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be invaded by the meanest scoundrel. Catholics were informed against the harpies who had fastened on them, would not be shaken off unless their ravenous appetite for plunder was in some measure gratified. Who was to believe the protestations of the innocent? They were tried, judged, and condemned, by their sworn enemies. Fines, imprisonments, and forfeitures followed, and thus the miserable catholics were reduced to lower and lower deeps of misery and suffering. God help the country that is abandoned by its governors and rulers to the mercy of bigotted petty magistrates, and of hireling spies, informers, and police!

Öne would have imagined that the Irish House of Commons would have been satisfied with the cruelty of their first act, without resorting to a second. The torture already inflicted on the eatholics by its means was such as would have satisfied a Nero or a Dioclesian; but it was not sufficient for the christian and protestant legislators of Queen Anne. The monument of sectarian atrocity had not yet been reared to its full height; and some new provisions were yet wanting to complete the hideous structure. In 1709, another act was passed, to explain and amend the act to prevent the further growth of popery, which imposed additional severities, and completed the misery of the Irish people. This act was passed under the lord-lieutenancy of the Earl of Wharton, whom Swift described as "a presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in religion;" -one who "sunk his fortune in endeavouring to ruin one kingdom, and raised it by going far in the ruin of another,"-for though "his administration of Ireland was looked upon as a sufficient ground to impeach him, at least for high crimes and misdemeanours, yet he gained by the government of that kingdom, in two years, five and forty thousand pounds, by the most favourable computation, half in the regular way, and half in the prudential."

The new law, which this infamous lord-lieutenant was instrumental in passing, enacted, among other things, that no catholic shall be capable of holding any annuity for life; that the child of a catholic on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father, and that the chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the court shall think fit; that catholic wives who shall declare themselves protestants shall be enabled to compel their husbands to secure them jointures, and to give them a separate maintenance if demanded. The anti-educational clauses were also strongly enforced in this bill, no catholic being allowed to teach, even as an assistant to a protestant master.

This act was, however, mainly directed against the catholic priesthood, whom it hunted down with terrible cruelty. While it offered a salary of £20 per annum to "popish priests who should conform"; it provided rewards for the discovery of " popish prelates, priests, and teachers," according to the following scale :

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For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction £50 For discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman, not registered.....

£20

For discovering each popish schoolmaster or usher......... £10 Other clauses in this act were directed against catholics serving in the office of sheriff, or upon juries,―it being sufficient that the plaintiff challenged a juror for being a papist, to cause his immediate rejection.*

*We give the following clear and succinct summary of the penal laws enacted against the catholics (though it anticipates several of the enactments passed in succeeding reigns,) from Mr. O'Connell's recently published work on "Ireland and the Irish" shewing the extraordinary manner in which the English government fulfilled the provisions of the Treaty of Limerick :"The Irish in every respect performed with scrupulous accuracy the stipulations on their part of the Treaty of Limerick.

"That treaty was totally violated by the British government, the moment it was perfectly safe to violate it.

"That violation was perpetrated by the enactment of a code, of the most dexterous but atrocious iniquity that ever stained the annals of legislation.

"Let me select a few instances of the barbarity with which the treaty of Limerick was violated, under these heads :

First.---PROPERTY.

"Every catholic was, by Act of Parliament, deprived of the power of settling a jointure on any catholic wife, or charging his lands with any provision for his daughters or disposing by will of his landed property. On his death the law divided his lands equally amongst all his

sons.

"All the relations of private life were thus violated.

"If the wife of a catholic declared herself a protestant, the law enabled her not only to compel her husband to give her a separate maintenance, but to transfer to her the custody and guardianship of all their children.

"Thus the wife was encouraged and empowered successfully to rebel against her husband. "If the eldest son of a catholic father at any age, however young, declared himself a protes tant, he thereby made his father strict tenant for life, deprived the father of all power to sell, or dispose of his estate, and such protestant son became entitled to the absolute dominion and ownership of the estate.

"Thus the eldest son was encouraged and, indeed, bribed by the law to rebel against his father.

"If any other child beside the eldest son declared itself, at any age, a protestant, such child at once escaped the controul of its father, and was entitled to a maintenance out of the father's property.

"Thus the law encouraged every child to rebel against its father.

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If any catholic purchased for money any estate in land, any protestant was empowered by law to take away that estate from the catholic, and to enjoy it without paying one shilling of the purchase money.

"This was law.--The catholic paid the money, whereupon the protestant took the estate. The catholic lost both money and estate.

