Census of Ireland 1861: Part IV, Reports and Tables relating to Religious Professions, Education and Occupations volume I, Religions and Education

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36 CENSUS OP IRELAND FOR THE YEAR 1861. 
Parochial Population. 

to the formation of new parishes out of townlands detached from parishes previously existing, or to the division of ancient parishes, as already stated in our Report on Ages andl Education. 
In the one case it may have lessened the number of parishes having fewest members of the Established Church; and in the other, reduced the number of the more populous parishes by these divisions; but in either case the alteration in the size and grouping of the parishes, spread over the entire number, must be inconsiderable. 
Classifica¬ tion of Parishes according to the Number of Members of each Religious Profession resident therein in 1S34 and 1861. 

Table IX.—Showing 
the Parishes of Ireland classified according to the Number of each Religious 

Profession resident therein in the Years 1834 and 1861. 

Classification of Pauishes. 

Number of Parishes containing— I. 
No Members, II. 
1, and not more than 20 Members, III. 
More than 20, and not more than 50 Members, IV. 
More than 50, and not more than 100 

„ V. 
More than 300, and not more than 200 

„ VI. 
More than 200, and not more than 500 „ VII. 
More than 500, and not more than 1,000 „ VIII. 
More than 3,000, and not more than 2,000 „ IX. 
More than 2,000, and not more than 5,000 „ X. 
More than 5,000, and not more than 10,00.) 
„ XI. 
Morethan 10,000, andnotmorethan 20,000 „ XII. 
More than 20,ooo5 and not more than 30,000 „ XIII. 
More than 30,000, and not more than -10,000 „ XIV. 
More than 40,000 Members, . 

Established Chuioli. 

1834. 
| 18G1 

204 456 382 307 317 315 3 07 3 25 76 14 

199 575 416 34.9 
270 309 141 106 53 

Boman Catholics. 

1 4 12 30 71 243 372 575 742 274 GH 3 

S 29 60 120 414 522 573 532 133 32 3 I 1 

Other \ Frosliyf crians. 
Viotostant 

18C1. 

Poisuasions. 
1834. 
1831. 
1801. 

1,884 1,261 1,962 

_ 

1,386 143 688 285 606 32 94 .r3 
153 35 54 40 111 25 

, 

49 33 84 49' i 55 16 68 42 1 (13 3 14 73 92 3 87 56 t 23 14 1 1 I 

1 • 

I • 

Classifica¬ tion of Parishes as to Estab¬ lished Church population. 

Members of the Estab¬ lished Ghnrch in each Parish. 

From this Table it appears that of the seven classes of parishes, from V. 
to XL, both inclusively, which in 1834 contained the largest number of members of the Established Church, six have undergone a large reduction, and one (XL) has disappeared; while class XII.,or 
those having more than 20,000,and not more than 30,000, which was unrepresented in 1834, is now represented by two. 
The class of parishes having no resident member of the Established Church shows a reduction of five, the difference between 204 in 1834 and 199 in 1861. 
On the other hand the three groups of parishes containing fewest Episcopalian Protestants have undergone a considerable increase. 
This may be accounted for in some degree by the fact that the parishes containing the largest pro¬ portion of Episcopalian Protestants contained also the greatest proportion of poor and struggling members of that persuasion, upon whom the calamitous events of the famine period, and other periods of distress during the twenty-seven years interval between 1834 and 1861, may be supposed to have pressed with equal severity as upon their poor countrymen of other persuasions. 
The Established Church population being thus reduced in the parishes where it was most dense, those parishes dropped from the rank assignable to them in 1834 into the lower ranks of the scale; while the parishes in which the members of the Established Church were in better circumstances and were placed by their social position comparatively beyond the influence of the disastrous times to which wo have referred, have not been exposed to a like reduction in the number of Established Church residents; and the number of those parishes became increased by the disappearance from other parishes higher in the scale of the few members of the Established Church who were unable to hold their ground against the pressure of the day. 
Confining our attention now to the year 1861, we find that there were 199 parishes in 1861, containing no member of tho Established Church, and consequently that the number of parishes having resident members of that church was 2,229. 
Of this number the parishes which constituted the largest group were those in which the members of the Established Church did not exceed 20, the number of such parishes being 575, or nearly a fourth of the entire. 
The two largest groups next in succession were those parishes whfeh contained no more than 50 and 100 members respectively of the Established Church; and adding toge¬ ther these three groups, the number of parishes in which the members of tho Established Church did not exceed 100, will be found to be 1.340, 
or more than one-half the entire num¬ ber of parishes having members of the Established Church. 
Next in point of numbers is the group of parishes in which the members of the Established Church ranged between 200 and 500; the number of which was 309, or something more than one-eighth of the whole. 
The next most considerable group (270) of parishes containing Established Church Protestants was that in which the number did not exceed 200. 
The three groups in which the members of the Established Church did not exceed 1,000, 2.000, 
and 5,000, respectively, diminish progressively and pretty uniformly in numbers, being 141, 106, and 53; while the groups in y*hich they exceeded 5,000, count only 10, being a small