Gazette Of The United States

DUBLIN, SEPTEMBER 10.

We have strong assurances that a very considerable number of Catholic dissenting farmers and peasantry of Ireland have it in contemplation to try the experiment of a French hemisphere as soon as the present troubles shall in that country subside, and the National Assembly are enabled to complete the grand fabric of a free Constitution.

The oppressions which those two sects of people have undergone, not only from the rack of absentee landlords, and middle men, but the oppressive burthens of clerical tythes, and the necessity of supporting two sets of clergy, point out to the Legislature the only system of arrangement that can render this country tolerable to two thirds of its inhabitants—when any other soil is to be found—when the true value of population and industry are estimated by a just scale of liberty and comfort, exempt wholly from vassalage and oppression.

Men begin now to think for themselves, and to separate their temporal and spiritual connections.—The whole property, principal and profit, of every Protestant husbandman in this country, goes once in every ten years to his clergy; and by the same rule, the property of every Dissenter, Catholic and Protestant is transferred to the church once in five years. This will never do— it is a prohibitory tax on industry, which Heaven knows, requires stimulants instead of discouragements in this country. The French National Assembly have abolished tythes—they have done wisely. The French clergy saw the people were in an humor to get rid of the grievance, and not disposed to be cajoled: They therefore made a virtue of necessity, and quietly resigned their pretensions.

This is an admissible precedent, and we trust will have its operation in this country, without an effort of popular violence.