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ON THE FOREGOING

LETTER AND DEFENCE.

Addreffed to the CONDUCTORS of the FREE-PRESS.

GEN LEMEN

I Know that it is lofs of time, and a lofs to the

public, impatient for a paper in which they have firft difcovered the outlines of their country's rights, and from whence they daily expect new illustrations, on the most important fubjects, to take up the Freeman's Journal with idle controverfy. Were controverfy the fubject, I fhould be the laft to enter the lift.

In your paper, which has already made its way to the continent, on account of the late exertions of the Irish, and which fhould contain nothing unworthy the nervous eloquence and fiberal principles of your numerous and learned

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correfpondents, Mr. Wefley, in a fyllogiftical method, and the jargon of the schools, has arraigned the Catholics all over the world, with their kings and fubjects, their prelates and doctors, as liars, perjurers, patentees of guilt and perjury, authorized by their priests to violate the facred rules of order and juftice; and unworthy of being tolerated even by Turks and Pagans. Such a charge carries with it, its own confutation. But are there not prejudiced people still in the world? The nine skins of parchment, filled with the names of petitioners against the English Catholics, owe the variety of their fignatures, to pulpit declamations and inflammatory pamphlets, teeming with Mr. Wefley's false affertions: and, to the dif grace of the peerage, in this variety of fignatures, is not the lord's hand-writing ftretched near the scratch of the cobler's awl? For the parchment would be profaned, if the man who does not know how to write, made the fign of the +.

I am a member of that communion which Mr. Wesley afperfed in fo cruel a manner. I disclaimed upon oath, in prefence of judge Henn, the creed which Mr. Wefley attributes to me. I have been the firft to unravel the intricacies of that very oath of allegiance

See Mr. Welley's letter, page 5.

própofed

propofed to the Roman Catholics as it is worded in a manner which, at first fight, feems abftrufe. And, far from believing it lawful to "violate faith with heretics," I folemnly fwear, without equivocation, or the danger of perjury, that, in a Catholic country, where I was chaplain of war, I thought it a crime to engage the king of England's foldiers or. failors into the fervice of a Catholic monarch, against their Proteftant fovereign. I refifted the folicitations, and ran the risk of incurring the displeasure of a minifter of state, and lofing my pension: and my conduct was approved by all the divines in a monastery to which I then belonged, who all unanimously declared, that, in conscience, I could not have behaved otherwise.

Mr. Wesley may confider me as a fictitious. character: but fhould he follow his precurfor, (I mean his letter, wafted to us over the British channel) and on his miffion from Dublin to Bandon, make Cork his way,-doctor Berkely, parish minister, near Middleton,-captains. Stanner, French, and others, who were prifoners of war, in the fame place, and at the fame time, can fully fatisfy him as to the reality of my existence, in the line already defcribed; and that in the beard which I then wore, and which, like that of fir Thomas More, never committed any treafon, I never concealed either poifon or dagger to destroy my

Proteftant

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