You are well aware, that, when a man renounces the Roman religion, there is no civil inconvenience or incapacity whatsoever which shall hinder him from joining any new or old sect of Dissenters, or of forming a sect of his own invention upon the most anti-christian principles. Let Mr. Thomas Paine obtain a pardon, (as on change of ministry he may,) there is nothing to hinder him from setting up a church of his own in the very midst of you. He is a natural-born British subject. His French citizenship does not disqualify him, at least upon a peace. This Protestant apostle is as much above all suspicion of Popery as the greatest and most zealous of your sanhedrim in Ireland can possibly be. On purchasing a qualification, (which his friends of the Directory are not so poor as to be unable to effect,) he may sit in Parliament; and there is no doubt that there is not one of your tests against Popery that he will not take as fairly, and as much ex animo, as the best of your zealot statesmen. I push this point no further, and only adduce this example (a pretty strong one, and fully in point) to show what I take to be the madness and folly of driving men, under the existing circumstances, from any positive religion whatever into the irreligion of the times, and its sure concomitant principles of anarchy.
When religion is brought into a question of civil and political arrangement, it must be considered more politically than theologically, at least by us, who are nothing more than mere laymen. In that light, the case of the Catholics of Ireland is peculiarly hard, whether they be laity or clergy. If any of them take part, like the gentleman you mention, with some of the most accredited Protestants of the country, in projects which cannot be more abhorrent to your nature and disposition than they are to mine,—in that case, however few these Catholic factions who are united with factious Protestants may be, (and very few they are now, whatever shortly they may become,) on their account the whole body is considered as of suspected fidelity to the crown, and as wholly undeserving of its favor. But if, on the contrary, in those districts of the kingdom where their numbers are the greatest, where they make, in a manner, the whole body of the people, (as, out of cities, in three fourths of the kingdom they do,) these Catholics show every mark of loyalty and zeal in support of the government, which at best looks on them with an evil eye, then their very loyalty is turned against their claims. They are represented as a contented and happy people, and that it is unnecessary to do anything more in their favor. Thus the factious disposition of a few among the Catholics and the loyalty of the whole mass are equally assigned as reasons for not putting them on a par with those Protestants who are asserted by the government itself, which frowns upon Papists, to be in a state of nothing short of actual rebellion, and in a strong disposition to make common cause with the worst foreign enemy that these countries have ever had to deal with. What in the end can come of all this?
As to the Irish Catholic clergy, their condition is likewise most critical. If they endeavor by their influence to keep a dissatisfied laity in quiet, they are in danger of losing the little credit they possess, by being considered as the instruments of a government adverse to the civil interests of their flock. If they let things take their course, they will be represented as colluding with sedition, or at least tacitly encouraging it. If they remonstrate against persecution, they propagate rebellion. Whilst government publicly avows hostility to that people, as a part of a regular system, there is no road they can take which does not lead to their ruin.
If nothing can be done on your side of the water, I promise you that nothing will be done here. Whether in reality or only in appearance I cannot positively determine, but you will be left to yourselves by the ruling powers here. It is thus ostensibly and above-board; and in part, I believe, the disposition is real. As to the people at large in this country, I am sure they have no disposition to intermeddle in your affairs. They mean you no ill whatever; and they are too ignorant of the state of your affairs to be able to do you any good. Whatever opinion they have on your subject is very faint and indistinct; and if there is anything like a formed notion, even that amounts to no more than a sort of humming that remains on their ears of the burden of the old song about Popery. Poor souls, they are to be pitied, who think of nothing but dangers long passed by, and but little of the perils that actually surround them.
I have been long, but it is almost a necessary consequence of dictating, and that by snatches, as a relief from pain gives me the means of expressing my sentiments. They can have little weight, as coming from me; and I have not power enough of mind or body to bring them out with their natural force. But I do not wish to have it concealed that I am of the same opinion, to my last breath, which I entertained when my faculties were at the best; and I have not held back from men in power in this kingdom, to whom I have very good wishes, any part of my sentiments on this melancholy subject, so long as I had means of access to persons of their consideration.
I have the honor to be, &c.