text:  Where in the civilized world but in Ireland can you find a "sliding-scale" of fees for the perpetration of murder? And why is this so? Because the religious instruction of the people has been totally neglected; because their priests have become politicians and stopping at nothing to accomplish their objects they teach the peasantry by private precept and example to disrespect and disregard those doctrines which they publicly inculcate; because their bishops pitchforked from the potatoe-basket to the palace become drunk with the incense offered to their vulgar vanity and the patronage granted in return for their unprincipled political support instead of checking the misconduct of the subordinates stimulate them to still further violence [9] and stop at nothing which can forward their objects; because the opinions of the people are formed on the statements and advice of mendicant agitators who have but one object in view their own pecuniary aggrandizement; because a rabid and revolutionary press concealing its ultimate designs under the praiseworthy and proper motive of affording protection to the weak seeks to overturn all law and order and pandering to the worst passions of an ignorant and ferocious populace goads them by the most unfounded and mischievous statements to the commission of crime and then adduces the atrocity of their acts as a proof of the injustice of their treatment