per cent. are
Catholics. More than three-fourths of the magistrates are Protestants;
and they bear about the same proportion on the grand juries. According
to the theory and practice of the constitution, all power, legislative
and administrative, must be based on the ownership of land. The
rate-payers have a voice indeed, but it is generally nothing but
an echo of the landlord's voice; what else can it be when they are
tenants-at-will, depending on the mercy of the proprietor for the
means of existence? In county offices, the Protestants have an
overwhelming majority. It is the same in all the offices filled by
government patronage, except the judges of the superior courts. There
Catholics are in the majority, because they had obtained seats in the
House of Commons.

On the boards of guardians the mass of the poor might expect that
a majority of guardians would be prompted by national and religious
feeling to sympathise with them, so that they would find in the master
and matron, the doctor and the relieving officer, something like the
natural tenderness which a common kindred and creed inspire. But half
the guardians are _ex-officio_ members, as magistrates; nearly all
landlords and Protestants. They have in addition 'property votes,' and
'residence votes;' so that, with their influence over the elections,
they are generally able to pack the board; and in that case the
officials are almost invariably Protestants and conservatives. I know
a union in which three-fourths of the rate-payers are Roman Catholics;
and yet, with the utmost efforts of the priests, they were not able to
elect a single Catholic guardian. To meet the landlord pressure,
some of the rate-payers were required to sign their voting papers in
presence of their pastors, yet so terrible was that pressure that they
afterwards took them to the agent's office, and, to make assurance
doubly sure, tore them up before his face. I have been told by a
priest, that such is the mortal dread of eviction, or of a permanent
fine in the form of increased rent, that he had known tenants who,
when produced in the witness-box, denied on oath acts of oppression of
which they had been bitterly complaining to himself, and which he well
knew to be facts.

Thus the land-war rages at every board of guardians, in every
dispensary, in every grand jury room, at every petty sessions,
in every county court, in every public institution throughout the
kingdom. The land-agent is th