where greater capacities lie dormant, yet where trifling of all kinds so abounds.” That is the verdict of an Irishman and an Irish Catholic upon you. In sober truth you groan, as England groans, under the Scotch superstition. Nobody can be prosperous in Ireland save Scotchmen. Nobody can manufacture but Scotchmen, nobody can farm but Scotchmen. The view is entirely false. Encourage it no longer; remember who you are, and make an end of trifling. [2] In point of fact the Scotch are neither Norman, Saxon, Dane nor good red-herring, but sheer Scotch. CHAPTER VIII PRIESTCRAFT Are there too many priests in Ireland? Yes. Is Dublin “black with them”? Yes. Do they appear to be as frequent on the country side as crows? Yes. Are they extorting from the Irish people money which is sorely needed for secular purposes? Yes. Here you have four pertinent questions, which invariably crop up whenever Ireland is discussed, together with the average answers to them. “It is the priests!” cry both well and ill informed. According to the latest critic—who, it seems, once occupied the somewhat superfluous position of “literary editor of the _Daily Mail_”—“one of the heaviest drags upon the life of Ireland is the religious vocation. The monasteries and nunneries prosper and increase, choking and interfering with the circulation of labor and of industry in the country.” Also, “it is my profound conviction that a large proportion of the present misery of Ireland is not only bound up with, but is actually a result of the country’s religion.” Also, “the houses of the people are so indecently poor and small; the houses of the Church are so indecently rich and large. Out of the dirt and decay they rise, proud and ugly and substantial, as though to inform the world that at least one thing is not dying and despondent, but keeps its loins girded and its lamps trimmed.” This, roughly, is the indictment. Appended are some of the figures upon which it is based. Mr. Michael M’Carthy, himself a Catholic, says, “A cardinal, 3 archbishops, 25 bishops, 2 mitred abbots, and 2,722 secular priests, together with a host of regular priests of all the different Orders, such as Jesuits, Franciscans, Vincentians, Holy Ghost, Carmelites, Passionists, Augustinians, Mary Immaculate, Dominicans, Cistercians, Marists, Redemptorists and so forth, all of whom flourish in Ireland—such is the force which constitutes the formidable clerical army of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and its auxiliary forces are the numerous Orders of nuns, Christian brothers, lay brothers attached to the regular Orders, and so forth; together with the great body of Catholic National teachers, male and female, who are under the control of the priests, and teach catechism in the churches; the parish priests, as managers of the parochial National Schools, having the power of dismissing the teachers.” “May it not be said of this great organization,” adds Mr. M’Carthy, “that ‘it is on a scale such as few