When I lived at Lincoln, after the death of my mother, the celebrated William Paley was sub-dean of the cathedral: I was in the habit of daily and familiar intercourse with him. One day, before one of those dinners which are given to the residentiary in a course as regular as that of the dinners of the cabinet-ministers, the company was standing in a circle round the fire; I stood next to Paley. He, almost pushing me out of the circle by a certain turn of his shoulder, to signify that what he was about to say would not be said out of complaisance to me as a catholic, while, at the same time he looked over his other shoulder to assure himself that I was listening,--Paley, I say, began to assert the justice, the expediency, and the utility of establishing by law in Ireland the catholic worship, defending the measure by the arguments, and almost in the words set down by me; ending, by declaring himself persuaded that the catholic clergy of Ireland would be well contented when they were well paid, and the catholic population would, in that supposed case, be as good subjects as they are every where else under the same circumstances. The greater part of Poland is subject to a schismatic; Silesia to a Lutheran; the Low Countries, formerly Austrian, to a Calvinist: the sovereigns of those several countries have not yet taken away the ecclesiastical revenues from the catholic clergy, nor their civil rights from the catholic people. Having made out a case, as I express myself above, I mention several topics on which, for brevity's sake, I forbear to enlarge. I beg to be understood as having a due sense of the importance of these objects, of each in its kind, and as entertaining in regard to them the opinion held by the catholic church. I say this the rather, because many protestants, after talking with me on religion, have found me, as they said, so reasonable, that they would not believe that I was really and truly a papist. The unreasonableness of the catholic faith exists only in the imagination of the protestants, who, in general, know nothing about it. One of them asked me why the prayers were translated into Latin: I answered, that the pope had ordered them to be subtracted in this manner from the curiosity of the good people of ----, naming the town nearest the country residence of my interrogator. Another, a little perplexed on the subject of unity, asked, "What is the catholic church?" as an answer, I asked, "What is the church of England?" An Anglican clergyman put the question, "What is the mass?" I told him it was what he had engaged to oppose. He was a worthy, quiet man, and did not want to oppose any thing.