"No tradesman was capable, by any service or settlement, to obtain his freedom in any town corporate; so that they trade and work in their native towns as aliens, paying, as such, quarterage, and other charges and impositions. They were expressly forbidden, in whatever employment, to take more than two apprentices, except in the linen manufacture only."* No Roman Catholic of any rank was allowed to possess arms without express licence from the LordLieutenant and Council. Fourth, as to Education. Let laws ever so stringent be passed to keep a nation prostrate, there is a chance of its getting on its feet if education be permitted; measures were accordingly enacted condemning the Roman Catholic population to perpetual ignorance, a precaution at present adopted by the southern states of America with respect to their slaves. All Roman Catholics were excluded from the universities; and to form private academies and schools of their own, was equally prohibited. "Popish schoolmasters" were proscribed, though teaching in a private family. Any person sent abroad for education, though but in childhood, was "disabled to sue in law or equity; to be guardian, executor, or administrator; he was rendered incapable of any legacy or deed of gift; he forfeited all his goods and chattels for ever, and he forfeited for his life all * Burke. Tracts on the Popery Laws. his lands, hereditaments, offices, and estate of freehold, and all trusts, powers, or interests therein."* Fifth, as to Morals. To deny political and civil privileges to the great bulk of a nation is to degrade; to forbid property is to barbarize; to prevent education is to brutalize; to ban religion is worse than all these but so long as the moral sense and those affections of which it is the seat subsist, there is a chance that a buried humanity may force its way up into the light. The whole constitution of society is founded upon that habit of reverence of which the fifth commandment, ranged first in the second table of the law, and the link between our duties to God and to our neighbour, is the symbol and the sanction. Was it from ignorance of this fact, or from the knowledge of it, that the penal laws included enactments of which the direct tendency was not only to force subjects into rebellion against their sovereign, but to tempt children to wage war on their parents? The eldest son, on conforming to Protestantism, was entitled to the paternal estate, his father retaining only a life interest in it; the other children, on the same conditions, and at any age, could extort from their father a separate and independent maintenance. "Every child of a Popish parent was encouraged to come into what is called a court of equity, to prefer a bill against his father, and compel him to confess * Burke. Tracts on the Popery Laws. upon oath the quantity and value of his substance, personal as well as real, of what nature soever, or howsoever it might be employed; upon which discovery the court was empowered to seize upon, and allocate for the immediate maintenance of such child, or children, any sum not exceeding one third of the whole fortune."* If the children discovered that the parent had increased his property subsequently to the award, they were entitled to bring a new bill against him, and thus keep him always in chancery. "The wife of a Roman Catholic had also the power, on changing her religion, to deprive her husband of his children; and by that hold she inevitably acquired a power and superiority over her husband."+ She had also the privilege, on conforming, to apply to chancery on her husband's death, in which case "she was to be allotted a portion from his leases, and other personal estate, not exceeding one third of his whole clear substance." The virtue of a nation is, however, a stubborn thing, as well as its vices; and these provisions of the penal laws failed on the whole in their object, though there were not wanting persons weak or vile enough to be seduced by them. It is thus that a countryman of yours comments on this period of English policy in Ireland. He asks "if it be possible to conceive any maxims of policy more detestable, or a more monstrous union * Burke. Tracts on the Popery Laws. + Ibid. Do the pages of human malignity and folly? of Machiavel contain suggestions more profligate ? Was the expulsion of the Moriscoes more barbarous and impolitic? or the revocation of the edict of Nantes more unwise and intolerant than this deliberate and long-sustained system, pursued by a country which plumes itself upon its free constitution, and its own glorious struggles for civil and religious liberty ?"* ... All which questions I leave you to answer. It has happened, Sir, in the remote dependencies of other great nations, that good laws have worked ill, or bad laws worse than was expected, through the corruption or wickedness of the subordinate instruments who executed them in detail. In Ireland the matter was otherwise; the executioners were more merciful than the judges: nor could the men be found, though corrupted by the tyranny obtruded upon them, though blinded by an apparent interest, and inflamed by the animosities both of religion and of race, to carry those laws into full effect, and make them bring forth their perfect fruits. The sentenced priest was spared by the despotic neighbour near whose gate he lurked; the people still knelt around their broken altars; the children still revered their fathers if not their laws; the multitudes condemned to perpetual poverty and apathy, glanced with more * "Past and Present Policy of England towards Ireland," page 56. toleration at the possessions torn from them, than you, Sir, at their children's rags; society continued to exist; no rebellion gave a pretext for this oppression; till, partly from a universal disgust, partly from a proved inefficacy, and partly from the terrible warning of the French revolution, those laws were repealed, and the sword of injustice, "fatigata nondum satiata," rested from its labour. Before this time two great revolutions had taken place in Ireland, the one, asserting the freedom of her trade, the other, the independence of her Parliament. Neither was achieved without a struggle. "Previous to the year 1780," says Mr. Huskisson, "the agriculture, the manufactures, the commerce, the navigation of Ireland, were all held in the most rigid subserviency to the supposed interests of Great Britain." But Ireland both felt the injury and knew where the remedy lay: the least of the wrongs you had done her worked the cure, for it united her people, and their natural leaders stood at their head. They demanded that room should be made for virtue; that a sphere should be opened to industry; that the people of Ireland should be afflicted by no malediction heavier than the primal curse, and at least be permitted to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Your "merchants, manufacturers, shipowners, and country gentlemen, all took the alarm:" Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester interposed, and, with loud prophecies of their |