In all religious orders, candidates for priesthood must be presented by their proper religious superior to some bishop. The prelate may examine the candidate; and, if he has no canonical objection, he promotes him to orders on the title of religious poverty; the superior, or the order, remaining answerable for his maintenance. But no priest of the regulars can assume any exercise of ministerial functions, in preaching, or administering sacraments, without licence of the diocesan prelate, who may examine, suspend, and correct him, incurring thus a certain responsibility. Of this subjection of regulars to the established prelates, surely, sir John must have been aware; why, then, endeavour to alarm us with the prospect of Jesuits colonizing in the south of Italy, for the purpose of overspreading these islands? I have reason, upon recent inquiry, to suspect, that sir John has been misled by his Sicilian informer, as to the voyagers for the priesthood; and the supposed system of seeking {115} furtive ordinations beyond the seas will vanish before a plain relation of a few trifling facts. In 1806 an ecclesiastical student, _on account of his health_, embarked for Naples in a neutral ship, which touched at Palermo, where he remained, having learned that Buonaparte had seized on Naples: he was joined, the next year, by another student, who went abroad from the same motive, that of health. To be of use to their catholic countrymen, whose number was daily increasing, by the arrival of new regiments, they entered into holy orders, though, it appears, they were not allowed to officiate as priests among them. These recovered their health, and returned home. In the course of the three ensuing years, one priest, and ten students, who were impressed with a strong desire to study in a catholic university, went also, at different times, to Palermo, where they experienced a similar disappointment in their zeal. Two of the students left Sicily before they were ordained, and one died before ordination, leaving nine, the whole number {116} ordained. The priest also died abroad. So that, instead of nineteen, there were altogether only nine, who obtained orders: one of these is the distinguished president of the new seminary of education in Ireland. For the last six years, not one catholic student has had a thought of following their example. Such trifling occasional emigrations of a few students will neither alarm nor surprise those who know, that, for more than two centuries, the penal laws have driven all English and Irish catholics, who were not content to live in ignorance at home, to seek education abroad; that this had become an invariable custom; and that every year scores of British subjects went abroad.