172 Residence of Clergy strictly enforced. 



candid individual. Whether it may have the 

 effect of promoting the cause of protestantism 

 is doubtful ; but that it will remove a stigma 

 from the establishment cannot be questioned. 



After service we visited a charter school. 

 These institutions were established by an act 

 of the Irish Parliament, in 1733, for the in- 

 struction of the children of popish and other 

 poor persons, in the English language, and, for 

 a time, were employed as a political instrument 

 for the conversion of the catholics. In 1775, 

 the board, under whose direction they were 

 regulated, resolved to admit none but catholic 

 children : experience soon proved the inefficacy 

 of this determination, and in 1803 it was re- 

 scinded. The board became ashamed of the 

 means resorted to for making proselytes ; and 

 the execrations attending their efforts excited 

 a general aversion and dislike to these charter 

 schools, which are not considered as seminaries 

 for instruction, but as traps for making pro- 

 testants, by practising on the poverty of 

 parents, who, tempted by the maintenance of 

 their children, connive at their being brought up 

 in an adverse religious persuasion. According 

 to the principle on which these establishments 

 were founded, poor persons' children were to 

 be educated without being required to sub* 

 6 



