[27] It was not, I think, until the tithe war took place, that the established clergy began to see anything irrational in their attitude. In 1834, however, the Hon. Power Trench, Archbishop of Tuam, wrote to Phillip Barron, of Waterford, editor of Ancient Ireland, a weekly magazine for the cultivation of the Irish language, regretting that in the whole of his diocese (where probably not one in twenty at that period understood a word of English) he had not outside of his own brother, a single clergyman who had "acquired a proficiency in the Irish language."
[28] "Present State of the Irish Church," seventh edition, 1787, p. 43, quoted by Anderson, in his "Native Irish."
[29] Robert Molesworth's "True Way to Make Ireland Happy," printed in 1697, is also quoted as an authority for this statement, but I have not been able to discover a copy of this book even in the Library of Trinity College.
[30] Roche's "Memoirs of an Octogenarian."
[31] Vol. i. p. 263.
[32] Thus on referring to a recent history of the County Sligo in two volumes by a distinguished author to see how far Irish prevailed in a certain barony, I find the fact that any other language than English either was or is spoken in Sligo, so far as I could see, quietly ignored. It is the same with most authors of local and county histories.
[33] I published this with a translation in the "Journal of Ulster Archæology."
[34] "Das Englische wird vom gemeinen Volke entweder gar nicht oder sehr unvolkommen erlernt" ("Briefe Aus Irland," Leipzig, 1785, p. 214).
[35] Grattan's "Miscellaneous Works," p. 321, edition of 1822.