

614 IRELAND AND HER COMMENTATORS. 



It has so long been the fashion of writers on Irish affairs, to attri- 

 bute the calamitous condition of the people of that country to religious 

 dissensions, that it requires the assistance of many stubborn facts to dis- 

 suade most readers of the fallacy of continuing to receive such doctrine 

 implicitly. It is a favourite hobby with the Standard) and writers of 

 that class, to contend that the existence of Catholicity and comfort in 

 Ireland is incompatible ; and in support of this dogma, they point to 

 the superior condition of the Province of Ulster, with its comparative 

 Protestant or anti- Papal population. Mr. Inglis maintains that the 

 difference which is so easily perceptible between a Catholic and an 

 anti-Catholic congregation in the south of Ireland, is the difference 

 between the upper and lower ranks. The gentry and substantial far- 

 mers go to church the labourers and working classes to chapel. One 

 half the population in Munster cannot procure employment at eight- 

 pence, or even sixpence a day, without diet, while the peasantry of 

 the north obtain much more constant work, and receive from ten- 

 pence to one and fourpence. Not only have better wages the effect 

 of improving the Protestants of Ulster, but the Catholics also, very 

 naturally, partake of the benefit. If there were anything in Catho- 

 licity to make men enamoured of poverty and filth, Catholics could 

 not evince their capabilities of enjoying the antithesis of these evils as 

 they do under all circumstances where the same advantages are held 

 out as to the professors of a different creed. We find Protestants in 

 Catholic districts, where competition for land is excessive, and the re- 

 muneration of labour insufficient, quite as badly situated as Catho- 

 lics ; whereas, were not Protestants just as susceptible as the others 

 of being influenced by circumstances, they would be free from the 

 general pressure. We do not find English Catholics different from 

 English dissenters of any denomination, in their social habits ; nor can 

 we ascertain that Catholic emigrants are more slow that their neigh- 

 bours of other faiths to take advantages of circumstances, after the 

 ordinary fashion of the most orthodox. To argue, therefore, that any 

 religion can make its votaries frugal, industrious, and wise, or the re- 

 verse, in the management of worldly matters, is merely to indulge in 

 rancorous polemical vapourings. If any religion have such effect, 

 it is surely not professed by civilized individuals. 



But, it will be asked, if religion in no respect influence the con- 

 duct of men, how comes it, that while the Catholic south and west of 

 Ireland are impoverished and distracted, the Protestant north is 

 wealthy and tranquillized. Mr. Stanley, in his Cloncurry Prize Es- 

 says,* says, that originally all the cottiers in the north, professing the 

 reformed religion received allotments of land, and were weavers ; 

 while they who did not embrace the new creed, were not so favoured, 

 and were, for the most part, field labourers. Mr. Inglis also says, 

 that the Scottish descent of the Ulster men gives them the provident 

 and forethinking characteristics of the canny people beyond the 

 Tweed ; and enables them to avoid the carelessness and prodigality 

 which are almost unfailing accompaniments in the compositions of the 



* Commentaries on Ireland, by W. Stanley. Dublin : Milliken ; London : 

 Hidgway. 



