"What is the reason that a people with so bountiful a soil, with such enormous resources (as the Irish), lag so far behind the English in the race? Some say that it is to be found in the character of the Celtic race, but I look to France, and I see a Celtic race there going forward in the path of prosperity with most rapid strides--I believe at the present moment more rapidly than England herself. Some people say that it is to be found in the Roman Catholic religion; but I look to Belgium, and there I see a people second to none in Europe, except the English, for industry, singularly prosperous, considering the small space of country that they occupy, having improved to the utmost the natural resources of that country, but distinguished among all the peoples of Europe for the earnestness and intensity of their Roman Catholic belief. Therefore, I cannot say that the cause of the Irish distress is to be found in the Roman Catholic religion. An hon. friend near me says that it arises from the Irish people listening to demagogues. I have as much dislike to demagogues as he has, but when I look to the Northern States of America I see there people who listen to demagogues, but who undoubtedly have not been wanting in material prosperity. It cannot be demagogues, Romanism, or the Celtic race. What then is it? I am afraid that the one thing which has been peculiar to Ireland has been the Government of England."[62] Nothing has occurred since 1865 to vary that judgment. THE HOME RULE FIVE So much for the one century of Union. What about the five of Home Rule? "Were there no black centuries before 1800? Had Ireland no grievances? What of the 'curse of Cromwell,' the broken 'Treaty of Limerick,' and the penal laws?" Thus I shall be challenged. There were, indeed, black centuries before 1800, and black events. Ireland endured a special share of the agony inflicted upon Europe by the great religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She suffered, perhaps, more than any other country from the divisions of Christian Europe following on the revolt of Luther against Rome in 1520. The statutory limitations of the Irish Parliament during that period led to many interferences from England, and the gradual exclusion of Catholics divided the Parliament from the Irish nation. The artificial infusion of a fanatical Protestant population by James I. and Cromwell produced a terrible embitterment of the struggle. There were crimes on both sides, and calamities beyond telling. But, with all that, it is still to be doubted whether any of those centuries presents such a picture of national decay, both industrial and social, as is presented by the Ireland of the nineteenth century.