"If any catholic got an estate in land by marriage, by the gift or by the will of a relation, or friend, any protestant could by law take the estate from the catholic and enjoy it himself. "If any catholic took a lease of a farm of land as tenant at a rent for life, or lives, or for any longer term than thirty-one years, any protestant could by law take the farm from the catholic and enjoy the benefit of the lease.

"If any catholic took a farm by lease for a term not exceeding thirty-one years, as he might still by law have done, and by his labour and industry raised the value of the land so as to yield a profit equal to one-third of the rent, any protestant might then by the law evict the catholic, and enjoy for the residue of the term the fruit of the labour and industry of the catholic.

"If any catholic had a horse, worth more than five pounds, any protestant tendering £5 to the catholic owner, was by law entitled to take the horse, though worth £50, or £100, or more, and to keep it as his own.

"If any catholic being the owner of a horse worth more than five pounds, conceal his horse from any protestant, the catholic for the crime of concealing his own horse, was liable to be punished by an imprisonment of three months, and a fine of three times the value of the horse, whatever that might be.

"So much for the laws regulating by act of Parliament, the property-or rather plundering by due course of law, the property---of the catholic.

It is impossible to describe the misery which followed the enactment and enforcement of these abominable laws. The nation lay entirely at the mercy of its plunderers and oppressors. Discoverers and informers, countenanced by the law, preyed upon the people; disregarding alike the ties of blood, of friendship, and of nationality; setting at utter defiance the natural laws of man and the ordinances of God.

The established religion became the mere engine of tyranny. The forced attempts to extend it, sapped both public and private virtue, and gave birth to hypocrisy of the most odious description.*

The government itself was in a state of constant terror. It was alarmed lest its victims should rise against its manifold cruelties. The government was thus always ready to suspect danger, even when it did not exist. Its own fears betrayed its consciousness of the tyranny which it practised. Hence, in the year 1708, on the

"I notice.-

Secondly.---EDUCATION.

"If a catholic kept school, or taught any person, protestant or catholic, any species of literature, or science, such teacher was for the crime of teaching punishable by law by banishment--and, if he returned from banishment, he was subject to be hanged as a felon.

"If a catholic, whether a child or adult, attended, in Ireland, a school kept by a catholic, or was privately instructed by a catholic, such catholic, although a child in its early infancy, incurred a forfeiture of all its property, present or future.

"If a catholic child, however young, was sent to any foreign country for education, such infant child incurred a similar penalty--- that is, a forfeiture of all right to property, present or prospective.

"If any person in Ireland made any remittance of money or goods, for the maintenance of any Irish child educated in a foreign country, such person incurred a similar forfeiture.

Thirdly.---PERSONAL DISABILITIES.

"The law rendered every catholic incapable of holding a commission in the army, or navy, or even to be a private soldier, unless he solemnly abjured his religion.

"The law rendered every catliolic incapable of holding any office whatsoever of honour or emolument in the state. The exclusion was universal.

"A catholic had no legal protection for life or liberty. He could not be a judge, grand juror,

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sheriff, sub-sheriff, master in Chancery, size clerk, barrister, attorney, agent or solicitor, or seneschal of any manor, or even gamekeeper to a private gentleman.

A catholic could not be a member of any corporation, and catholics were precluded by law from residence in some corporate towns.

"Catholics were deprived of all right of voting for members of the Commons House of Parliament.

"Catholic Peers were deprived of their right to sit or vote in the House of Lords.

"Almost all these personal disabilities were equally enforced by law against any protestant who married a catholic wife, or whose child, under the age of fourteen, was educated as a catholic, although against his consent.

Fourthly.---RELIGION.

"To teach the catholic religion was a transportable felony; to convert a protestant to the Catholic faith, was a capital offence punishable as an act of treason.

"To be a catholic regular, that is a monk or friar, was punishable by banishment, and to return from banishment an act of high treason.

"To be a catholic archbishop or bishop, or to exercise any ecclesiastical jurisdiction whatsoever in the catholic church in Ireland, was punishable by transportation---to return from such transportation was an act of high treason, punishable by being hanged, embowelled alive, and afterwards quartered."---Memoir on Ireland, p.p. 10---16.

