But besides the sea and the race, there is yet one more feature of the Irish problem which remains practically unchanged. Ireland still remains predominantly Catholic, while Great Britain is still predominantly Protestant. The great movement of the sixteenth century, known as the Reformation, passed from Germany through Holland and France into Great Britain. It won Scotland completely. In England, after a prolonged struggle with a powerful Catholic tradition, it ended in the compromise still represented by the Anglican Church. But there the victory of the Reformation closed. The movement was checked at St. George's Channel. In Ireland Catholicism stood with its back against the Atlantic, and fought a stern, long fight against all the political and social forces of the British Empire. The attack of Protestantism was supported by the full power and authority of the conqueror. It lasted for two centuries. It began with Elizabeth and James as a simple imperative, mercilessly applied without regard to national conditions. It came under Cromwell as a scorching, devastating flame. It remained under William and the Georges as a slow, cruel torture applied through all the avenues of the law. The end of all that effort was, not to convert or destroy, but to weld the national and religious spirits into one common force, acting together throughout the nineteenth century as if identical. Purified by persecution, Catholicism in Ireland, almost alone among the religions of Western Europe, stands out still to-day as a great national and democratic force. But though the persecution failed, it built up, by a double process of immigration and monopoly, a very powerful Protestant population with all the stiff pride of ascendancy. For generations the Protestants of Ireland enjoyed all the offices of government, and had the sole right of inheritance. Thus both the land and the government slipped into their hands. Since no Catholic could inherit land under the penal laws, and since the penal laws lasted for nearly a century, it followed inevitably that the whole land of Ireland fell into the hands of the Protestants. That is why even at the present day the vast majority of the Irish landed and leisured classes are Protestants. The Catholics, during that dark period, became hewers of wood and drawers of water. Thus property in Ireland came to mean, not merely a division of classes, but also a division of creeds. In spite of all the great reforms, the descendants of these Protestants still retain most of the wealth and most of the Government offices in Ireland.[8] Their resistance to any change is not, therefore, altogether surprising; and we must remember amid all the various war-cries of the present agitation that these gentlemen are fighting, not merely for the integrity of the Empire, but also for position, income and power. This state of affairs has varied very little for the last half-century.