1 According to the Report of the Registrar-General, the population has decreased to the number of half a million since the Census of 1851.
2 See Letters from The Times' Commissioner, ed. 2, p. 271, and The Saxon in Ireland, chapter x.
3 “Why are there so many more Scotch than English? It appears that there are 756 'Britishers' agriculturally settled in Ireland, and of these 660 are natives of Scotland.”--Agricultural and Social State of Ireland in 1858, by Thomas Miller.
The Saxon says that the Celt (how one despises those malicious nicknames, stereotyping hate, and perpetuating a lie, as if there were a true Celt or Saxon extant!) that the Celt will shoot him; and, perhaps, he may if nothing is done to conciliate, but everything to offend his prejudices. Those prejudices are the growth of ages, and will not vanish before slang and compulsion, but only before goodness, teaching by example a better and a happier way. If I wish to propitiate a high-spirited unbroken steed, not warranted free from vice, and can do so by checking him sharply with the curb, and by sticking in both spurs, without ruining the horse, and finding myself in a position to take an uninterrupted view of the firmament, Mr. Rarey and reason plead in vain. John Bull is a magnificent fellow, but his mere repetition of “curse the Pope” will do no more to evangelise mankind than Grip the Raven's “I'm a Protestant kettle;” nor can we specify any signal blessings as likely to accrue to the human race, when “Sawney, with his Calvinistic creed in the one hand, and allaying irritation with the other,” denounces smiling on Sunday as a deadly sin, or goes
“Bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke, At crippled Papistry to butt and poke, Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull Hunts an old woman in a scarlet cloak.”
Were I desirous to impress upon the people of Connaught the advantages of protecting their feet with leather, I should scarcely proceed to demonstrate my proposition by kicking them with hobnailed boots; and although bread as an article of food is vastly superior to potatoes, few men would essay to enforce this argument by pelting the peasantry with quartern loaves.
The Saxon says that the Celt will shoot him; and nothing can be more vile and despicable than those cowardly murders which disgrace Ireland. But we must not forget, in our righteous horror, that our own capital convictions are thrice as numerous, according to population, as those in the sister-country; and, though this does not denote the exact proportion of crime, because conviction in Ireland is far more difficult than with us, it may still suggest a wholesome restraint, when we are minded to sit in judgment upon others.
