I cannot deny, however, that Orangeism, with all its crimes and outrages, has rendered very important services to the political Protestantism of the country.

In fact, it was produced at the period of its formation by the almost utter absence of spiritual religion in the Established Church.

Some principle was necessary to keep Protestantism from falling to pieces, and as a good one could not be found in a church which is at this moment one mass of sordid and selfish secularity,* there was nothing left for it but a combination such as this.

Indeed, you could form no conception of the state of the Protestant Church here, even while I write, although you might form a very gorgeous one of the Establishment.

The truth is she is all Establishment and no Church; and is, to quote Swift's celebrated simile-- "Like a fat corpse upon a bed, That rots and stinks in state." * Let the reader remember that this, and almost everything that refers to the Irish Establishment, is supposed to have been written about forty years ago.
"There was no purifying or restraining power in the Establishment to modify, improve, or elevate the principles of Orangeism at all.