Page:Home rule through federal devolution.djvu/33

 continue in England is problematic; what is certain is that there is nothing like it in Ireland. As has already been remarked, there is no spirit of compromise amongst Irish political parties. In England, though religious considerations are not without influence on politics, they are very rarely the deciding factor in the division of parties. In Ireland, the religious element is the ruling consideration in politics, and enters also into every department of life, social and mercantile, as well as political. There are Roman Catholic Unionists, and there are Protestant Home Rulers; but, relatively, the proportion of such exceptions is small compared with the total populations, and may, for our present purpose, be considered negligible. It seems to English people incredible and disgraceful that this should be so, but we have to do with facts, and the fact is that religio-political opinion in Ireland at the present time is much what it was in England in the time of Elizabeth; and there is no prospect that Home Rule or any other political change will alter this state of things. In the province of Ulster the Protestants outnumber the Roman Catholics by something less than the proportion of three to two; but in the other three provinces the Roman Catholics outnumber the Protestants by nearly ten to one—using the word Protestant for all non-Catholics. Omitting Dublin, the proportion of Roman Catholics would be still greater; and in the "Six Counties" the proportion of Protestants is, of course, considerably greater than in the whole province. The consequence of this distribution of population is that, whilst in Ulster there may, from time to time, be some oscillation of the pendulum, varying the representation fractionally, there will be in the rest of the country a permanent solid majority of at least three to one for the representatives of the Roman Catholic population of the agricultural counties in the south and west in the Irish Parliament.

As long as this disproportion exists—and there is no visible probability of any change—the working of the party system must be vastly different in Ireland from