Now these civil disabilities do not directly affect the priests; they therefore must have ulterior views, and though it must be flattering to their vanity to shew that they have the Irish representation in their own hands, and though their worldly interest and that of their connections will, they know, immediately profit by that dominion, what they look for principally is the advancement of their religion at the cost of Protestantism; that would bring everything else in its train.

While it is obvious that the political agitators could not rouse the people without the intervention of the priests, it is true that the priests could not excite the people without a hope that from the exaltation of their Church their social condition would be improved.

What in Irish interpretation these words would mean we may tremble to think of.
In whatever way we look, religion is so much mixed up in this matter, that the guardians of the Episcopal Church of the Empire are imperiously called upon to show themselves worthy of the high trust reposed in them.
You, my Lord, are convinced that, in spite of the best securities that can be given, the admission of Roman Catholics into the Legislature is a dangerous experiment.

Oaths cannot be framed that will avail here; the only securities to be relied upon are what we have little hope to see--the Roman Church reforming itself, and a Ministry and a Parliament sufficiently sensible of the superiority of the one form of religion over the other to be resolved, not only to preserve the present rights and immunities of the Protestant Church inviolate, but prepared by all fair means for the extension of its influence, with a hope that it may gradually prevail over Papacy.
It is, we trust, the intention of Providence that the Church of Rome should in due time disappear; and come what may on the Church of England, we have the satisfaction of knowing that in defending a Government resting upon a Protestant basis--say what they will, the other party have abandoned--we are working for the welfare of humankind, and supporting whatever there is of dignity in our frail nature.
Here I might stop; but I am above measure anxious for the course which the bench of bishops may take at this crisis.

They are appealed to, and even by the Heir Presumptive to the throne from his seat in Parliament.
There will be attempts to brow-beat them on the score of humanity; but humanity is, if it deserves the name, a calculating and prospective quality; it will on this occasion balance an evil at hand with a far greater one that is sure, or all but sure, to come.