and of the Methodists of the United States.3 From the same wild county of Donegal, that gave birth to the first missionary of Scotland, sprang Francis Mackemie and Patrick Mackie, the two earliest Presbyterian ministers of Philadelphia. And from the Irish Palatines,' as they were called-the refugees from the Palatinate who settled near Limerick, and on whom Wesley 4 produced the deepest impression-issued forth Philip Embery and Barbara Heck, the founders of the first Methodist chapel in New York. The influx of this extreme Protestantism into Ireland, though it elicited some of the most ferocious passions of the nation, yet had the same good result that it had in England, of awakening a fervour which had before been wanting in the older churches. The singular grace of the Irish nation opened a path for the refined enthusiasm of Wesley, such as he had vainly sought in Scotland. He found, he said, 'as real courtesy in their cabins 'as could be found at St. James's or the Louvre.' 'Our peo'ple here,' writes one of his companions, 'are in general the most zealous, lively, affectionate Christians we have in the 'kingdom.' Advantages of Presbyterian Protestantism. 5 Before his time the same negligence had extended to both Churches. If there were English bishops of Protestant sees in Ireland who never could face the stormy waves of St. George's Channel, there were also Roman Catholic bishops who usually resided on the Continent, and only visited their dioceses for the sake of recreation. The careless administration of their parishes by the Protestant clergy is too well known. Not equally well known, but equally true, is the like carelessness of the Roman clergy. Many of them made money by farming; others attended races; not a few hunted; almost all wore brown coats. Confirmation, even by exemplary prelates, was almost entirely neglected. The good Catholic Bishop Delany, 'the only man who ever 'made the austere Alban Butler laugh, used to publish long 'lists of parishes where he intended to hold visitations, but, ' when the advertised time came, it invariaby found the bishop 'confined to his room by gout or on a visit with the patriot peer Lord Cloncurry, or Dr. Moylan of Cork.' This apathy was broken up in Ireland, as in England, at any rate simultaneously with the fervour of Wesley. His revivals and those 7 • Brennan's History of Ireland, ii. p. "Fitzpatrick's Doyle, i. pp. 97, 99, which have followed may be mere passing phenomena, but they kept alive the flame of spiritual life, and both the Church of Rome and the Church of England have felt and profited by the warmth. vantages. With this fervour has been and is combined, whether in the Presbyterian Church itself or in the outlying sects, the fierce Its disad- and narrow intolerance, and the domination of the 9 majority over the minority, which is the bane of religious parties, or so-called Free Churches. 'Why do you prefer the voluntary system?' was the question of an English traveller to an intelligent Irish Methodist layman on the hills of Donegal. 'Because it enables the majority at once to turn out 'the minority,' was the decisive and instructive answer. The principle of subscription to the Westminster Confession was fought out with a bitterness beyond anything that has occurred in England or Scotland; and the free element of thought has, consequently, been driven into the small sect of Unitarians. The connexion of the Presbyterian Church with the Established Church of Ireland on the one hand, and with the Established Church of Scotland on the other, doubtless sustained for a long time a freer spirit in the Ulster Synod; and the State has always recognised the more liberal as well as the more exclusive branch of the Presbyterians both in constitution and in salary. But in proportion as these influences were withdrawn, it is probable that the wilder and more imperious ecclesiastical passions of the several communities would more and more obtain the ascendency. 1 Such are the three religions-or rather let us say the Churches of the three nations of Ireland. They have each, as I have shown, a common substratum in the character of the Irish people; they have each been coloured, to a certain degree, by the influence of each. No settlement of Ireland can be complete which overlooks any of these elements—and their almost equal coexistence is one of the peculiar features of the Irish, as distinct from the English or the Scottish, ecclesiastical arrangements. The Church of England may, in a certain sense, be called the national Church of England, and the Church of Scotland the * See the condemnation (in Reid, iii. p. 113) of the Belfast Society, as 'under'mining the entire system' of Christianity merely by the assertion of the most fundamental principles of toleration. Compare also the extraordinary statements in vol. iii. pp. 279, 296. See a powerful statement of these evils in Mr. Ludlow's Essay in the Contemporary Review of December 1868. Reid, iii. pp. 302, 304. Jeremy Taylor's Original Sin was bitterly denounced by the more rigid party in the Presbyterian Church, but held its ground through the support given to it by the English bishops (ibid. iii. p. 302). national Church of Scotland, because in neither of these cases do the surrounding sects (except, perhaps, in the case of Wales) represent a different nationality from that of the Established Church. In Ireland, on the contrary, there is not only a difference of religious belief and of race, but the religious divisions derive most of their force from the divisions of race; and thus, in point of fact, there are three Churches, all national, in the sense of representing a powerful nation. This coexistence, which appears in their history, is also, to a great extent, recognised by a coequality in law and in fact. Let us first look at the legal privileges and precedence of the Established Church of Ireland, and it will at once appear that, so far from its having the same exclusive position as the Established Church in England, in almost every particular, it has varied almost as much from that of the Church of England, as the present condition of that Church varies from its own position, two centuries ago. In both cases there has been a gradual accommodation of the institution to the altered state of the country; and in both cases this change has hitherto been consistent with the existence of the English Constitution as the safeguard of the freedom and the development of