Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/158

 of themselves, are either unlearned, or men of some bad note, for which they have forsaken England. So as the bishop, to whom they shal be presented, may justly reject them as incapable and insufficient. Secondly, the bishop himselfe is perhappes an Irish man, who being made iudge, by that law, of the sufficiencie of the ministers, may at his owne will, dislike of the Englishman, as unworthy in his opinion, and admit of any Irish, whom hee shall thinke more for his turne. And if hee shall at the instance of any Englishman of countenance there, whom hee will not displease, accept of any such English minister as shall bee tendred unto him, yet hee will under hand carry such a hard hand over him, or by his officers wring him so sore, that hee will soone make him weary of his poore living. Lastly, the benefices themselves are so meane, and of so small profite in those Irish countreyes, thorough the ill husbandrie of the Irish people which doe inhabite them, that they will not yeelde any competent maintenance for any honest minister to live upon, scarcely to buy him a gowne. And were all this redressed (as haply it might bee) yet what good should any English minister doe amongst them, by teaching or preaching to them, which either cannot understand him, or will not heare him? Or what comfort of life shall he have, where his parishioners are so insatiable, so intractable, so ill-affected to him, as they usuall bee to all the English; or finally, how dare almost any honest minister, that are peaceable civill men, commit his