It appears, however, from the Vatican archives that Hussey, in March 1798, did petition the Pope for leave of absence from his diocese, and for a coadjutor, 'as he could not obtain the consent of the Court of Spain to leave its service.' He adds that for thirty years he was head of the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel, London.[662] His _amour propre_, no doubt, revolted from accepting at Portland's hands the passport to return to Spain--if, indeed, he could desert his diocese without leave from the Pope. A coadjutor bishop was not granted, but, in reply to the request for leave of absence, it was stipulated by Rome that Hussey should appoint efficient vicars to govern the see while away.[663] Was it of this arrangement that, as Hippesley says, he 'thought better'? Between the two accounts the diplomat stands confessed. He certainly passed the year 1799 in London, where, true to his instincts, we find him busy as a bee. Writing to J. Bernard Clinch, the influential occupant of a chair at Maynooth, he says of the then mooted Legislative Union:-- Whatever my reason may tell me upon a cool inquiry, my feelings rejoice at it. I told the Chancellor of your Exchequer here, that I would prefer a Union with the Beys and Mamelukes of Egypt to that of being under the iron rod of the Mamelukes of Ireland; but, alas! I fear that a Union will not remedy the ills of poor Erin. The remnants of old oppression and new opinions that lead to anarchy (to use the words of a foolish milk-and-water letter) still keep the field of battle, and until one side be defeated, the country is not safe. Another project upon which I have been consulted is, to grant salaries or pension to the Catholic clergy of the higher and lower order.[664] The conditions upon which they are to be granted, as first proposed to me, are directly hostile to the interests of religion, and, taken in the most favourable point of view, must be detrimental to the Catholics, by cutting asunder the slender remaining ties between the pastor and his flock, by turning the discipline and laws of the Church into a mercantile, political speculation, and must end in making the people unbelievers, and, consequently, Jacobins--upon the French scale. Whether the prelates of Ireland have courage or energy enough to oppose any such project so hurtful to religion, I will not say. Indeed, the infernal Popery laws have lessened the courage of the clergy, as well as destroyed the honesty and morals of the people, and my affection for my native land is not so effaced as to enable me to say with our countryman, after he had gone to bed, 'Arrah, let the house burn away; what do I care, who am only a lodger?'[665] Dr. Hussey had been so long condemned to observe the Carthusian rule of silence that he seemed, when freed from restraint, like an opened flask of 'Mumm.'