"In 1672, the total population of Ireland was 1,100,000 (it is to be remembered that this was after the massacres and transportations of Cromwell's period). Of that number
800,000 were Catholics.
50,000 " Dissenters.
150,000 " Church-of-Ireland men.
"In 1727, the Anglican Primate of Ireland, Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, wrote to his English colleague, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that 'we have, in all probability, in this kingdom, at least five Papists for every Protestant.' Those proportions are confirmed by official statistics under Queen Anne.
"In 1740, according to a kind of official census, confirmed by Wakefield, the number of Protestant heads of families did not exceed 96,067.
"Twenty-six years later, the Dublin House of Lords caused a comparative table of Protestant and Catholic families to be drawn up for each county. The result was the following:
Protestant families . . 130,263
Catholic families . . 305,680
"In 1834, exact statistical returns being made of the members of each communion, the following was the result: The total population being estimated at 7,943,940, the Church-of-Ireland members amounted only to the number of 852,064. The remaining 7, 091,876 were thus divided:
Presbyterians . . . . . . 642,350
Other Dissenters . . . . 21,808
Catholics . . . . . . . 6,427,718
"The censuses of 1841 and 1851 contained no information upon this important question. Thirty years had therefore elapsed since official figures had given the exact proportions of each Church.
"This silence of the Blue Books had given rise, among the Protestant press of England and Ireland, to the opinion, too hastily adopted on the Continent by publicists of great weight, that emigration and famine had resulted in the equalization of the numbers of Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. The evident conclusion joyfully drawn from this supposed fact by the defenders of the Anglican Church was, that the scandal of a Protestant establishment in the midst and at the expense of a Catholic people was gradually dying away.