There have been bills passed for the rest of the British Isles which have not been passed in Ireland owing to the veto of the Catholic Church. One has only to compare the educational differences of the Irish people and the Scottish people, two nations of the same size, to comprehend what a heavy reckoning the Catholic Church will have to answer to some day. The Catholic Church has allowed ignorance and superstition. A certain intolerance can also be laid at its door, but not in any great degree. But in Ulster, Protestant Ulster, Protestantism has bred a ferocity of intolerance, which is astounding in the twentieth century. Ireland staggers about with these two religions upon her back. The old cry, Home Rule Rome Rule, was probably a false one. One of the results of the struggle for Irish independence has been the breaking of the power of the Catholic Church. The young men have in part educated themselves, and prevailing conditions have, whether for better or worse, matured their characters before their time. There is still a profound reverence and love for the Church; but the day has gone when it can dictate to the nation. While Sinn Fein was in its infancy the Church condemned the movement, when it grew strong the Church had to walk beside it with trembling steps and grave forebodings. The young generation of priests threw themselves into the Republican movement body and soul. But Ireland is still hag-ridden. So long as North and South take their religions as violently as they do, the two parts of the Irish nation can never come together. It does not look as if North or South will relinquish its belief. Protestantism fits the vigorous masculine Northerner, Catholicism suits the feminine, imaginative, easy-going Southerner. Because Ireland is Ireland the two religions make a fence which keep the peoples apart. It is a calamity. What a people might the intermarriage of North and South produce! So this fated nation has never had a single voice, and the British Government has perpetually listened to several contrary requests in place of one demand. The result has been that those things which ought to have been done have been left undone. One of the things which ought to have been done was to give Ireland such few original privileges as she asked a very long time ago. Let us pass on. The history of Ireland has been a series of periods of agitation, sometimes culminating in open rebellion, alternating with periods of quiet, at the end of which time political firebrands once more bludgeoned the people into discontent. There had been such a period of calm, and then came the birth of the Gaelic League and a Celtic renaissance to herald in Sinn Fein. It was a bellows for the Sinn Fein spark.