A
refugee for religion was a protected character. Now the reception is
cold indeed; and therefore, as the asylum abroad is destroyed, the
hardship at home is doubled. This hardship is the more intolerable
because the professions are shut up. The Church is so of course. Much is
to be said on that subject, in regard to them, and to the Protestant
Dissenters. But that is a chapter by itself. I am sure I wish well to
that Church, and think its ministers among the very best citizens of
your country. However, such as it is, a great walk in life is forbidden
ground to seventeen hundred thousand of the inhabitants of Ireland. Why
are they excluded from the law? Do not they expend money in their suits?
Why may not they indemnify themselves, by profiting, in the persons of
some, for the losses incurred by others? Why may not they have persons
of confidence, whom they may, if they please, employ in the agency of
their affairs? The exclusion from the law, from grand juries, from
sheriffships and under-sheriffships, as well as from freedom in any
corporation, may subject them to dreadful hardships, as it may exclude
them wholly from all that is beneficial and expose them to all that is
mischievous in a trial by jury.
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