the diverse tendencies which belong to English Protestantism. The coequality of the two Churches in law. In England the Roman Catholic prelates have no rank and no precedence. In Ireland, their archbishops rank before Protestant bishops; their bishops before Protestant deans; 3 till by the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill of 1851 they could legally assume the titles of all sees not occupied by bishops of the Established Church. In England, every prelate but two has a permanent seat in the Legislature. In Ireland, only four prelates have seats at a time, and none have a permanent place. In England, the parochial and diocesan system is confined to the Established Church. In Ireland, the two Churches have their dioceses and parishes, over against or conterminous with each other, throughout the island; every Protestant bishop is aware that he has a Roman Catholic brother or rival, as the case may be; 5 every Protestant parson' knows that he has a Roman 2 [There was one apparent exception. Except in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, no English prelates took so high a place in the executive functions of the State as the Irish primates occupy, as Lords Justices, in the absence of the Viceroy. This, however, was a mere excrescence, which belonged to a state of things long past.] 3 [Such was the state of the law in Ireland before 1869.] • There was a well-known answer of Archbishop Whately to some one who asked him why he had never brought a Bill into Parliament: Why should I lay ' an egg for another to addle?' 5 The gradual rise of the Roman Catholic prelates from their depressed 6 Catholic priest' sharing with him the superintendence of his flock-the very word 'parish priest,' which in England signifies, of course, the minister of the Established Church, in Ireland means as distinctly the Roman Catholic pastor.7 In England, no Roman Catholic clergyman can perform the religious funeral rites of his coreligionists in the parish churchyard; in Ireland, any Roman Catholic clergyman or Nonconformist minister has, under certain nominal restrictions since 1824, and since 1868 absolutely, been empowered to perform the burial service in such churchyard according to the rites of his own Church or congregation. In England, the privilege of solemnising the act of marriage is confined to the clergy of the Established Church. In Ireland, both the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian clergy can, in regard to members of their own communions, celebrate marriages equally and with as full validity as the Established clergy: In England, the Roman Catholic chaplains of gaols and poorhouses are appointed by the Roman Catholics, and paid by them. In Ireland they are both appointed and paid by the Government or its agents. To no college in England connected either with the Established Church, or with Nonconforming churches, nor to Trinity College, Dublin, does the State give any pecuniary support, beyond that of legal sanction of its property. The one great college in either island which receives a large direct endowMaynooth ment from the State is Maynooth. Everyone who College. has read Lord Macaulay's Speeches will call to mind his antithesis between 'the commodious chambers, the refec'tories, the combination-rooms, the bowling-greens, the stabling, the savoury steam of the kitchens, of his own Trinity, and the miserable Dotheboys Hall which is given to the 'future priests and bishops of the Irish people.'s This antithesis is one which never could have been written had the great orator seen the splendid institution which he thus disparaged. If his own Trinity at Cambridge throws all like state, in which they refused the title of It was observed that if, at the late Congress in Dublin, an English clergyman had announced his intention to read a paper on 'The Duties of the Parish Priest,' he would have found himself pledged to deliver an address on the functions of the Roman Catholic priesthood. "A Catholic usage, which, without buildings into the shade, yet assuredly S. Patrick's College at Maynooth may well confront the rival Trinity College in Dublin. That stately pile,' conceived in Pugin's highest moodthose wide cloisters, those spacious quadrangles, that noble hall, that ample library, that green park and precincts clustered under the venerable ruins of the old fastness of the Geraldines, is worthy of the gentle graces and learned dignity of its present enlightened head; worthy also of the historic fame which Maynooth has acquired as the touchstone, for so many years, which divided true comprehensive statesmanship from fanaticism and sectarianism. Of all the poetic strains of the eminent historian whose words were just now cited, none is so full of pathos or of spirit as that which was inspired by the sacrifice of his political career to his support of the grant to Maynooth, which carries with it the whole principle of the endowment and establishment2 of the Irish Roman Catholic Church. Nomination Crown to Even in the points on which that Church has professed itself more sensitive than on the question of receiving aid from the State, which in the case of Maynooth it has so freely admitted and sought-in the point of the nomination by the Crown to its highest dignities-the influence of the English State has been greater than is commonly supposed. Susceptible and jealous as the Irish Roman Catholic clergy are and have been regarding the appointment of their bishops by any external authority, even by the Pope himself, eagerly as they have clung to what they call the system of 'domestic nomination,'3 yet so long as the Stuart princes 4 lived, the Irish sees were regularly filled by the nominees of James II., James III., Charles III., and Henry IX. And, even afterwards, the Roman Catholic primacy was virtually bestowed on Archbishop Curtis by the 1 This architectural equality is generally borne out by many of the palaces and cathedrals of the Roman Catholic prelates. The palace and cathedral of the Bishop of Kerry, at Killarney, are superior to those of his Protestant brother at Limerick. Bishop Doyle's biographer dwells with pardonable pride on the ' princely mansion of Braganza,' in which the bishop spent the latter years of his life (i. 417). 2 Macaulay's Miscellaneous Works, ii. 430. It should be observed that not only was the grant to Maynooth directly given by the State, but the nomination of the president and the laws of the |