“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.”
“Nailed snugly to the pillory! I never felt myself so much degraded as by this conversation with you.”
“Sir, the Catholic priesthood have always been at their duty at the bed of sickness, and sorrow, and death, among the poor and afflicted; where you, who live by their hard and slavish labor, have never been known to show your red nose.”
“Red nose—ha—ha—dear me, how well bred, how admirably accomplished, and how finely polished. Red nose!”
“Faith, you did well to correct me, it is only a mulberry. Wasn't your Irish Establishment in a blessed torpor—dying like a plethoric parson after his venison or turtle, until ould Jack Wesley roused it? Then, indeed, when you saw your flocks running to barns and hedges after the black caps, and the high-cheeked disciples of sanctity and strong dinners—you yawned, rubbed your eyes, stroked your dewlaps, and waddled off to fight in your own defence against the long-winded invaders of your rounds and sirloins. Where was your love of education before that shock, my worthy Bible man? Faith, I'm peppering you!”
“Sir, if I could have anticipated such very vulgar insolence, I would have taken some other way. Why obtrude yourself thus upon me? I trust you have no notion of personal Violence?”