The Irish Catholica are content, and for an Irish reason.
They have lost the rubber, but won the immediate game. The returns show that the population of Ireland has dwindled by emigration front 6,551,970 to 5,764,542, a decrease of 787,892 souls, in ten years, without counting the loss of the increase which must, in the order of nature, have occurred. This is a terrible decline; but then, say the' Catholics, our creed shows 4,490,583 followers to 1,271,520 Pro- testants, and we are, therefore, still seven to two. The assertion is just, but the Catholic .strength is none the less decayed. In 1834, out of 25,000,000 of persons within the British Isles, the Irish Catholics formed one clear fourth, and Catholics of all races thirty per cent. Now, the Irish Catholics amount to little more than a seventh, or, more strictly speaking, sixteen per cent., and the Roman interest, even including the English Catholics, who are a totally dif- ferent class, as loyal now as when a Catholic defeated the Armada, only includes nineteen per cent. of the population. The men who depart, also, are the cottiers, and the land, thrown together in larger masses, is passing gradually to Protestants, a change beginning to be felt in the results of the county elections. The National schools, too, diffuse an intelligence fatal to the influence of the priests, and in ten years we may yet see in Ireland the picture presented in Belgium—a Catholic and Protestant population dwelling together without internal quarrels, and in loyalty to a Protestant throne.
It is curious, when the English returns are remembered, to find that every city in Ireland, except Belfast, has decreased in popula- tion. The fact is accepted as indicating decay, but we suspect it is explicable on other and far pleasanter suppositions. The increased prosperity of the interior, the higher rate of wages, and the general increase of security, keep away from the towns the crowds who, under tho.pressure of hunger, swarm to them as the last hope of employment or relief. A process precisely similar followed the ex- tinction Zi feudalism in England.
