Suppose an atheist, playing the part of a bigot, should be in power again in that country, do you believe that he would faithfully and religiously administer the trust of appointing pastors to a church which, wanting every other support, stands in tenfold need of ministers who will be dear to the people committed to their charge, and who will exercise a really paternal authority amongst them? But if the superior power was always in a disposition to dispense conscientiously, and like an upright trustee and guardian of these rights which he holds for those with whom he is at variance, has he the capacity and means of doing it? How can the Lord-Lieutenant form the least judgment of their merits, so as to discern which of the Popish priests is fit to be made a bishop? It cannot be: the idea is ridiculous. He will hand them over to lords-lieutenant of counties, justices of the peace, and other persons, who, for the purpose of vexing and turning to derision this miserable people, will pick out the worst and most obnoxious they can find amongst the clergy to set over the rest. Whoever is complained against by his brother will be considered as persecuted; whoever is censured by his superior will be looked upon as oppressed; whoever is careless in his opinions and loose in his morals will be called a liberal man, and will be supposed to have incurred hatred because he was not a bigot. Informers, tale-bearers, perverse and obstinate men, flatterers, who turn their back upon their flock and court the Protestant gentlemen of the country, will be the objects of preferment. And then I run no risk in foretelling that whatever order, quiet, and morality you have in the country will be lost. A Popish clergy who are not restrained by the most austere subordination will become a nuisance, a real public grievance of the heaviest kind, in any country that entertains them; and instead of the great benefit which Ireland does and has long derived from them, if they are educated without any idea of discipline and obedience, and then put under bishops who do not owe their station to their good opinion, and whom they cannot respect, that nation will see disorders, of which, bad as things are, it has yet no idea. I do not say this, as thinking the leading men in Ireland would exercise this trust worse than others. Not at all. No man, no set of men living are fit to administer the affairs or regulate the interior economy of a church to which they are enemies. As to government, if I might recommend a prudent caution to them, it would be, to innovate as little as possible, upon speculation, in establishments from which, as they stand, they experience no material inconvenience to the repose of the country,--_quieta non movere_.