A series of Land Purchase Acts was passed, and the transfer of the land to the tenants is now proceeding on a large scale.
Remedial Legislation Passed by English It must be said that the English government has done much during the last half century to repair the injustices of the cen turies preceding. Let us reckon briefly what has been done. Passing over Catholic Emanci pation (1829) and the establishment of the system of primary education known as the °National° system (1831), both of which measures belong to the first half of the tury, we have to put to the account of the English Parliament and government the Dis establishment of the Irish Church (1869), which gave equality to all religions before the law; the system of intermediate education (1878); the Royal University (1879), defective inas much as it did not give university education, but merely tested it and conferred degrees ; local government (1898), which bestows on elected bodies the administration of local affairs; the series of Land Acts designed to improve the position of the occupier — the Act of 1870, which put a check on arbitrary eviction and gave the tenant compensation for disturbance; the Act of 1881, which established a tribunal to which the tenant could appeal for the fixing of a fair rent; the Act of 1885, which made the first advance (f5,000,000) to the tenants for the purchase of their holdings; the Act of 1888, which made another advance of f5,000.000; the Act of 1891, which advanced f33.000,000 for the same purpose; the Act of 1896, which amended the preceding acts; and, finally, the Wyndham Act of 1903, which facilitated the operations of purchase and increased the loan for buying out the landlords to f100,000,000, and the Land Act of 1909, providing further facilities for payment.
Previous to the passing of the 1903 measure a Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was established (1898) to instruct the people in the improved modern methods of agriculture and to diffuse among them a knowl edge of the industrial arts.
Under these acts the operations of purchase have been carried out on a large scale. Up tb 1902, under the earlier acts, over 70,000 tenants had purchased their holdings at sums amounting in the aggregate to over 120,000,000. In January 1906 the sales under the Wyndham Act had amounted to f7,207,548. Up to March 1917 the total amount advanced was f98,531,611, while i1,677,073 had been paid in cash by purchasers of estates. For the purposes of the Labourer Acts, 1906, 1911 and 1914 the Land Commis sion had advanced i4,586,821. The total num ber of holdings in 1917 was 572,045.
all this remedial legisla tion the prospects of Irish industry are im proving. The manufactures are confined chiefly to the northeastern corner of the island, where the shipbuilding industry of Belfast and the linen industry in the city and sur rounding country employ a large number of hands. If we except the brewing industry in Dublin we may say that the rest of the coun try is devoted to farming. The farming is not of the intensive kind; of the 20,371,124 acres which form the area of Ireland close on 15,000,000 acres are devoted to permanent pasture and meadow, and thus, as has been said, °Two-thirds of the country is never touched by plough or spade.° Under these
conditions a large population cannot be main tained in comfort. Hence the ceaseless flow of emigration, chiefly to the United States and Canada. In 1841 the population was 8,175,124; in 1901 it was 4,458,775; in 1911, 4,390,219, and the drain still continues. The cost of the ad ministration of justice is nearly double what it is in England, where the population is more than six times that of Ireland; and 10 times what it is in Scotland, where the popula tion is about equal that of Ireland. Of the 103 members sent by Ireland to the Imperial Parliament over 80 are sent there to offer per sistent resistance to the English government of Ireland. On the whole it must be admitted that under this government Ireland has not enjoyed the good fortune which the framers of the Act of Union promised her. Nor has Britain derived from the union tke advantages which the authors of the measure anticipated. The predictions of Grattan and the other far-seeing opponents of the act have found melancholy fulfilment, and English statesmen of the ent day seem warranted by the experience of a century in to the policy—to which they are now committed—of trusting to self government as the best means of securing ma terial prosperity for Ireland and political harmony between the sister countries.
The The principal religious de nominations of Ireland are the Roman Catholic, the Episcopalian Protestant (late Church of Ireland, disestablished in 1869), the Presbyterian and the Methodist. The respective numbers of these communions, according to the census of 1911 are: Catholics. 3,242,670; Episcopalian Prot estants, 576,611; Presbyterians, 440,525; Meth odists, 62,382; and other piofessions, 68,031. The constitution and government of the Catho lic, Presbyterian and Methodist bodies are the same in Ireland as in other countries. The constitution of the Protestant Episcopalian Church presents some points of special interest. The constitution of this church was framed under the Irish Church Act of 1869, by which the °Church of Ireland° was disestablished. The supreme authority is vested in the General Synod. The General Synod consists of two houses : the House of Bishops, which includes all members of the Protestant episcopacy, and the House of Representatives, consisting of 208 clerical and 416 lay members. These repre sentatives are elected by the clerical and lay members of the Diocesan Synods, which, in their turn, are elected by the clergy and laity respectively of the several dioceses. The Gen eral Synod is the supreme authority in all mat ters relating to discipline and doctrine within the church. The funds of the church are held by a body of trustees called the Representative Body. The capital sums in the hands of this body amount, according to the most recent returns, to nearly L14,000,000 sterling. See