162 ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. [BOOK II. 



can neither work in the mine nor at the anvil. 

 In all ages the only resource of women has been 

 to spin, and modern inventions now deprive them 

 of their sole means of earning a livelihood. 



Let it be attentively remarked, that this number 

 of families, the heads of which are incapable of 

 supporting them, amount to more than a tenth of 

 the whole. Who then is there to provide for so 

 much want, if not the Catholic clergy, a class of 

 men living in celibacy, who by their position con- 

 stitute the intermediate link between the rich and 

 the poor, the strong and the weak ? How much 

 greater too was the security of society, when the 

 religious orders, the great owners of the land, ac- 

 cumulated by their skill and industry in agricul- 

 ture immense stores of the means of subsistence, 

 for which their only use was to aid the poor, as 

 they were'themselves subjected to sumptuary laws, 

 a fixed residence and a regular employment of their 

 time ! 



urprise is excited at the commotions which 

 take place in Europe, but let us examine only the 

 miseries to which the different classes of society 

 have been subjected. Women, it has been said, 

 and with reason, have gained everything by Chris- 

 tianity, which alone has invested them with a 

 dignity of existence before unknown. Instead of 

 being the prey to the wild passions of their mas- 



