338 ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. 



under the superintendence of the Commissioners, which 

 the Catholics allow their children to attend, the school- 

 master may be a deist*." 



[* The author, like most controversialists, is quite ignorant of the 

 principles of his opponent. The unfairness of his argument consists 

 in making two contradictory charges, and shifting them from time to 

 time as suits his object. First, that Protestantism is a mass of dis- 

 cordant sects, no two of which agree together. Secondly, that a thing 

 which is true of one Protestant sect, is equally so of all ; whereas, 

 according to his first charge, the fact of a Protestant sect holding any 

 one thing, should be a proof that no other hold the same. 



The error against which every loyal Englishman wishes to see 

 Papists delivered is, that any priest, no matter whether a bishop of 

 Rome, or of Dublin, or of London, has any right to absolve the Queen's 

 subjects from their allegiance to her. This is a practical question : po- 

 lemists may dispute about the immaculate conception, the intercession 

 of saints, &c. &c., and it may be convenient for Romanists to turn 

 aside to such questions, and so evade the real pinching place ; but this 

 is the question which makes all Protestants know that it is not safe to 

 give men political power who believe in such a maxim ; and Papists 

 know well that they are suffered to profess a loyalty at present in par- 

 tibus irtfidelium, which they dare not avow in Rome ; they know that 

 no preacher would be suffered in Rome who should declare that the 

 Pope had not power to absolve subjects from oaths of allegiance, to 

 make incest lawful, &c. &c. 



The error of the system of education was, not that it intended to 

 make the children members of one sect in preference to another, but 

 that it endeavoured to conduct education really without any religion 

 at all : yet to represent it as a meditated attack on the sect of Rome 

 alone, is a gross perversion of the object of the Government and of the 

 Commissioners. ENGLISH EDITOR.] 



