[160] Thus the grievances of the Irish Roman Catholic had hardly anything in common with the grievances of the English Roman Catholic.

The Roman Catholic of Lancashire or Staffordshire had only to turn Protestant; and he was at once, in all respects, on a level with his neighbours: but, if the Roman Catholics of Munster and Connaught had turned Protestants, they would still have continued to be a subject people.

Whatever evils the Roman Catholic suffered in England were the effects of harsh legislation, and might have been remedied by a more liberal legislation.
But between the two populations which inhabited Ireland there was an inequality which legislation had not caused and could not remove.

The dominion which one of those populations exercised over the other was the dominion of wealth over poverty, of knowledge over ignorance, of civilised over uncivilised man.
James himself seemed, at the commencement of his reign, to be perfectly aware of these truths.

The distractions of Ireland, he said, arose, not from the differences between the Catholics and the Protestants, but from the differences between the Irish and the English.