Those things may tend to explain why the only prosperous trade in Ireland is the clerical trade. Every year the number of priests increases, though the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered 3,136; in 1881 they were 3,363, or an increase of 227, under the guidance of four archbishops and twenty-four bishops. The Catholic population is of three million persons; that gives one priest for about 900 inhabitants.
It is generally admitted that each of these priests, with his church and his house, cannot cost much under £300 or £400 a year. That would give about £1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of those labourers and servant girls. The tithe was never so heavy.
This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of small farmers and peasantry (by the reason that the other classes are for the majority Protestants); as a consequence the clergy share all the passions of their class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more active. Almost everywhere the parish priest is the president of the local Land League Board. In the stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing the landlords with fiery eloquence; not to speak of the Sunday preaching, which is only another meeting closed against the police, and where landlords are handled with extraordinary freedom of language. One has seen Irish priests openly declare a shot to be an unimportant trifle, so long as it was sent after a landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they asserted, had gone so far as to put the properties of the landlords in lottery, by tickets of ten shillings each. The verification of this fact would by no means be easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest, the ardour he brings into the struggle, the boundless indulgence he displays towards agrarian outrages, the tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have done even worse. However surprising may be in our Continental eyes the spectacle of a whole clergy taking part against the lords in a social war, under the paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember that here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious passions, hereditary instinct, and personal interest.
A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing himself against the League would soon see his subsidies stopped. His flock would besides lose all confidence in him, and all respect for his person. I am told of a characteristic example of the kind of practical jokes indulged in such a case by the peasantry against the dissident pastor. A priest of the county Clare, seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to abuse the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of sounding the usual praise in its honour. At once they sent him from the lower end of the church an old woman who begged to be heard directly in confession, before she could approach Holy Communion. The worthy man, grumbling a little at such an untimely fit of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the confessional.
“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I accuse myself of having this moment thought that you were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock to take the part of their natural enemies....”
“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.
Without waiting for absolution the old woman had got up to go. The priest tried to imitate her. Impossible. They had placed on his seat a huge lump of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly to his place. To get him free they were obliged to go for help outside, to call strangers to the rescue. The whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter, and thought the joke in the best possible taste.