ey posted a Church in Ireland just as they posted garrisons
in Ireland. The garrisons did their work. They were disliked. But that
mattered not. They had their forts and their arms; and they kept down
the aboriginal race. But the Church did not do its work. For to that
work the love and confidence of the people were essential.

I may remark in passing that, even under more favourable circumstances
a parochial priesthood is not a good engine for the purpose of making
proselytes. The Church of Rome, whatever we may think of her ends, has
shown no want of sagacity in the choice of means; and she knows this
well. When she makes a great aggressive movement,--and many such
movements she has made with signal success,--she employs, not her
parochial clergy, but a very different machinery. The business of her
parish priests is to defend and govern what has been won. It is by
the religious orders, and especially by the Jesuits, that the great
acquisitions have been made. In Ireland your parochial clergy lay under
two great disadvantages. They were endowed, and they were hated; so
richly endowed that few among them cared to turn missionaries; so
bitterly hated that those few had but little success. They long
contented themselves with receiving the emoluments arising from their
benefices, and neglected those means to which, in other parts of Europe,
Protestantism had owed its victory. It is well known that of all the
instruments employed by the Reformers of Germany, of England, and of
Scotland, for the purpose of moving the public mind, the most powerful
was the Bible translated into the vernacular tongues. In Ireland the
Protestant Church had been established near half a century before the
New Testament was printed in Erse. The whole Bible was not printed
in Erse till this Church had existed more than one hundred and twenty
years. Nor did the publication at last take place under the patronage
of the lazy and wealthy hierarchy. The expense was defrayed by a layman,
the illustrious Robert Boyle. So things went on century after century.
Swift, more than a hundred years ago, described the prelates of his
country as men gorged with wealth and sunk in indolence, whose chief
business was to bow and job at the Castle. The only spiritual function,
he says, which they performed was ordination; and, when he saw what
persons they ordained, he doubted whether it would not be better that
they should neglect that function as they neglected every