“This way, man alive—­”

“Man alive!  To whom do you address such, a term?” said Mr. Lucre; “I really have never met so very vulgar a person; I am quite sickened, upon my honor.  Man alive!!  I trust I shall soon get rid of you.”

“This way, man alive,” responded the priest, “is as free to me, in spite of corrupt jobs and grand juries, as it is to you or any other tyrant, whether spiritual or temporal.  If there are turbulence and disturbances in this parish, it is because bad laws, unjustly administered, drive the people, first, into poverty, and then into resistance.  And, sir, you are not to tell me, for I will not believe it, that a bad law, dishonestly and partially administered, is not to be resisted by every legal means.”

“Do you call noon-day murder, midnight assassination, and incendiarism, legal?  Do you call schooling the people into rebellion, and familiarizing them with crime, legal?  All this may be allegiance to your pope, but it deserves a halter from the king and laws, of England.”

“The king and laws of England, sir, have ever been more liberal of halters to the Irish Catholics, than they have been of either common justice or fair play.  What do the Catholic people get, or have ever got, from you and such as you, in return for the luxury which you draw, without thanks, from their sweat and labor, but gaols, and chains, and scourges, and halters.  Hanging, and transportations, triangles, and drumhead verdicts, are admirable means to conciliate the Catholic people of Ireland.”

“The Catholic people of Ireland may thank you, and such red hot intemperate men as you, for the hangings, and transportations which the violated laws of the country justly awarded them.”

“And have you, sir, who wring the blood and sweat out of them, the audacity to use such language to me?  Did not your English kings and your English laws make education a crime, and did you not then most inhumanly and cruelly punish us for the offences which want of education occasioned?”

“Yes; because you made such knowledge as you then acquired, the vehicle, as you are doing now, of spreading abroad disaffection against Church and State, and of disturbing the peace of the country.”

“Because, proud parson, when the people become enlightened by education, they insist, and will insist upon their rights, and refuse to be pressed to death by such a bloated and blood-sucking incubus as your Established Church.”

“If this be true, then, upon your own showing, you ought to be favorable to education among the people; but that, we know you are not.  You have no schools; and you will not suffer us, who are willing, to educate them for you.”

“Certainly not, we have no notion to sit tamely by and see you, and such as you, instil your own principles into our flocks.  But in talking of education, in what state, let me ask you, is your own church in this blessed year of 1804, with all her wealth and splendor at her back?  I tell you, sir, in every district where the population is equal, we can show two Catholic schools for your one.  When you impute our poverty, sir, as a reluctance to educate our people, you utter a libel against the Catholic priesthood of Ireland for which you deserve to be prosecuted in a court of justice, and nailed snugly to the pillory afterwards.”