Editorial note — The Irish Church Act Of 1869.

[Footnote 52: A late number of The Catholic Opinion (London) gives us the following statistics: There are, it is said 700,000 Anglicans in Ireland and 36,000,000 Catholics in France; that is, 51 times as many Catholics in France as Anglicans in Ireland. The budget therefore of Catholic worship in France should be 51 times £800,000, or £40,800,000, to write which is enough to show the monstrous iniquity of which Ireland has been the victim. The Presbyterians, numbering 523,291 persons, receive a regium donum for their ministers amounting to £40,547, and a subsidy of £2050 for their theological college at Belfast, making a total of £42,597. Protestant dissenters have no endowment, nor yet Catholics, excepting a subsidy to the college at Maynooth of £26,360. Thus the Anglican Establishment in Ireland has a revenue of about £800,000 for 700,000 persons, or about £1 3s. per head. The Presbyterians receive from the government £42,597 for 523,291 persons, or about 1s. 7 1/2d. per head. Catholics, £26,360 for 4,505,265 persons, that is, LESS THAN ONE PENNY HALFPENNY per head. According to the last census, that of 1861, there were in Ireland: