English were little scrupulous in committing acts of national injustice. The spirit of commercial jealousy, which has done more injury to the commerce of England than all other causes united, induced the British parliament to present a joint address to the king, praying that he would discourage the woollen manufacture of Ireland! The royal reply deserves to be recorded.

"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

"I shall do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen manufacture of Ireland, and to encourage the linen manufacture there; and to promote the trade of England.

“July 2, 1698."

The promise of encouraging the linen manufacture was not kept. Every attempt to establish it in the south of Ireland failed, principally, it must be added, because the avarice of the clergy prevented the establishment of an equitable modus for the tithe of flax.*

About the same time, Mr. William Molyneux, member for the Dublin University, celebrated as the friend of Locke, published a book asserting the independence of the Irish legislature. The English House of Commons was thrown into a paroxysm of rage. They resolved unanimously, "that the book published by Mr. Molyneux was of dangerous tendency to the crown and people of England, by denying the authority of the king and parliament of England to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland,

* As a further example of England's spirit of commerciai jealousy, we may mention a petition presented to the British House of Commons in this reign, from Folkstone in Kent and Aldborough in Suffolk, complaining, "that the Irish of Waterford and Wexford, by catching herrings and sending them to the Straits, were forestalling and ruining the markets of the petitioners." This petition was ordered to be taken into serious consideration by the Solons of that day; but what was the result is not known.

VOL. II.-S

and the subordination and independence that Ireland had, and ought to have, upon England, as being united and annexed to the imperial crown of England." They also, in a body, presented an address to his majesty, beseeching him, "that the laws directing and restraining the Irish parliament should not be evaded;" and obtained from the king a promise of compliance. Finally, they ordered the obnoxious book to be burned by the common hangman. If any thing could add to the disgrace of William's Irish parliament, it would be their tame submission to this flagrant and wanton insult; but a legislature, already dishonoured by perfidy, injustice, and tyranny, dared not to make any efforts for its own vindication. They were prepared to submit to any treatment, provided that they were permitted to retain their ascendency over the unfortunate Catholics.

Small as the confiscations made by William were, they formed the ground of a serious quarrel between him and his parliament. The king having made seventy-six grants of the forfeited estates to his most faithful servants, those who were disappointed of their share of plunder clamoured loudly against this exertion of the prerogative. A bill for the resumption of these grants passed the lower house with little difficulty, but encountered a severe opposition in the lords. It was however finally carried, and William could not refrain from expressing his dissatisfaction when he gave it the royal assent. The forfeited lands were placed for sale in the hands of trustees, whose proceedings were marked by the most scandalous oppression and venality; but the English parliament rejected all petitions against their conduct, and declared that all the accusations were false and malicious. This ingenious mode of argument, in which sentence is given on the conclusion, after refusing all consideration of the premises, has been frequently practised by the English and Irish

parliaments when legislating for Ireland. The forfeited lands were valued at fifteen hundred thousand pounds; in the hands of the trustees, they produced little more than a third of that sum.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Penal Laws.

A. D. 1701.—During the reign of Anne, England attained to greater prosperity and influence than she had acquired since the reign of Cromwell; but Ireland, by the ferocious acts of her own legislature, was reduced to a state of wretchedness almost unexampled in the annals of tyranny and suffering. While William was alive, his well-known wish to prevent further infringements of the treaty of Limerick, prevented the faction of the ascendency from adding to those iniquitous acts by which they showed their malignant hatred of their fellow-subjects, and at the same time their fears, that some new crisis might wrest from them the lands purchased by such a long course of guilt and fraud. The first bill, "to prevent the growth of popery," was introduced in the session of 1703. The following are among the most remarkable of its enactments :-The third clause provides, that if the son of an estated papist shall conform to the established religion, the father shall be incapacitated from selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by will. The fourth clause prohibits a papist from being the guardian of his own child; and orders, that if at any time the child, though ever so young, pretends to be a Protestant, it shall be taken from its own father, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, here

ditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases, it further enacts, that if a papist should hold a farm producing a profit greater than one-third of the amount of the rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit. The seventh clause prohibits papists from succeeding to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By the tenth clause, the estate of a papist, not having a Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal shares between all his children. The sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the articles of the treaty. The twenty-fifth clause vests in her majesty all adowsons possessed by papists.

It would be a mere waste of words to reprobate this iniquitous law, or rather this violation of all law human and divine. No Irish Protestant can peruse its enactments without a blush for the shame thus brought on his religion, when it was thus virtually declared that the reformed system should owe its strength and security, not to the purity of its principles, not to the excellence of its doctrines, but to robbery and oppression, to dissension between father and child, to stimulating one neighbour to seize the fruits of another's industry, to the desecration of a solemn sacrament, by making it a test for office. How can we be surprised that the reformed religion is unpopular in Ireland, when, by this and similar laws, a Protestant legislature virtually declared that Protestantism could not be secure unless it entered into alliance with Belial, Mammon, and Moloch?

When this atrocious bill was introduced, the

Catholics asked leave to be heard by counsel at the bar of the house against it, and obtained permission. Sir Theobald Butler, Mr. Malone, and Rice, who had been chief-baron, appeared, and made an argumentative, rather than an eloquent, appeal to the justice and honour of their hearers. Butler showed how gross was this attempt to violate the articles of Limerick. The meritorious conduct of the Catholics since the period of their submission, he insisted, ought to save them from such bitter penalties. He pointed out how infamous was the attempt to destroy all confidence between parents and children; and he severely censured the exclusion of Protestant dissenters from office, by the imposition of the sacramental test. His arguments, as he seems himself to have anticipated, were unheeded. The bill was sent to the Duke of Ormond, then lord-lieutenant, who declared on receiving it, "that he would recommend it in the most effectual manner, and do every thing in his power to prevent the growth of popery ;"—a promise which he very faithfully performed.

By a strange concatenation of events, this law proved penal to Protestants as well as papists. The English ministers were at this time engaged in a negotiation with the Emperor of Germany, for obtaining from him a full toleration of Protestantism in his dominions; and were by no means willing to put it in his power to retort, that he treated Protestants far better than they did Catholics. They laboured, therefore, to dissuade the Irish parliament from urging the measure; but their efforts were vain. The faction of the ascendency was not to be deterred from persecution by a regard for foreign Protestants, because their war was not against the religion but the property of the Catholics. The whig ministry of England was now caught by its own devices. They had excited and maintained a popular clamour against popery for several years, in order to strengthen their influence; and now, it was to be feared, that, if they ន ខ