equally unable to resist the pressure of the land-craving necessities of the peasantry, and that he has no means, even if he understands his interest, and is ready to act upon his conviction, of bringing about a state of things, in which the labourer shall live by money received from the farmer, not from land allowed by the proprietor. With the present law, and in the present form of society, the Irish landlords may make a few isolated attempts to struggle against the stream, and some may meet with a partial success: but in the mean time the multiplication of the people goes on with perpetually increasing velocity; every year adds to the number of claimants for potato-grounds, and, by further subdividing the land, diminishes the means of employment; thus tending, slowly, perhaps, but inevitably, to that worst form of civil convulsion, a war for the means of subsistence. 341 THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. ALL the chief grievances of Ireland, so far as they are at present the subjects of complaint, may be considered as falling under the two heads of economical or ecclesiastical. The civil distinctions between Protestants and Catholics have now been abolished, and the restrictions on the Irish commerce and manufactures have been repealed; the bill for the reform of the Irish representative system has passed, and that for the reform of the Irish municipal corporations cannot be long delayed. The well-founded dissatisfaction at the manner in which the grant for the education of the Irish poor was administered has now been in great measure removed. There remain now only two main causes of uneasiness in Ireland,—the condition of the peasantry, and the position of the Established Protestant Church and the Roman Catholic Church with respect to the State. One of the most important elements in the condition of the agricultural population, as bearing upon the question of a Poor Law for Ireland, has been already discussed in the foregoing pages I propose now to enter into the consideration of the second of these two subjects; for which purpose it will be desirable, first, to state briefly the condition of Ireland in respect of the religious denominations of its inhabitants, and the evils arising from this condition, and then to attempt to discover whether there is any satisfactory method of removing those evils which, from the time of the Reformation to the present day, have been caused by the policy of the English Government with regard to the differences of religion in Ireland. According to the census taken by the Commissioners of Public Instruction, the entire population of Ireland, in 1834, was distributed as follows into religious denominations:- Members of the Established Church Other Protestant Dissenters. Total of Protestants Roman Catholics Total population 852,064 642,356 21,808 1,516,228 6,427,712 7,943,940 The numbers of the several religious persuasions were thus distributed according to provinces: |