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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and Catholics have now been abolished, and the restrictions on the Irish commerce and manufactures have been repealed; the bill for the reform of the Irish representative system has passed, and that for the reform of the Irish municipal corporations cannot be long delayed.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

Presbyterians

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:

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From these statements it appears that the members of the Established Church are rather more than 10 per cent., the Roman Catholics rather more than 80 per cent., the Presbyterians rather more than 8 per cent., and the Protestant Dissenters about one-fifth per cent. of the entire population of Ireland. The Roman Catholics constitute the great bulk of the community in the three provinces of Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam; and in that of Armagh they are more than half the population. The Protestants of the Established Church occur in greatest numbers in the province of Ulster, and in the large towns, as Dublin, Limerick, Cork, and Waterford. Nevertheless they are very generally diffused over the face of the country, and there is no considerable part of the surface of Ireland in which some Protestants are not to be found. Thus, out of 1387 benefices into which Ireland is divided, there are

only 41 in which there is no member of the Established Church, and only 223 in which there are between 1 and 50; leaving 1123 benefices, in each of which there are more than 50 Episcopalian Protestants. This general dispersion of the Church Protestants over the entire country is to be particularly noticed, since it greatly increases the difficulty (as will be presently pointed out) of making a state-provision for their worship. With the Presbyterians it is otherwise, as they are chiefly confined to the province of Armagh, or indeed to that part of it which lies in the civil province of Ulster*; the Presbyterians being less than one per cent. of the population in the three provinces of Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam, while in that of Armagh they are more than 20 per cent. If as large a proportion of the 852,064 members of the Established Church were in the province of Leinster as there is of the 642,356 Presbyterians in the province of Ulster†. the difficulty of making a legislative settlement of the Irish Church question would be very much less than it is with the existing distribution of the former class of Protestants.

It should be further observed, that owing to the manner in which Ireland has been settled, the Protestants, especially those of the Established Church, belong to the richer classes; and that the Roman Ca

*The diocese of Dromore contains upwards of 36 per cent.; of Down, upwards of 52 per cent.; of Connor, upwards of 53 per cent.; and of Derry, upwards of 32 per cent. of Presbyterians on the entire population. The dioceses of Ardagh and Meath (equally in the province of Armagh) together contain only about one-tenth per cent. of Presbyterians; that is to say, out of 617,295 persons, only 1138 are Presbyterians.

+ Out of 642,356 Presbyterians, 638,073 are in the province of Armagh; and of the latter, all but about 1138 (as has been just mentioned) are in Ulster.

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