Home Rule | Page 5

prolonged struggle with a powerful Catholic tradition, it ended
in the compromise still represented by the Anglican Church. But there
the victory of the Reformation closed. The movement was checked at
St. George's Channel. In Ireland Catholicism stood with its back against
the Atlantic, and fought a stern, long fight against all the political and
social forces of the British Empire. The attack of Protestantism was
supported by the full power and authority of the conqueror. It lasted for
two centuries. It began with Elizabeth and James as a simple imperative,
mercilessly applied without regard to national conditions. It came under
Cromwell as a scorching, devastating flame. It remained under William
and the Georges as a slow, cruel torture applied through all the avenues
of the law. The end of all that effort was, not to convert or destroy, but
to weld the national and religious spirits into one common force, acting
together throughout the nineteenth century as if identical.
Purified by persecution, Catholicism in Ireland, almost alone among
the religions of Western Europe, stands out still to-day as a great
national and democratic force.
But though the persecution failed, it built up, by a double process of
immigration and monopoly, a very powerful Protestant population with
all the stiff pride of ascendancy. For generations the Protestants of
Ireland enjoyed all the offices of government, and had the sole right of
inheritance. Thus both the land and the government slipped into their
hands. Since no Catholic could inherit land under the penal laws, and
since the penal laws lasted for nearly a century, it followed inevitably
that the whole land of Ireland fell into the hands of the Protestants. That
is why even at the present day the vast majority of the Irish landed and
leisured classes are Protestants. The Catholics, during that dark period,
became hewers of wood and drawers of water. Thus property in Ireland
came to mean, not merely a division of classes, but also a division of

creeds. In spite of all the great reforms, the descendants of these
Protestants still retain most of the wealth and most of the Government
offices in Ireland.[8] Their resistance to any change is not, therefore,
altogether surprising; and we must remember amid all the various
war-cries of the present agitation that these gentlemen are fighting, not
merely for the integrity of the Empire, but also for position, income and
power.
This state of affairs has varied very little for the last half-century.
The Census of 1911 contains, like most previous Irish Census returns, a
schedule asking for a statement of religious faith. That enables us to tell
with comparative accuracy the proportions between the Catholics and
Protestants in Ireland since 1861, when the schedule was first
introduced, right up to the present day.
The Preliminary Report shows that the variation has been very slight.
The round figures for 1911 are:--
Roman Catholics 3,238,000 Protestant Episcopalians 575,000
Presbyterians 439,000 Methodists 61,000
The figures for 1861 were:--
Roman Catholics 4,500,000 Protestant Episcopalians 693,000
Presbyterians 523,000 Methodists 45,000[9]
There has been an all-round decrease, corresponding to the decrease of
the population. That decrease has been brought about by emigration,
and that emigration has taken place mainly from the Catholic provinces
of Munster and Connaught. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Catholics
should have diminished more than the Protestants. The result of forty
years' wastage of the Irish Catholic peasantry is that the proportions of
Catholics to Protestants are now three to one, as against four to one in
1861. Allowing for the great fact of westward emigration, this means
that the relations between these two forms of Christianity in Ireland are
practically stationary.

The Protestants, too, we must not forget, are divided into two
sects--Episcopalian and Presbyterian--which in their history have been
almost divided from one another as Catholicism and Protestantism, so
much so that several times in Irish history--as, for instance, in
1798--the Catholic and Presbyterian have been brought together by a
common persecution at the hands of the Episcopalian.
We must also bear in mind that the Protestants are mainly concentrated
in the two provinces of Ulster and Leinster. Ulster contains nearly all
the Irish Presbyterians--421,000 out of 439,000--men who are rather
Scotch by descent than actually native Irish. Ulster also contains
366,000 Episcopalians, making, with 48,000 Methodists, 835,000
Protestants in Ulster, out of 1,075,000 in the whole of Ireland. The rest
of the Episcopalians are in Leinster--round Dublin--where 140,000 are
domiciled. Munster contains less than 60,000 Protestants in all, and
Connaught contains little over 20,000.[10] It is practically a Catholic
province.
The great fact about this religious situation in Ireland, therefore, is that
you have a Catholic country with a strong Protestant minority.
We are asked to believe that this presents an insuperable obstacle to the
gift of self-government. But Ireland