I.’  The English habit, language, and manners almost universally prevailed.  ‘Irish,’ says Harris, ’can be heard only among the inferior rank of Irish Papists, and even that little diminishes every day, by the great desire the poor natives have that their children should be taught to read and write in the English tongue in the Charter, or other English Protestant schools, to which they willingly send them.’  The author exults in the progress of Protestantism.  There were but two Catholic gentlemen in the county who had estates, and their income was very moderate.  When the priests were registered in 1704 there were but thirty in the county.  In 1733 the books of the hearth-money collectors showed—­

Protestant families in the county Down 14,000
Catholic families 5,210
Total Protestants, reckoning five a family 70,300
Total Catholics 26,050
                                               ______
Protestant majority 44,250

Our author, who was an excellent Protestant of the 18th century type, with boundless faith in the moral influence of the Charter schools, would be greatly distressed if he could have lived in these degenerate days, and seen the last religious census, which gives the following figures for the county of Down:—­

Protestants of all denominations 202,026
Catholics 97,240
                                              _______
Total population 299,266

The total number of souls in the county in the year 1733 was 96,350.  These figures show that the population was more than trebled in 130 years, and that the Catholics have increased nearly fourfold.

The history of the Hertfort estate illustrates every phase of the tenant-right question.  It contains 66,000 acres, and comprises the barony of Upper Massereene, part of the barony of Upper Belfast, in the county of Antrim, and part of the baronies of Castlereagh and Lower Iveagh, in the county of Down; consisting altogether of no less than 140 townlands.  It extends from Dunmurry to Lough Neagh, a distance of about fourteen miles as the crow flies.  When the Devon commission made its inquiry, the population upon this estate amounted to about 50,000.  It contains mountain land, and the mountains are particularly wet, because, unlike the mountains in other parts of the country, the substratum is a stiff retentive clay.  At that time there was not a spot of mountain or bog upon Lord Hertfort’s estate that was not let by the acre.  About one-third of the land is of first-rate quality; there are 15,000 or 16,000 acres of mountain, and about the same quantity of land of medium quality.