108 THREK DATS AND THREE NIGHTS ON BOARD A STEAMER. 



collect, but certes we had a seventh. In order to pass the time, we got 

 the table covered, that we might have dinner the moment the vessel was 

 unmoored, and before we got into what we had every reason, from ap- 

 pearances, to suppose would be rough water. 



Dinner was soon over, and we all did full justice to what the steward 

 set before us. After dinner, each one was enjoying his glass of toddy amid 

 the conversation, which was of a very general kind, and in which all 

 joined. By degrees, however, it rested upon the harm or the good which 

 Ireland was receiving from the church as established by law. The me- 

 dical man was a bigoted Catholic, and maintained the injustice of obliging 

 a Catholic population to support a protestant establishment ; he of the 

 nicely clad raiments said that, for his part, he would, as a general princi- 

 ple, allow every one to think for himself, and sujiport what religion he 

 thought best, }'et he could not see any great hardship there was in ob- 

 liging a people groaning under the rank bigotry, sujierstition, and into- 

 lerance of Popish en'or to support the pure doctrines of protestantism, 

 as every one must admit who knew anything at all, that Protestantism 

 was the only true faith. We, on the contrary, defended the rights of 

 conscience on the broadest ground, and denied the right of any sect to say 

 their's was the true faith. The soldier denied that the church of England 

 could be called a sect ; it was the religion that the king, the government, 

 and the people, had sworn to accept, and therefore they who denied its 

 tenets, ought to be at least obliged to support it — even though it should 

 be at the point of the sword ; while the provision-dealer called us all a 

 parcel of bigoted fools for believing either in one sect or another, and 

 openly avowed himself an atheist, and at the same time a believer in 

 Bishop Berkely's theories : why he disbelieved the actuality of his own 

 existence he said he knew not— but such was the fact, and he cared 

 nothing more about it. 



It may easily be supposed that, with such an incongruous mixture of 

 opinions, and especially over a glass of toddy, all harmony and real 

 argument were soon lost, and what termination might have been made to 

 the debate it is hard to prophesy, had every one been allowed to carry it 

 on as he wished. Much snarling had been manifested on the part of the 

 soldier and the dealer in provisions, and each party had during the dis- 

 cussion told the situation in which he stood in society ; but the wind 

 was now blowing hard above, and the sea was rough below, which caused 

 the vessel to pitch so much that the lieutenant stretched himself upon 

 the sofa, after declaring that it was foolish to enter into a discussion of 

 this kind with a dealer in pigs. Having said this, he uttered a groan, but 

 was roused from his sickness for a moment at his adversary throwing 

 back the term pig-dealer with contempt, telling him that it was at least 

 an lionester, if not more honourable trade than that of a pig-driver, 

 •which he had doubtless been during the time he had served in Ireland. 

 The answer to this unceremonious retaliation upon the man of fire 

 was attempted, but alas, alas ! the most honourable of men have some- 

 times to succumb to circumstances, and he was, notwithstanding he held 

 a commission in his Majesty's service, obliged to content himself with 

 again laying down his head, and uttering a series, not of oaths, but of 

 groans, which were, we shrewdly guessed, not for the benighted condi- 

 tion of the pig-dealer's mind, but for the perturbed state of the pig-driver's 



