Lords in 1732, the proportion of Catholics to Protestants was not 2 to 1. It is now (as we have already observed) 4 to 1; and the causes which have thus altered the proportions in favour of the Catholics are sufficiently obvious to any one acquainted with the state of Ireland. The Roman Catholic priest resides; his income entirely depends upon the number of his flock and he must exert himself, or he starves. There is some chance of success, therefore, in his efforts to convert; but the Protestant clergyman, if he were equally eager, has little or no probability of persuading so much larger a proportion of the population to come over to his church. The Catholic clergyman belongs to a religion that has always been more desirous of gaining proselytes than the Protestant church; and he is animated by a sense of injury and a desire of revenge. Another reason for the disproportionate increase of Catholics is, that the Catholics will marry upon means which the Protestant considers as insufficient for marriage. A few potatoes and a shed of turf, are all that Luther has left for the Romanist; and, when the latter gets these, he instantly begins upon the great Irish manufacture of children. But a Protestant belongs to the sect that eats the fine flour, and leaves the bran to others; he must have comforts, and he does not marry till he gets them. He would be ashamed, if he were seen living as a Catholic lives. This is the principal reason why the Protestants who remain attached to their church do not increase so fast as the Catholics. But in common minds, daily scenes, the example of the majority, the power of imitation, decide their habits, religious as well as civil. A Protestant labourer who works among Catholics, soon learns to think and act and talk as they do he is not proof against the eternal panegyric which he hears of Father O'Leary. His Protestantism is rubbed away; and he goes at last, after some little resistance, to the chapel, where he sees every body else going.

These eight Catholics not only hate the ninth man, the Protestant of the Establishment, for the unjust privileges he enjoys not only remember that the lands of their

father were given to his father-but they find themselves forced to pay for the support of his religion. In the wretched state of poverty in which the lower orders of Irish are plunged, it is not without considerable effort that they can pay the few shillings necessary for the support of their Catholic priest; and when this is effected, a tenth of the potatoes in the garden are to be set out for the support of a persuasion, the introduction of which into Ireland they consider as the great cause of their political inferiority, and all their manifold wretchedness. În England, a labourer can procure constant employment or he can, at the worst, obtain relief from his parish. Whether tithe operates as a tax upon him, is known only to the political economist: if he does pay it, he does not know that he pays it; and the burthen of supporting the Clergy is at least kept out of his view. But, in Ireland, the only method in which a poor man lives, is by taking a small portion of land, in which he can grow potatoes: seven or eight months out of twelve, in many parts of Ireland, there is no constant employment of the poor: and the potatoe farm is all that shelters them from absolute famine. If the Pope were to come in person, and seize upon every tenth potatoe, the poor peasant would scarcely endure it. With what patience, then, can he see it tossed into the cart of the heretic Rector, who has a church without a congregation, and a revenue without duties?

We do not say whether these things are right or wrong -whether they want a remedy at all—or what remedy they want; but we paint them in those colours in which they appear to the eye of poverty and ignorance, without saying whether those colours are false or true. Nor is the case at all comparable to that of Dissenters paying tithe in England; which case is precisely the reverse of what happens in Ireland, for it is the contribution of a very small minority to the religion of a very large majority; and the numbers on either side make all the difference in the argument. To exasperate the poor Catholic still more, the rich graziers of the parish the squire in his parish-pay no tithe at all for their

or

grass land. Agistment tithe is abolished in Ireland; and the burthen of supporting two Churches seems to devolve upon the poorer Catholics, struggling with plough and spade in small scraps of dearly-rented land. Tithes seem to be collected in a more harsh manner than they are collected in England. The minute subdivisions of land in Ireland - the little connection which the Protestant clergyman commonly has with the Catholic population of his parish, have made the introduction of tithe proctors very general-sometimes as the agent of the clergyman-sometimes as the lessee or middle-man between the clergyman and the cultivator of the land; but, in either case, practised, dexterous estimators of tithe. The English clergymen, in general, are far from exacting the whole of what is due to them, but sacrifice a little to the love of popularity or to the dread of odium. A system of tithe-proctors established all over England (as it is in Ireland), would produce general disgust and alienation from the Established Church.

