242 Whether money, lying dead in the bank of Amsterdam, would not be as useless as in the mine?
243 Whether our visible security in land could be doubted? And whether there be anything like this in the bank of Amsterdam?
244 Whether it be just to apprehend danger from trusting a national bank with power to extend its credit, to circulate notes which it shall be felony to counterfeit, to receive goods on loans, to purchase lands, to sell also or alienate them, and to deal in bills of exchange; when these powers are no other than have been trusted for many years with the bank of England, although in truth but a private bank?
245 Whether the objection from monopolies and an overgrowth of power, which are made against private banks, can possibly hold against a national one?
246 Whether the evil effects which of late years have attended paper-money and credit in Europe did not spring from subions, shares, dividends, and stock-jobbing?
247 Whether the great evils attending paper-money in the British Plantations of America have not sprung from the overrating their lands, and issuing paper without discretion, and from the legislators breaking their own rules in favour of themselves, thus sacrificing the public to their private benefit? And whether a little sense and honesty might not easily prevent all such inconveniences?
248 Whether the subject of free-thinking in religion be not exhausted? And whether it be not high time for our freethinkers to turn their thoughts to the improvement of their country?
249 Whether it must not be ruinous for a nation to sit down to game, be it with silver or with paper?
250 Whether, therefore, the circulating paper, in the late ruinous schemes of France and England, was the true evil, and not rather the circulating thereof without industry? And whether the bank of Amsterdam, where industry had been for so many years subsisted and circulated by transfers on paper, doth not clearly decide this point?
251 Whether there are not to be seen in America fair, towns, wherein the people are well lodged, fed, and clothed, without a beggar in their streets, although there be not one grain of gold or silver current among them?
252 Whether these people do not exercise all arts and trades, build ships and navigate them to all parts of the world, purchase lands, till and reap the fruits of them, buy and sell, educate and provide for their children? Whether they do not even indulge themselves in foreign vanities?
253 Whether, whatever inconveniences those people may have incurred from not observing either rules or bounds in their paper money, yet it be not certain that they are in a more flourishing condition, have larger and better built towns, more plenty, more industry, more arts and civility, and a more extensive commerce, than when they had gold and silver current among them?
254 Whether a view of the ruinous effects of absurd schemes and credit mismanaged, so as to produce gaming and madness instead of industry, can be any just objection against a national bank calculated purely to promote industry?
255 Whether a scheme for the welfare of this nation should not take in the whole inhabitants? And whether it be not a vain attempt, to project the flourishing of our Protestant gentry, exclusive of the bulk of the natives?
256 Whether an oath, testifying allegiance to the king, and disclaiming the pope's authority in temporals, may not be justly required of the Roman Catholics? And whether, in common prudence or policy, any priest should be tolerated who refuseth to take it?
257 Whether there is any such thing as a body of inhabitants, in any Roman Catholic country under the sun, that profess an absolute submission to the pope's orders in matters of an indifferent nature, or that in such points do not think it their duty to obey the civil government?
258 Whether since the peace of Utrecht, mass was not celebrated and the sacraments administered in divers dioceses of Sicily, notwithstanding the Pope's interdict?
259 Whether a sum which would go but a little way towards erecting hospitals for maintaining and educating the children of the native Irish might not go far in binding them out apprentices to Protestant masters, for husbandry, useful trades, and the service of families?
260 Whether there be any instance of a people's being converted in a Christian sense, otherwise than by preaching to them and instructing them in their own language?
261 Whether catechists in the Irish tongue may not easily be procured and subsisted? And whether this would not be the most practicable means for converting the natives?
262 Whether it be not of great advantage to the Church of Rome, that she hath clergy suited to all ranks of men, in gradual subordination from cardinals down to mendicants?
263 Whether her numerous poor clergy are not very useful in missions, and of much influence with the people?
264 Whether, in defect of able missionaries, persons conversant in low life, and speaking the Irish tongue, if well instructed in the first principles of religion, and in the popish controversy, though for the rest on a level with the parish clerks, or the school-masters of charity-schools, may not be fit to mix with and bring over our poor illiterate natives to the Established Church?
Whether it is not to be wished that some parts of our liturgy and homilies were publicly read in the Irish language? And whether, in these views, it may not be right to breed up some of the better sort of children in the charity-schools, and qualify them for missionaries, catechists, and readers?
265 Whether a squire possessed of land to the value of a thousand pounds per annum, or a merchant worth twenty thousand pounds in cash, would have most power to do good or evil upon any emergency? And whether the suffering Roman Catholics to purchase forfeited lands would not be good policy, as tending to unite their interest with that of the government?