harsh on the Catholic peasant; if oppression was not general or even common, he was too often subjected to excessive rent and unfair eviction. This order of things has all but completely passed away; the position of Catholic Ireland in the State has almost wholly been changed. Catholic emancipation has long been an accomplished fact; Irish Catholics and Protestants are equal before the law; and have really equal chances in fighting the battle of life. Though still not numerous, the Catholic owners of land have multiplied; the Irish Catholic middle classes have made a marked advance; they have grown in knowledge and increased in wealth; they have risen to a higher plane of existence. At the same time, the grievances of the past have nearly all been removed by law, often indeed very late, and by questionable means; but the Established Church has fallen from its high estate; education has been diffused through the Catholic masses; the Irish Catholics have obtained more than a just share in local government and administration of all kinds; their ascendency in this province is well-nigh assured. The most important, however, of these changes is that which has taken place in the state of the Irish Catholic peasantry. The process which lifted up millions of these from the land and sent them into exile was, no doubt, terrible; but it was the condition of the welfare and the progress of the population which remained. A great deal of the legislation, besides, which has revolutionised the tenure of land in Ireland, and has had a special effect on the Catholic occupiers of the soil, has been essentially ill designed and unjust; above all, it has been much too long delayed. But the Irish Catholic peasantry have long ago ceased to be serfs; they are more the owners of their own holdings than their former landlords; their rights in the land have been more than protected; they have acquired the fee in their farms in thousands of instances; the days of rack rents and harsh evictions have passed away for ever. If the lines of the old Irish land system may still be traced, they rather resemble, it has truly been said, the lineaments of a phantom than of a living being.