are quite sufficient to show how large a proportion of the energy and ability of Ireland was employed in foreign lands, and how ruinous must have been the consequences at home. If, as there appears much reason to believe, there is such a thing as an hereditary transmission of moral and intellectual qualities, the removal from a nation of tens of thousands of the ablest and most energetic of its citizens must inevitably, by a mere physical law, result in the degradation of the race. Nor is it necessary to fall back upon any speculations of disputed science. In every community there exists a small minority of men whose abilities, high purpose, and energy of will, mark them out as in some degree leaders of men. These take the first steps in every public enterprise, counteract by their example the vicious elements of the population, set the current and form the standard of public opinion, and infuse a healthy moral vigour into their nation. In Ireland for three or four generations such men were steadily weeded out. Can we wonder that the standard of public morals and of public spirit should have declined?

But not only were the healthiest elements driven away: corrupting influences of the most powerful kind infected those who remained. It is extremely difficult in our day to realise the moral conditions of a society in which it was the very first object of the law to subvert the belief of the great majority of the people, to break down among them the sentiment of religious reverence, and in every possible way to repress, injure, and insult all that they regarded as sacred. I have already described the principal provisions of the penal code. I have given examples of the language employed on the most solemn occasions and in their official capacities, by viceroys and by judges; but it is only by a minute and detailed examination that we can adequately realise the operation of the system. In all the walks and circumstances of

life the illegal character of the faith of the people was obtruded. If a Catholic committed a crime, no matter how unconnected with his creed, the fact that he was of the Popish religion was usually recorded ostentatiously in the proclamation against him. If a petitioner could possibly allege it, his Protestantism was seldom omitted in the enumeration of his merits. A Catholic, or even the husband of a Catholic, was degraded in his own. country by exclusion from every position of trust from the highest to the lowest, while Frenchmen and Germans were largely pensioned, avowedly in order to strengthen the Protestant interest. The form of recantation drawn up for those who consented to join the Established Church was studiously offensive, for it compelled the convert to brand his former faith as 'the way of damnation.'1 In the eyes of the law the prelates and friars, whom the Catholic regarded with the deepest reverence; the priest, who without having taken the abjuration oath celebrated the worship which he believed to be essential to his salvation; the schoolmaster, who, discharging a duty of the first utility, taught his children the rudiments of knowledge, were all felons, for whose apprehension a reward was offered, and who only remained in the country by connivance or concealment.

Their actual condition varied greatly at different times and in different counties. Some bishops lived chiefly on the Continent, and only ventured from time to time to come to Ireland. Others lived under assumed names, in some obscure farmhouse among the mountains.2 At ordinations several hands were laid at the same moment on the head of the candidate, in order that if

1 Howard, On Popery Cases, p. 175. According to Howard, the terms of the recantation had a considerable effect in preventing conversions.

2 See some very curious instances of this in Fitzpatrick's Life of Bishop Doyle, i. 169. Brenan's Ecclesiastical Hist. of Ireland, ii. 328, 329.

examined in the law courts he might be ignorant of the person who ordained him. Sometimes, too, at Mass a curtain, for the same reason, was drawn between the priest and the worshippers.2 The priests, after the imposition of the abjuration oath, were at the mercy of the Government, for most of them had accepted the system. of registration. Their names and addresses were known, and they were now called upon to take a new oath, which their Church pronounced to be sinful. The recusants were obliged to fly from their homes and conceal themselves. In many districts the Catholic worship for a time ceased, and many of the clergy abandoned their country and took refuge in Portugal. The persecution, however, was soon suspended; but the position of the priests remained completely precarious. The last Tory ministry of Anne was accused of being favourable to them, and it was alleged that many at this time came over in hope of a restoration, but in 1711 a proclamation was issued for the rigid execution of the laws against Papists. In January 1712 the Tory Chancellor, Sir Constantine Phipps, in a speech to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of Dublin, strongly urged upon them the duty of preventing public Mass being said, contrary to law, by priests not registered, and that will not take the abjuration oath;' and he complained that the negligence of the Corporation in enforcing the law had produced great licence throughout the kingdom.4

In the correspondence of the Government at this time we have many curious glimpses of the condition of the Church, and of the actual working of the law.

