come of age. It attacked absentee landlords who "riot in the wantonness of luxury" while leaving management of their estates to an agent, "whose principle business is to ingratiate himself with his master, by squeezing the uttermost farthing of rack-rent out of the starved bellies of a laborious and industrious tenantry". Other, more regular, themes included the need for a general education system, freedom of the press, and abolition of the slave trade. But Drennan's chief preoccupations remained the government's failure to deliver on the promise of political equality for Catholics, its corrupting "courtship" of the Presbyterian clergy (Drennan denounced the acceptance of regium donum grants) and the "long-drawn-out pointless and wasteful folly" of the war with France (for which he continued to pillory the late Edmund Burke as "the trumpet"). Religion and the State Consistent with his father's teaching from the pulpit of Belfast's First Presbyterian, on religious matters Drennan deferred to conscience rather than to doctrine, or to civil authority. In this light "Christianity properly called" had, in his view, "scarcely appeared on this earth since the death of Christ". He had no sympathy at all for the Sabbatarianism that was the mark of Old Light and evangelical Protestantism: "the abolition of Sunday" he suggested, "would be a blessing". In 1792 Drennan proposed: "My toast should be--The Sovereignty of the People--not of any party; the ascendancy of Christianity, not of any Church". Rejecting anything indicative of religious establishment, after the Union he objected not only to the regnium donum for Presbyterian ministers but (aligning himself with Daniel O'Connell in the Veto Controversy), also to acceptance, as a condition for final Catholic Emancipation, of a British Crown veto in the papal appointment of Irish bishops. Catholic political association At the same time, Drennan retained his distrust of a distinct, organised, Catholic interest, such as had begun to re-emerge under the leadership of Daniel O'Connell in the course of the Veto Controversy. In campaigning to remove the remaining sacramental barriers to their participation in Parliament and the higher offices of state, Catholics might help restore a sense of public spirit to Irish society, but not if they determined to do so exclusively by their own efforts. He cautioned Catholics against replicating "the errors, the follies, and the crimes of past and present administrations, in perpetuating a distinctness, a separating instead of an associating spirit". He proposed organising the campaign through