A PROTESTANT CLERGYMAN ON IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 14, 2 August 1873, Page 12

A PROTESTANT CLERGYMAN ON IRELAND.

xiTßKev. David Walk iv a lecture to the Congregation of the Linden' ot Christian Church, Memphis, Tennessee, alluding to Protestant and Oatnohc Ireland, said:— My business is to state facts— not to make them. Of course, I had evar been taught— in fact, I bad read it in the Sunday-school book— that the North' of Ireland', which is supposed to be Protestant, is greatly superior to the South of Ireland 1 , which is supposed-to-be Catholic- Now, I have been through Ireland, from' the extreme South to the extreme North, and I aver upon the honor of a gentleman, and a Christian, that a greater fraud than the assumed superiority of the Protestant over the Catholic population of Ireland was never palmed off upon an innocent and unsuspecting public. It is j>iliful when men attempt to coin religious capital out of such material. Ua the other hand, I saw more squalor, more abject misery, more poverty and wretchedness in Glasgow and Edinburgh than in the whole of Ireland put together. Scotland is Protestant; Ireland is Catholic. I say it is my duty to state facts o3 I see them, and not to allow religious prejudice to blind my eyes to the truth. The sun shines on no fairer land than the South of Ireland. From Mallow on the Bkckwater to Cork on the Lee, it is is pure and beautiful ac a dream m the heart of a sinless maiden. I saw just two cities in Europe tvhicht should care to live in. One of these is Dundee, in' Scotlan d; Hie other Cork, Ireland-with a decided preference fo* Cork. Every' where m Ireland I was treated like a' geatleman. Never for a sinele instant was I maltreated by a human being.