RELIGIONS OF ULSTER

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 138, 7 December 1912, Page 16

RELIGIONS OF ULSTER

In, considering the problem of Irish Home Bule we are too ready to assume that Ulster and Protestantism are synonymous terms, says an exchange. The Protestants are, of course, in a majority, but it is a entail majority, there being about 690,006 Catholics and about 888,000. non-Catholics. There is actually a Catholic majority in five of the nine Ulster counties, that is to say in Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Monaghart, and Tyrone, and a non-Catholic majority in Ajitrim, Armagh, Down, and Detry. Speaking politically, Ulster is almost exactly divided between Orangemen and Nationalists. Sixteen of her thirty-thtee members of Parliament are Nationalists and seventeen are Orangemen, and sometimes these numbers are reversed. Excluding the city ot Belfast, the Nationalists would be in a large majority throughout Ulster. To speak of Ulster as representing any particular religious or political creed is therefore a mistake.