6

'During the administration of Lord Halifax,' says Mr. Hardy, in quoting the opinion of Lord Charlemont upon tithes paid by Catholics, Ireland was dangerously disturbed in its southern and northern regions. In the south principally, in the counties of Kilkenny, Limerick, Cork, and Tipperary, the White Boys now made their first appearance; those White Boys, who have ever since occasionally disturbed the public tranquillity, without any rational method having been as yet pursued to eradicate this disgraceful evil. When we consider, that the very same district has been for the long space of seven and twenty years liable to frequent returns of the same disorder into which it has continually relapsed, in spite of all the violent remedies from time to time administered by our political quacks, we cannot doubt but that some real, peculiar, and topical cause must exist; and yet, neither the removal, nor even the investigation of this cause, has ever once been seriously attempted. Laws of the most sanguinary and unconstitutional nature have been enacted; the country has been disgraced, and exasperated by frequent and bloody executions; and the gibbet, that perpetual resource of weak and cruel legislators, has groaned under the multitude of starving criminals: yet, while the cause is suffered to exist, the effects will ever follow. The amputation of limbs

will never eradicate a prurient humour, which must be sought in its source, and there remedied.'

I wish,' continues Mr. Wakefield, for the sake of humanity, and for the honour of the Irish character, that the gentlemen of that country would take this matter into their serious consideration. Let them only for a moment place themselves in the situation of the half-famished cotter, surrounded by a wretched family, clamorous for food; and judge what his feelings must be, when he sees the tenth part of the produce of his potato garden exposed at harvest time to public cant; or, if he have given a promissory note for the payment of a certain sum of money, to compensate for such tithe when it becomes due, to hear the heart-rending cries of his offspring clinging round him, and lamenting for the milk of which they are deprived, by the cows being driven to the pound, to be sold to discharge the debt. Such accounts are not the creations of fancy; the facts do exist, and are but too common in Ireland. Were one of them transferred to canvas by the hand of genius, and exhibited to English humanity, that heart must be callous indeed that could refuse its sympathy. I have seen the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling after, through wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of this their only friend and benefactor, at the pound gate. I have heard with emotions which I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village as the cavalcade proceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the domain walls of the opulent grazier, whose numerous herds were cropping the most luxuriant pastures, while he was secure from any demand for the tithe of their food, looking on with the most unfeeling indifference.'-Wakefield, p. 486.

In Munster, where tithe of potatoes is exacted, risings against the system have constantly occurred during the last forty years. In Ulster, where no such tithe is required, these insurrections are unknown. The double church which Ireland supports, and that painful visible contribution towards it which the poor Irishman is compelled to make from his miserable pittance, is one great cause of those never-ending insurrections, burnings, murders, and robberies, which have laid waste that ill-fated country for so many years. The unfortunate consequence of the civil disabilities, and the church payments under which the Catholics labour, is a rooted antipathy to this

country. They hate the English Government from historical recollection, actual suffering, and disappointed hope; and till they are better treated, they will continue to hate it. At this moment, in a period of the most profound peace, there are twenty-five thousand of the best disciplined and best appointed troops in the world in Ireland, with bayonets fixed, presented arms, and in the attitude of present war: nor is there a man too much nor would Ireland be tenable without them. When it was necessary last year (or thought necessary) to put down the children of Reform, we were forced to make a new levy of troops in this country-not a man could be spared from Ireland. The moment they had embarked, Peep-of-day Boys, Heart-of-Oak Boys, Twelve-o'clock Boys, Heart-of-Flint Boys, and all the bloody boyhood of the Bog of Allen, would have proceeded to the ancient work of riot, rapine, and disaffection. Ireland, in short, till her wrongs are redressed, and a more liberal policy is adopted towards her, will always be a cause of anxiety and suspicion to this country; and, in some moment of our weakness and depression, will forcibly extort what she would now receive with gratitude and exultation.

Ireland is situated close to another island of greater size, speaking the same language, very superior in civilisation, and the seat of government. The consequence of this is the emigration of the richest and most powerful part of the community a vast drain of wealth and the absence of all that wholesome influence which the representatives of ancient families residing upon their estates, produce upon their tenantry and dependants. Can any man imagine that the scenes which have been acted in Ireland within these last twenty years, would have taken place, if such vast proprietors as the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Lansdown, Earl Fitzwilliam, and inany other men of equal wealth, had been in the constant habit of residing upon their Irish, as they are upon their English, estates? Is it of no consequence to the order, and the civilisation of a large district, whether the great mansion is inhabited