“Such is the man by whom the minds opinions, and even actions of the people are often influenced; and, if man is but a creature of education and habit, I leave you to draw the inference. But this is but _one_ class of priesthood, and its description rather applicable to twenty or thirty years back than to the present day. The other two may be divided into the sons of tradesmen and farmers, and the younger sons of Catholic gentry. “Of the latter order am I; and the interest of my friends on my return from the continent procured me what was deemed the best parish in the diocese. But the good and the evil attendant on every situation in life, is rather to be estimated by the feelings and sensibility of the objects whom they affect, than by their own intrinsic nature. It was in vain I endeavoured to accommodate my mind to the mode of life into which I had been forced by my friends. It was in vain I endeavoured to assimilate my spirit to that species of exertion necessary to be made for my livelihood. “To owe my subsistence to the precarious generosity of those wretches, whose every gift to me must be the result of a sensible deprivation to themselves; be obliged to extort (even from the altar where I presided as the minister of the Most High) the trivial contributions for my support, in a language which, however appropriate to the understandings of my auditors, sunk me in my own esteem to the last degree of self-degradation; or to receive from the religious affection of my flock such voluntary benefactions as, under the pressure of scarcity and want, their rigid economy to themselves enabled them to make to the pastor whom they revered. * In a word, after three years miserable dependence on those for whose poverty and wretchedness my heart bled, I threw up my situation, and became chaplain to the Prince of Inismore, on a stipend sufficient for my little wants, and have lived with him for thirty years, on such terms as you have witnessed for these three weeks back. * “Are these men supposed to have no sense of justice that, in addition to the burthen of supporting their own establishment exclusively, they should be called on to pay ours; that, where they pay sixpence to their own priest, they should pay a pound to our clergymen; that, while they can scarce afford their own a horse, they should place ours in his carriage; and that when they cannot build a mass- house to cover their multitudes, they should be forced to contribute to build sumptuous churches for half a dozen Protestants to pray under a shed--Inquiry into the Causes of Popular Discontents, &c. page 27.