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The greater part of these incapacities are removed, though many of a very serious and oppressive nature still remain. But the grand misfortune is that the spirit which these oppressive laws engendered remains. The Protestant still looks upon the Catholic as a degraded being. The Catholic does not yet consider himself upon an equality with his former tyrant and taskmaster. That religious hatred which required all the prohibiting vigilance of the law for its restraint has found in the law its strongest support; and the spirit which the law first exasperated and embittered continues to act long after the original stimulus is withdrawn. The law which prevented Catholics from serving on Grand Juries is repealed; but Catholics are not called upon Grand Juries in the proportion in which they are entitled by their rank and fortune. The Duke of Bedford did all he could to give them the benefit of those laws which are already passed in their favour. But power is seldom entrusted in this country to one of the Duke of Bedford’s liberality, and everything has fallen back in the hands of his successors into the ancient division of the privileged and degraded castes. We do not mean to cast any reflection upon the present Secretary for Ireland, whom we believe to be upon this subject a very liberal politician, and on all subjects an honourable and excellent man. The Government under which he serves allows him to indulge in a little harmless liberality; but it is perfectly understood that nothing is intended to be done for the Catholics; that no loaves and fishes will be lost by indulgence in Protestant insolence and tyranny; and, therefore, among the generality of Irish Protestants, insolence, tyranny, and exclusion continue to operate. However eligible the Catholic may be, he is not elected; whatever barriers may be thrown down, he does not advance a step. He was first kept out by law; he is now kept out by opinion and habit. They have been so long in chains that nobody believes they are capable of using their hands and feet.

It is not, however, the only or the worst misfortune of the Catholics that the relaxations of the law are hitherto of little benefit to them; the law is not yet sufficiently relaxed. A Catholic, as everybody knows, cannot be made sheriff; cannot be in parliament; cannot be a director of the Irish Bank; cannot fill the great departments of the law, the army, and the navy; is cut off from all the high objects of human ambition, and treated as a marked and degraded person.

The common admission now is that the Catholics are to the Protestants in Ireland as about four to one, of which Protestants not more than ONE HALF belong to the Church of Ireland. This, then, is one of the most striking features in the state of Ireland. That the great mass of the population is completely subjugated and overawed by a handful of comparatively recent settlers, in whom all the power and patronage of the country is vested, who have been reluctantly compelled to desist from still greater abuses of authority, and who look with trembling apprehension to the increasing liberality of the parliament and the country towards these unfortunate persons whom they have always looked upon as their property and their prey.

Whatever evils may result from these proportions between the oppressor and oppressed–to whatever dangers a country so situated may be considered to be exposed, these evils and dangers are rapidly increasing in Ireland. The proportion of Catholics to Protestants is infinitely greater now than it was thirty years ago, and is becoming more and more favourable to the former. By a return made to the Irish House of Lords in 1732 the proportion of Catholics to Protestants was not two to one. It is now (as we have already observed) four to one; and the causes which have thus altered the proportions in favour of the Catholics are sufficiently obvious to any one acquainted with the state of Ireland. The Roman Catholic priest resides; his income entirely depends upon the number of his flock; and he must exert himself or he starves. There is some chance of success, therefore, in HIS efforts to convert; but the Protestant clergyman, if he were equally eager, has little or no probability of persuading so much larger a proportion of the population to come over to his Church. The Catholic clergyman belongs to a religion that has always been more desirous of gaining proselytes than the Protestant Church; and he is animated by a sense of injury and a desire of revenge. Another reason for the disproportionate increase of Catholics is that the Catholics will marry upon means which the Protestant considers as insufficient for marriage. A few potatoes and a shed of turf are all that Luther has left for the Romanist; and, when the latter gets these, he instantly begins upon the great Irish manufacture of children. But a Protestant belongs to the sect that eats the fine flour and heaves the bran to others; he must have comforts, and he does not marry till he gets them. He would be ashamed if he were seen living as a Catholic lives. This is the principal reason why the Protestants who remain attached to their Church do not increase so fast as the Catholics. But in common minds, daily scenes, the example of the majority, the power of imitation, decide their habits, religious as well as civil. A Protestant labourer who works among Catholics soon learns to think and act and talk as they do; he is not proof against the eternal panegyric which he hears of Father O’Leary. His Protestantism is rubbed away, and he goes at last, after some little resistance, to the chapel where he sees everybody else going.