The Census of 1911 contains, like most previous Irish Census returns, a schedule asking for a statement of religious faith. That enables us to tell with comparative accuracy the proportions between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland since 1861, when the schedule was first introduced, right up to the present day. The Preliminary Report shows that the variation has been very slight. The round figures for 1911 are:-- Roman Catholics 3,238,000 Protestant Episcopalians 575,000 Presbyterians 439,000 Methodists 61,000 The figures for 1861 were:-- Roman Catholics 4,500,000 Protestant Episcopalians 693,000 Presbyterians 523,000 Methodists 45,000[9] There has been an all-round decrease, corresponding to the decrease of the population. That decrease has been brought about by emigration, and that emigration has taken place mainly from the Catholic provinces of Munster and Connaught. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Catholics should have diminished more than the Protestants. The result of forty years' wastage of the Irish Catholic peasantry is that the proportions of Catholics to Protestants are now three to one, as against four to one in 1861. Allowing for the great fact of westward emigration, this means that the relations between these two forms of Christianity in Ireland are practically stationary. The Protestants, too, we must not forget, are divided into two sects--Episcopalian and Presbyterian--which in their history have been almost divided from one another as Catholicism and Protestantism, so much so that several times in Irish history--as, for instance, in 1798--the Catholic and Presbyterian have been brought together by a common persecution at the hands of the Episcopalian. We must also bear in mind that the Protestants are mainly concentrated in the two provinces of Ulster and Leinster. Ulster contains nearly all the Irish Presbyterians--421,000 out of 439,000--men who are rather Scotch by descent than actually native Irish. Ulster also contains 366,000 Episcopalians, making, with 48,000 Methodists, 835,000 Protestants in Ulster, out of 1,075,000 in the whole of Ireland. The rest of the Episcopalians are in Leinster--round Dublin--where 140,000 are domiciled. Munster contains less than 60,000 Protestants in all, and Connaught contains little over 20,000.[10] It is practically a Catholic province. The great fact about this religious situation in Ireland, therefore, is that you have a Catholic country with a strong Protestant minority.