Large numbers lapse into indifferentism and irreligion.

There should be in America about 20,000,000 Catholics; there are scarcely 10,000,000.

There are reasons to fear that the great majority of the apostates are of Irish extraction, and not a few of them of Irish birth.' [21] This view seems to be taken by the most influential spokesmen of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy.

See Evidence, _Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland_, vol.iii., p.

238, Questions 8702-6.
[22] I may mention that of the co-operative societies organised by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society there are no fewer than 331 societies of which the local priests are the Chairmen, while to my own knowledge during the summer and autumn of 1902, as many as 50,000 persons from all parts of Ireland were personally conducted over the exhibit of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction at the Cork Exhibition by their local clergy.