might come to settle, or remain settled in any parish, would be regarded as tending towards the withdrawing or withholding, as the case might be, of the funds of the national education, and diverting them to the use of an heretical establishment._ “_The most harassing persecutions, the most ferocious outrages, the most systematic murders, would in consequence be increased fourfold. Bitter as religious animosities have hitherto been in this wretched country, it would be to most persons astonishing that they could be so much augmented, as I have no doubt they would be, by this fatal experiment. When instead of mere vague jealousy, revenge and party spirit, to prompt to crime and violence, there was also held out a distinct pecuniary national benefit in the extermination of Protestants, it would be in fact a price set on their heads, and they would be hunted down like wolves...._ Better, far better, would it be to confiscate at once and for ever all the endowments held by the clergy, and leave them to be supported by voluntary contribution, or by manual labour. However impoverished, _they and their congregations would at least have security for their lives._” “_To seek to pacify Ireland_,” he writes a little further on, “_by compliance and favour shown to its disturbers would be even worse than the superstitious procedure of our forefathers, with their weapon salve, who left the wound to itself, and applied their unguents to the sword which had inflicted it._” Writing to his friend Senior on Parliamentary Reform he says that a system of £10 qualification “could not last, but must go on to universal suffrage.” His own plan would be universal suffrage with a plurality of votes to owners of property in proportion to the amount of it, and a system of election by degrees--parishes _e.g._ to elect an elector. “Some may,” he concludes, “perhaps think at the first glance that my reform is very democratical. I think that a more attentive mind will show that it is calculated to prevent in the most effectual way the inroads of excessive democracy. I can at least say that no one can dread more than myself a democratical government, chiefly because I am convinced it is the most warlike.” Such were the utterances of an advanced Liberal in the first half of this century. Was I far wrong in saying that Whately’s Liberalism would have made very good modern Conservatism? There was a story current, I remember, not long after Whately’s acceptance of the see of Dublin, which, as I do not think it has been told in print, and as it is very significant, I may tell here--observing that all I know is, that the story _was_ current.