The legislature itself seemed conscious that their coercive measures against the catholics tended to make hypocrites rather than protestants, for in the year 1725, fearful of the converts, made by the penal code, they enacted that no person that is, or shall be, converted from the popish religion, ought to be elected, or admitted to serve as a member of this house, for the space of seven years next after his conversion; and unless he produces a certificate of having received the sacrament, according to the usage of the church of Ireland as by law established, thrice in every year, during the said term.--Commons' Journal, vol. v. p. 290.

bare rumour of an intended invasion of Scotland by the Pretender, forty-one of the Roman catholic nobility and gentry were arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Dublin; the government, however, was afterwards ashamed of its arbitrary conduct, and ordered them to be set at liberty, "remitting their fees, though they amounted to eight hundred and odd pounds." Another instance of the terrified state of the government mind, which would be ludicrous, but that it indicates so dreadful a state of things, was that in connection with a holy well in the county of Meath, called St. John's well,-a kind of place of pilgrimage where numbers of maimed, diseased, and infirm persons, resorted in summer for the cure of their several disorders. The idea of these cripples assembling together even for such a purpose, was alarming to the goverment ; and they at once took the matter into their serious consideration! A resolution was consequently adopted by the House of Commons, that the sickly devotees "were assembled in that place, to the great hazard and danger of the public peace, and the safety of the kingdom!" And forthwith, fines, imprisonments, and whippings, were made the penalties of "such disorderly and tumultuous assemblies"; penalties which were afterwards carried into the most rigorous effect.

It has been supposed that the real object of the protestants, in devising these monstrous penal laws, and carrying them so cruelly into effect, was to drive the whole body of catholics out of the kingdom. And certainly, their effect was to force such of them as could do so, to emigrate in great numbers. Those catholics who were in the possession of wealth, transferred their capital to other countries, whither they went, and founded commercial houses, many of which, even to the present day, retain their high character and prosperity. The Irish protestant corporations and the Irish protestant parliament, took care that they should have no opportunity of returning to Ireland, to enrich their native country with either their industry or their skill; for the former enacted laws within their several localities, excluding Roman catholics from all profitable branches of trade, and in many instances, even from residence within the walls of the town ;-while the latter ordered, in the year 1713," that an address be made to her Majesty, to desire her, that she would be pleased not to grant licenses to papists to return into the kingdom." At the same time, hundreds of protestant Palatine families* were brought over and settled in Ireland, and large sums of the public money set apart for their maintenance, until they were able to maintain themselves by their own industry.

We have now given a brief outline of this dreary period, but sufficient to show the fiendish malignity which characterised the legislation of the time. The plans of the persecutors were now

An interesting account of the descendants of a portion of these people, settled in the vicinity of Adare, near Limerick, is to be found in "Hall's Ireland." To this day they are very different in character, and distinct in habits, from the people of the country.

completed, their ingenuity in torture was almost exhausted, and they sat down to watch the effects of their horrible machinations. In the graphic language of Mr. Wyse, "The last consummation was now perfected. The land was reduced to a waste, yet fear and discord still reigned; solitude was everywhere, but peace was not yet established. Emigrations became numerous and frequent; all who could fly, fled. They left behind a government in prey to every vice, and a country the victim of every wrong. The facility of acquiring property by the violation of the natural duties of social life, was too powerful a temptation: dishonesty, treachery, and extravagance prevailed. The rewards of conformity cast at large the seeds of mutual distrust in the breasts of child and of parent. Hypocrisy and dissimilation were applauded and recompensed by the laws themselves. A nursery for young tyrants was formed in the very bosom of the legislature; habitual oppression and habitual subserviency degraded and debased the upper classes. The lower, without rights, without lands, with scarcely a home, with nothing which truly gives country to man, basely crept over their native soil defrauded of its blessings, the patient victims of its wrongs the insensible spectators of its ruin,' and left behind them, between the cradle and the grave, no other trace of their existence, than the memorial of calamities under which they bent, and of crimes which were assiduously taught them by their governors.

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CHAPTER XXIX.

Ireland at the accession of George I.—State of AGRICULTURE-Oppressions practised on the people by the landlords-The TRADE of Ireland ruined-Distressed state of the Irish operatives-The LEGISLATION for Ireland-Further oppressions of the Catholics-The spirit of the people crushed-The Irish Protestant ascendancy thrown off-Ascendancy of the English parliament-Horrible proposal of the Irish parliament against Catholic priests-The factions of the day all hostile to Ireland Dean Swift-His efforts to create a national resistance to the government Exclusive dealing-Wood's half-pence-The Drapier's letters-Death of Swift-Reign of George II.

IRELAND was in a wretched condition on the accession of George I. to the throne of Britain. Human cruelty had almost exhausted itself in devices for its oppression; and the people, hopeless and spirit-broken, lay down to die, amid the ruins of the national wealth and industry. Multitudes of the Irish people had gone into voluntary exile, rather than bear the horrible misery of English rule. Agriculture was ruined; even the ploughing of land being in many cases prohibited. Vast tracts of country, formerly arable, were cleared for the feeding of sheep: the population were driven off, and those who could not emigrate, were speedily reduced to

• Historical Sketch of the Catholic Association, p. 24-5.

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