potatoes in the garden are to be set out for the support of a
persuasion, the introduction of which into Ireland they consider as
the great cause of their political inferiority, and all their
manifold wretchedness. In England a labourer can procure constant
employment, or he can, at the worst, obtain relief from his parish.
Whether tithe operates as a tax upon him, is known only to the
political economist: if he does pay it, he does not know that he
pays it, and the burden of supporting the Clergy is at least kept
out of his view. But in Ireland, the only method in which a poor
man lives is by taking a small portion of land in which he can grow
potatoes: seven or eight months out of twelve, in many parts of
Ireland, there is no constant employment of the poor; and the potato
farm is all that shelters them from absolute famine. If the Pope
were to come in person, seize upon every tenth potato, the poor
peasant would scarcely endure it. With what patience, then, can he
see it tossed into the cart of the heretic rector, who has a church
without a congregation, and a revenue without duties? We do not say
whether these things are right or wrong, whether they want a remedy
at all, or what remedy they want; but we paint them in those colours
in which they appear to the eye of poverty and ignorance, without
saying whether those colours are false or true. Nor is the case at
all comparable to that of Dissenters paying tithe in England; which
case is precisely the reverse of what happens in Ireland, for it is
the contribution of a very small minority to the religion of a very
large majority; and the numbers on either side make all the
difference in the argument. To exasperate the poor Catholic still
more, the rich graziers of the parish, or the squire in his parish,
pay no tithe at all for their grass land. Agistment tithe is
abolished in Ireland, and the burthen of supporting two Churches
seems to devolve upon the poorer Catholics, struggling with plough