1 8 Anne, c. 3, sec. 25.

2 This is noticed in the 'heads of a Bill for explaining the Acts to prevent the growth of Popery,' which were carried through the Irish Parliament in 1723, but were dropped in England. MSS.

Irish Record Office.

3 See The Conduct of the Purse of Ireland (London, 1714).

This speech is printed in a pamphlet called Resolutions of the Irish House of Commons against Sir C. Phipps.

Thus, when the proclamation for putting the laws against Popish priests and dignitaries into force, came down to Armagh, in the beginning of the October of 1712, it was at once reported to Walter Dawson, a cousin of the Secretary at the Castle, that there was in the neighbourhood a Popish Dean of Armagh. He proved to be an old bedridden man of ninety, long since sunk into idiocy, fed like a child, and living by charity. The old man was carried off to gaol, but the brother of his captor wrote to the Government, remonstrating at the inhumanity of the proceeding, and urging that it could not fail to bring serious discredit upon the law. A few months later we learn the sequel of the story in a letter from Walter Dawson to his cousin at the Castle, stating that in pursuance of the proclamation he had arrested. Brien M'Guirk, Popish titular Dean of Armagh, that he had obtained witnesses against him, but that on February 13, before the Assizes had begun, his prisoner died in gaol, and Dawson hoped that this mischance would not deprive him of the reward of 50l. which he would have obtained on conviction. In the county of Sligo, at the same time, many Papists were compelled to answer on oath, when, where, and from whom they last heard Mass, and whether they knew of any Catholic bishops, friars, or schools. It appears from their answers that they had heard Mass from different registered but nonjuring priests, and that they were ignorant of the existence of any Catholic schools. One deponent, however, stated that a certain MacDermott was Bishop of Elphin, and one Rourke, of Killala, that the former lived somewhere in Roscommon, that the deponent had heard Mass in Donegal celebrated by friars, and that he believed there were several other friars in that county,

'Irish Record Office (Irish Civil Correspondence, Miscellaneous).

though he did not know their address. In the September of 1712 a constable named Freeny informed the magistrates of the county Roscommon that during the last seven or eight months great multitudes of friars had appeared in the county, begging through the villages, and that it was a common discourse among the inhabitants that the old abbeys would soon be rebuilt, and the monks restored.2 In the preceding year a magistrate at Listowel, in the county of Kerry, gave the Government a curious picture of one of these itinerant friars. A man named Bourke, a native of Connaught, appeared in Kerry, 'barefoot, bareheaded, and a staff in his hand, exhorting the common people to forsake their vices and lead a godly life. He had a catechism, which he read and pretended to expound to the people in Irish. . . . At the end of a discourse he usually set up a cry, very common in Connaught (as I am told), after which he would scourge himself until the blood ran down his back.' The magistrate, hearing that he was followed by multitudes, and believed by the common people to work miracles, sent to apprehend him; but he succeeded in escaping, and was afterwards heard of, preaching to as many as 2,000 or 3,000 persons in the county of Limerick. As far as the magistrate was able to learn, he had no objects except the promotion of piety.3

A priest-hunter, named Edward Tyrrell-pronounced by the chancellor to be a great rogue'-now appears frequently in the Government correspondence. In October 1712 he drew up some injunctions in Dublin against priests, boasted that he had taken many, but complained of the remissness and ill-will of the magis

1 Irish State Paper Office, Presentments and Informations of Grand Jurors, Co. Sligo.

2 Ibid. Co. Roscommon.

J. Julian to the Right Hon. the Lord of Kerry, Aug. 13, 1711. Irish Record Office.