“That is generally believed,” said she, ashamed that her violent attack on Bridget had been overheard by one whose good opinion, of late, she was rather anxious to secure, for a delicate reason that shan’t be mentioned here.

“It is generally talked, but not believed, dear miss, unless by the idiots and children into whose minds it is continually dinned by malicious persons, who know that their occupation would be gone if the truth were known, and who struggle to shut out the light and knowledge of Catholicity from the souls of their wretched hearers with the same cruelty that the tyrant shuts out the light of heaven from the dungeon of his captive.  I thought this was a free country,” he continued; “but I find the most odious of tyrannies, domestic tyranny, and the tyranny of opinion, established here.  I, myself, have been its victim in no less than six instances.  Yes, miss, I was turned out of employment, and cheated out of my wages, as I would not say my prayers with, or square my creed in accordance with, the notions of my eccentric and fanatical employers.”

“That was too bad, Murt,” said she, laughing.  “Ha, ha, ha!”

“It was almost as bad as your own attempt to rob these orphan children of the faith of their fathers.  For they were young, innocent, and helpless; but for me, I am able to work, and can defy any tyrant your country affords,” said he, in a passion.  “There is not, I believe,” he added, “on earth, a more odious tyranny, except the landlord tyranny in Ireland, than that of your sectarian Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Nothingarian tyranny in America.”

“You Irish should learn to correspond with the institutions of the country, and should not attempt to introduce Popery into this Protestant land.”

“Protestant land!” said Murty.  “We never dream of this being a Protestant land when we land on its shores.  We look on it as the land of liberty, where no form of religion is dominant, and where all are equally protected.  Protestant land!  Why, this sounds odd in a world first discovered and trod on by Catholics.  This sounds bad in a republic established by the aid of Catholic arms, blood, and treasure, despite of the tyranny of Protestant England.  This slang of Protestant land is intolerable in a people against whose liberties no Catholic sword was ever unsheathed, though the founder of the sect of which your friend Mr. Barker is preacher, John Wesley, offered George III. the services of his forty thousand Methodists to put down the American rebellion.  What American, what republican, then, of spirit or intelligence, can for an hour profess himself a follower in religion of such a fanatic as Wesley, with this well-known fact staring him in the face?  How noble the conduct of Catholic France, or Catholic Ireland, when compared with Protestant England or Protestant Germany, at the time of the revolution!  The two former Catholic nations sent their men, ships, money, clothing, and provisions, to aid your insurgent ancestors; Germany and England sent their armed vessels, their cannon, and their hireling soldiery, to burn the homesteads, desolate the fields, and murder the wives and children of your forefathers.”