded pride of the country, by some modification of the union, and the hearts of the Irish, naturally loyal and affectionate, will yield with delight to the sentiments of zeal and duty towards the govern

ment.

Who, that sympathised in the expansion of honest gratulation which broke forth on the Duke of Bedford's arrival in Ireland, can doubt it!

What would be the effect? The yeomanry, strengthened by the accession of all the wealthy and more respectable Catholics, and without any apprehension of

internal insurrection, would be quite sufficient to defend the country from any sudden invasion, on a small scale. The militia might be sent on foreign service, together with the English army, at present locked up in Ireland, or kept in England from the apprehension of danger in Ireland.

The recruiting service, assisted with the influence of Catholic officers, would go on with rapidity, and produce an annual supply, far beyond what is imagined. By these means, an army of at least 60,000 men might be made disposable, and be brought to act against the most vulnerable parts of the French empire: let its losses be ever so great, the means of recruiting it would be nearly inexhaustible; and it is no great presumption, after what we have seen done by a combined army of Irish and English at Egypt, and at Maida, to say, that it would consist of the bravest, and most formidable troops in Europe.

To this desirable and decisive increase in national strength, there is but the one obstacle, a kind of nursery terror of the Pope, which still clings to our maturer reason.

It is by the extreme of this terror that

our opponents are blinded, or they would perceive that we have the same ‘object in view with them, only that we pursue it by very different means.

They wish to secure the forfeited properties to their present owners; so do we. They wish to put an end to Catholic rebellions; so do we. They wish to curb the bigotry and intolerance of the Catholic religion; so do we. What means have they adopted to effect this purpose, and have they succeeded? No. Why then should you be so averse to try an opposite mode of proceeding?

You were possessed of every instrument of influence, of restriction, of terror, and you made ample use of them: yet the Roman Catholics, like the Israelites of old, multiplied under the oppression of their task-masters. If interest has failed to gain one single convert from the most corrupt of the Roman Catholics, the desire cf political importance from the most ambitious, fear from the most timid, certainly the severe and disqualifying system is radically wrong. On the contrary, it has become a received axiom in modern policy, that sects gain

force and numbers by being stigmatized and oppressed, but by being assimilated and adopted by government, their union i relaxed, and their numbers diminished. Voltaire was a deist, his testimony must, therefore, be considered as impartial; Mrs. Barbauld is a dissenter, her evidence is the confession of an enemy.* Both agree that sects only flourish from the distinctive marks and disqualifications which governments attach to them, because no honourable man would quit a discountenanced sect, as his desertion would not be supposed to arise from a change of opinion, but from motives of fear or mean interestedness. But when nothing is lost by remaining attached to a sect, and nothing gained by quitting it, its adherents will listen to persuasion, or will yield to fashion, and will naturally adopt that form of religion which is most consonant to truth,

See Voltaire's English letters. Mrs. Barbauld's beautiful Essay on Devotional Taste.

"That conversion will always be suspected which apparently concurs with interest; he that never finds his error till it hinders his progress towards wealth and honour, will not be thought to love truth only for herself." Johnson on Dryden's Conversion.