nd 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 emig