The contest in Ireland had in itself far greater importance than that in Scotland. In both countries the Keltic population was on the side of the hereditary King, but in Ireland it formed a large majority, in Scotland a small minority of the population. While the Jacobites in Scotland, far from contesting the preponderance of the Teutonic population, or even of the Protestant religion, only opposed a revolution which had taken place suddenly, and strove to maintain the constitution which had been legally established during the last twenty years and more, the object aimed at in Ireland was the complete transformation of the mode of government which had previously existed, and either the destruction, or at least without doubt the subjugation of the Teutonic element. The members of the native party in Ireland persisted in their attachment to the Catholic religion, which procured them a support in Roman Catholic Europe; that attachment was not perhaps necessary in itself, but they had been accustomed to it for a century and a half, and it had become indissoluble. The consequence of this was, that the Teutonic element, so far as it was also kept together by Protestantism, united for resistance without regard to the ecclesiastical differences which prevailed in its bosom. The Protestants of Scottish and English descent formed an association against the Popish and illegal counsellors of King James, and attached themselves expressly to the government of England in the form which it was assuming at the same time under the influence of continental relations.