eticism may
have its justification, it behoves a Church to see that its members,
while fully acknowledging the claims of another life, should develop the
qualities which make for well-being in this life. In fact, I believe
that the influence of Christianity upon social progress will be best
maintained by co-ordinating these spiritual and economic ideals in a
philosophy of life broader and truer than any to which the nations have
yet attained.

What I have just been saying with regard to Roman Catholicism generally,
in relation to economic doctrines and industrial progress, applies, of
course, with a hundred fold pertinence to the case of Ireland. Between
the enactment of the first Penal Laws and the date of Roman Catholic
Emancipation, Irish Roman Catholics were, to put it mildly, afforded
scant opportunity, in their own country, of developing economic virtues
or achieving industrial success. Ruthlessly deprived of education, are
they to be blamed if they did not use the newly acquired facilities to
the best advantage? With their religion looked on as the badge of legal
and social inferiority, was it any wonder that priests and people alike,
while clinging with unexampled fidelity to their creed, remained
altogether cut off from the current of material prosperity? Excluded, as
they were, not merely from social and political privileges, but from the
most ordinary civil rights, denied altogether the right of ownership of
real property, and restricted in the possession of personalty, is it
any wonder that they are not to-day in the van of industrial and
commercial progress? Nay, more, was it to have been expected that the
character of a people so persecuted and ostracised should have come out
of the ordeal of centuries with its adaptability and elasticity
unimpaired? That would have been impossible. Those who are intimate with
the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, and at the same time familiar with
their history, will recognise in their character and mental outlook many
an inheritance of that epoch of serfdom. I speak, of course, of the
mass, for I am not unmindful of many exceptions to this generalisation.

But I must now pass on to a more definite consideration of the present
action and attitude of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy towards the
economic, educational, and other issues discussed in this book. The
reasons which render such a consideration necessary are obvious. Even if
we include Ulster, three quarters of the