The State has some six hundred thousand pounds to administer every year in the religious interests of the population of Ireland. Of that population, seventy-seven per cent. are Catholics, the remainder belonging to various sects of Protestantism. The State, when it does not persecute, at least completely ignores the religion of the seventy-seven per cent., and gives that enormous sum of the public money of the country to the religion of the remaining fraction of the population. Can any injustice be more flagrant than this? The force of this argument rests on two assertions: One, that the Catholics have an immense numerical majority over the Protestants; the other, that an enormous sum of public money is squandered upon the Establishment. If these assertions can be once proved, the argument is simply crushing in its conclusiveness. Now, the proof of these assertions is easy, and cannot be too often repeated to the Catholics of Ireland. On the 17th of April, 1861, the resident population of Ireland were taken as follows:-- Members of the Established Church, 11.9 per cent. Roman Catholics, 77.7 " Presbyterians, 9.0 " Methodists, 0.8 " Independents, Baptists, and Quakers, 0.1 " All other persuasions, 0.3 " Thus out of a total population of 5,798,900, there were in round numbers, Catholics, four millions and a half; Protestants of all denominations, rather more than a million and a quarter. In Connaught the Catholics are 94.8 per cent. of the inhabitants; in Munster, 93; in Leinster, 85; in Ulster, 50 per cent. The Presbyterians in Ulster are 26.3 per cent. of the whole population. In none of the other provinces do they reach one per cent. "The Established Church ranges from 38.4 per cent. in the county of Fermanagh, its highest level, to 2 per cent. in Clare. In Armagh it numbers 30 per cent.; in the suburbs of Dublin 35 per cent.; in the counties of Dublin, Wicklow, Antrim, and Londonderry, between 15 and 20 per cent.; in King's and Queen's counties, Cavan, Carlow, Kildare, Donegal, Monaghan, and the City of Cork, between 10 and 15; in the counties of Longford, Louth, Meath, Westmeath, Wexford, Cork, Tipperary (North Riding), Leitrim, and Sligo, and in the cities of Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford, members of the Establishment are between 5 and 10 per cent.; in the counties of Kilkenny, Limerick, the South Riding of Tipperary, Kerry, Roscommon, and the town of Galway, the per-centage is between 3 and 5; while in the counties of Waterford, Galway, and Mayo it is between 2 and 3, sinking at last to 2 per cent. in Clare.