I. 1700 had paid it; and a significant clause was added to the CHAP. act, that the procuring or passing exorbitant grants by any member of the Privy Council, or by any other that had been a Privy Councillor, to his own use or benefit, was a high crime and misdemeanour." To secure the consent of the Upper House, the Resumption Bill was attached to the Money Bill; and the Money Bill was so framed that it must be passed unmutilated, or else rejected. The Lords threatened amendments. The Commons locked their doors, and proceeded to comment more at length on the connexion of the King's bounties with the list of Privy Councillors. Amidst humiliation, rage, and pain, the bill passed, and received the Royal assent. The Irish forfeitures were recovered out of the harpies' talons, and made over to thirteen trustees, to sell to the highest bidder. Another measure was carried also before the English Parliament separated, which, though immediately affecting England only, became to Ireland an example of the deepest moment, and formed an eventual turning-point in its history. The Catholic clergy, recovering from the first terrors into which they had been thrown by the revolution, still dreaming of changes, unable to part with a vision of a reconciled England, which they had imagined to be on the eve of realization, were again at their eternal work of plots and conspiracies, moving about in contempt of penal laws, and deep in Jacobitism and treason. Heated with their late success, and this time with William's sanction, the Protestant majorities in the two Houses passed the act which formed the model of the Irish act to prevent the future growth of Popery.' BOOK II. 1700 By the 4th of the 11th of William the Third any bishop or priest of the Roman Church convicted of saying mass, teaching or keeping a school, or exercising any other religious function, was made liable to perpetual imprisonment. A hundred pounds reward was offered for the apprehension of such persons; and, because experience had proved the insufficiency of laws against opinions or acts of worship, without touching more nearly the motives found powerful with the laity, it was enacted further that no person, educated in or professing the Popish religion, who had not, within six months after attaining the age of eighteen, taken the two oaths of allegiance and abjuration, and made the declaration disavowing Transubstantiation, should be capable of inheriting real estate in England. Nor should any Papist be allowed to purchase lands; nor might he send his children to be educated in foreign seminaries. And if any Papist father, having Protestant children, should attempt to punish or coerce them, by a refusal of adequate maintenance, the Court of Chancery should have power to interfere and compel the parent to make such children a sufficient allowance. The act succeeded in England, and has, therefore, been little heard of. Catholicism ceased practically to exist among us, and has only revived within the memory of middle-aged men. Its companion act failed in Ireland, and has, therefore, been held up as an example of the folly and ineffectuality of religious persecution. Experience, to which the appeal is made so confidently, gives opposite answers in the two countries; and, if the question be argued on broad grounds of justice, the reply must still vary with the conditions of time and place and with the CHAP. active principles of the creed proscribed. The imagination of ordinary men is unequal to the reproduction of circumstances other than those by which they 1700 are themselves surrounded; and, when the political or moral mischiefs of particular opinions seem to have disappeared, they condemn measures as bigoted and tyrannical which, had their lot been cast in other times, they would have themselves been the loudest in applauding. The condition of Ireland was not the condition of England. A measure suited for one may, on this ground, have been unsuited to the other; but, if it be argued, that persecution is necessarily unsuccessful, the history of England and Scotland is an adequate answer. The Catholics, at all events, had no right to complain. They, who had never professed toleration, could not demand the protection of it. To them the same measure only was meted out which they had allowed to others in England while the power was theirs, and which they continued to allow them in other countries, where the power was still theirs. They suffered under no disabilities in Great Britain which Protestants did not suffer under in France, and Spain, and Italy. So long as differences of religion affected the public policy of Catholic and Protestant governments, the English and Irish Catholic was the natural ally of the enemies of the English throne, and as such, in the opinion of the times, a legitimate object of restraint. BOOK II. 1700 SECTION VII. POPULAR legislatures may pass laws in paroxysms of emotion, but, unless the emotion is continuous, and unless with the laws they provide an executive to give effect to their resolutions, the interposition may remain after all but a mute and helpless protest. Their sessions end, their indignation dies away, satisfied with what it seems to have achieved. Corruption resumes its sway, and, after a brief pause, the stream falls back into its old channels. The forfeited estates were recovered from the grantees, and, by the Act of Resumption, were to be sold to Protestants, and to Protestants only. The thirteen trustees were selected for their supposed unimpeachable probity; no one was admitted into their number who held office under the crown, who was in any way accountable to the King, who was in Parliament, and, therefore, liable to influence. They entered into possession of estates worth in fee simple nearly two millions; which were to be disposed of at last to the best advantage for the benefit of the nation. Yet either the situation was too difficult for them, or the temptation was too strong. They sate for two years. The rents were consumed by their expenses. The lands were redistributed. Yet, when they were gone, the purchasemoney was eaten up by the demand as it arose; and the Protestant claim was defeated or evaded. The trustees displayed, in all their decrees, the same manifest partiality for Papists,' which had been so passionately condemned. The spirit which had thrown I. out the Security Act continued dominant, it being a CHAP. maxim among all who favoured King James's interest, to serve the professors of that religion whose estates were confiscated for their adherence to him.'1 There was no further interference. An attempt to control the affairs of Ireland on principles of probity and uprightness, was abandoned as hopeless; but the estrangement between the two islands was aggravated, and the mutual resentment and suspicion; and, more than ever, it became the policy of England to keep her equivocal neighbour poor and helpless. Among the immediate results was an increasing development of absenteeism. In all empires the wealth and intellect of the provinces flow inevitably towards the ruling country, where social life is more agreeable, pleasures more refined, and the openings to ambition more inviting. The absenteeism of Ireland was peculiarly objectionable, for the justification of the forfeitures was the necessity of settling English and Scotch rulers on the soil. That land had become a chattel, to be bought and sold at pleasure, however, rendered the enforcement of residence impossible. The altered circumstances of society threw estates into the market, or made them the prey of political intrigue; and the successful speculator, when his prize was secured, carried the profits to enjoy them where he pleased. Enormous estates had fallen to English companies and capitalists in a country where they never meant to set their foot. Irish noblemen and gentlemen, as, from increasing intercourse, they became conscious of the contrast between the two countries, grew impatient of the wretchedness of their Irish homes, and established themselves in London 1 Harris. 1700 |