_The second cause is Drink_. On this question I shall content myself with quoting a few statistics. They supply melancholy food for reflection. In 1899, out of every three placed in the dock for drunkenness in the capital of this Catholic country one was a woman. I think you may search the world for a more shameless exhibition. Out of every thousand of the general population in England, fifty persons are arrested for drunkenness; out of every thousand of the general population in Ireland, one hundred and forty-three. In other words, we produce almost three convicted drunkards to their one. And still we plume ourselves on our superior virtue. Our total income from agriculture, the staple industry of the country, is forty millions. On this, mainly, the nation has to live. Yet before a penny is touched for food, clothing or education, almost fourteen out of the forty millions are handed over to the sellers of drink. Within fifteen years we lost half a million of our people, but we consoled ourselves by opening eleven hundred and seventy-five new public-houses within the same period. [Side note: Activity II] To these figures I shall not add one word: it would only weaken the argument. Will any one deny that the young priest has here an ample field for his zeal and energy, and a splendid opportunity of proving himself the reformer and saviour of the people? [Side note: Emigration] _The third, most powerful source of lunacy, is Emigration_. It may seem a paradox to say that the lessening of our people must naturally mean the increase of insanity. When we say the country loses forty thousand of its inhabitants yearly, we make but a partial statement of the case. Whom do we lose? Not the average class--the youth, and the youth only go. Two consequences follow. A boy, when he has arrived at his eighteenth year, has cost the country two hundred pounds, and a girl one hundred and fifty. Up to that time they were consumers, they produced little. This enables us to arrive at the appalling fact that Ireland every year pours seven millions worth of human cargo into the emigrant ship. Would that this was all, but worse remains to be said. Who stay with us? The aged, the delicate, the infirm. The kernel of the race is going, the husks are remaining with us. Intermarriage among these, intermingling of enfeebled and tainted blood is one of the main contributory causes why the walls of our asylums are enlarging. [Side note: Remedies] Let us see what the priest can do to fight the national curse, and stay the national haemorrhage. [Side note: The Points to Fix on] In dealing with the drink question his main purpose should be to purify public opinion. Till that is done, every other effort must fail. What use in our inveighing against a vice if the people insist on labelling it a virtue? Our first effort must be to get the people to view it in an honest light--to see it as we see it. Public opinion up to this could scarcely be more depraved.