The maxims on which the government of Ireland was administered by Protestant England after the Revolution of 1688 brought about the relations by which that country and our own reciprocally affected each other's destiny; Ireland assisting to people America, and America to redeem Ireland. The inhabitants of Ireland were four parts in five, certainly more than two parts in three, Roman Catholics. Religion established three separate nationalities; the Anglican churchmen, constituting nearly a tenth of the population; the Presbyterians, chiefly Scotch-Irish; and the Catholic population, which was a mixture of the old Celtic race, the untraceable remains of the few Danish settlers, and the Normans and first colonies of the English. 1763. In settling the government, England intrusted it exclusively to those of "the English colony" who were members of its own church; so that the little minority ruled the island. To facilitate this, new boroughs were created; and wretched tenants, where not disfranchised, were so coerced in their votes at elections that two thirds of the Irish house of commons were the nominees of the large Protestant proprietors of the land. In addition to this, an act of the English parliament rehearsed the dangers to be apprehended from the presence of popish recusants in the Irish parliament, and required of every member the new oaths of allegiance and supremacy and the declaration against transubstantiation. But not only were Roman Catholics excluded from seats in both branches of the legislature: a series of enactments, the fruit of relentless perseverance, gradually excluded "papists" from having any votes in the election of members to serve in parliament. The Catholic Irish being disfranchised, one enactment pursued them after another till they suffered under a universal, unmitigated, indispensable, exceptionless disqualification. In the courts of law, they could not gain a place on the bench, nor act as a barrister or attorney or solicitor, nor be employed even as a hired clerk, nor sit on a grand jury, nor serve as a sheriff or a justice of the peace, nor hold even the lowest civil office of trust and profit, nor have any privilege in a town corporate, nor be a freeman of such corporation, nor vote at a vestry. If papists would trade and work, they must do it even in their native towns as aliens. They were expressly forbidden to take more than two apprentices in whatever employment, except in the linen manufacture only. A Catholic might not marry a Protestant, the priest who should celebrate such a marriage was to be hanged, 1763. nor be a guardian to any child, nor educate his own child, if the mother declared herself a Protestant, or even if his own child, however young, should profess to be a Protestant. None but those who conformed to the established church were admitted to study at the universities, nor could degrees be obtained but by those who had taken all the tests, oaths, and declarations. No Protestant in Ireland might instruct a papist. Papists could not supply their want by academies and schools of their own; for a Catholic to teach, even in a private family or as usher to a Protestant, was a felony, punishable by imprisonment, exile, or death. Thus "papists" were excluded from all opportunity of education at home, except by stealth and in violation of law. It might be thought that schools abroad were open to them; but, by a statute of King William, to be educated in any foreign Catholic school was an "unalterable and perpetual outlawry." The child sent abroad for education, no matter of how tender an age or himself how innocent, could never after sue in law or equity, or be guardian, executor, or administrator, or receive any legacy or deed of gift; he forfeited all his goods and chattels, and forfeited for his life all his lands. Whoever sent him abroad, or maintained him there, or assisted him with money or otherwise, incurred the same liabilities and penalties. The crown divided the forfeiture with the informer; and, when a person was proved to have sent abroad a bill of exchange or money, on him rested the burden of proving that the remittance was innocent; and he must do so before justices without the benefit of a jury. The Irish Catholics were deprived even of the opportu 1763. nity of worship, except by connivance. Their clergy, taken from the humbler classes of the people, could not be taught at home, nor be sent for education beyond seas, nor be recruited by learned ecclesiastics from abroad. Such priests as were permitted to reside in Ireland were registered, and were kept like prisoners at large within prescribed limits. All "papists" exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, all monks, friars, and regular priests, and all priests not then actually in parishes, and not registered, were banished from Ireland under pain of transportation, and, on a return, of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Avarice was stimulated to apprehend them by the promise of a reward; he that should harbor or conceal them was to be stripped of all his property. When the registered priests were dead, the law, which was made perpetual, applied to every popish priest. By the laws of William and of Anne, St. Patrick, in Ireland, in the eighteenth century, would have been a felon. Any two justices of the peace might call before them any Catholic, and make inquisition as to when he heard mass, who were present, and what Catholic schoolmaster or priest he knew of; and the penalty for refusal to answer was a fine or a year's imprisonment. The Catholic priest abjuring his religion received a pension of thirty, and afterwards of forty, pounds. In spite of these laws, there were, it is said, four thousand Catholic clergymen in Ireland; and the Catholic worship gained upon the Protestant, so attractive is sincerity when ennobled by persecution, even though "the laws did not presume a papist to exist there, and did not allow one to breathe but by the connivance of the government." The Catholic Irish had been plundered of six sevenths of the land by iniquitous confiscations; every acre of the remaining seventh was grudged them by the Protestants. No non-conforming Catholic could buy land, or receive it by descent, devise, or settlement; or lend money on it, as the security; or hold an interest in it through a Protestant trustee; or take a lease of ground for more than thirty-one years. If, under such a lease, he brought his farm to produce more than one third beyond the rent, the first Prot estant discoverer might sue for the lease before known Protestants, making the defendant answer all interrogatories on oath; so that the Catholic farmer dared not drain his fields, nor enclose them, nor build solid houses on them. If in any way he improved their productiveness, his lease was forfeited. It was his interest rather to deteriorate the country, lest envy should prompt some one to turn him out of doors. In all these cases, the forfeitures were in favor of Protestants. If a Catholic owned a horse worth more 1763. than five pounds, any Protestant might take it away. Nor was natural affection or parental authority respected. The son of a Catholic land-holder, however dissolute or however young, if he would but join the English church, could turn his father's estate in fee-simple into a tenancy for life, becoming himself the owner, and annulling every agreement made by the father, even before his son's conversion. The dominion of the child over the property of the popish parent was universal. The Catholic father could not in any degree disinherit his apostatizing son; but the child, in declaring himself a Protestant, might compel his father to confess upon oath the value of his substance, real and personal; whereupon the Protestant court might out of it award the son immediate maintenance, and, after the father's death, any establishment it pleased. A bill might at any time be brought by one or all of the children, for a further discovery. If the parent, by his industry, improved his property, the son might compel an account of the value of the estate, in order to a new disposition. The father had no security against the persecution of his children but by abandoning all acquisition or improvement. Ireland passed away from the ancient Irish. The proprietors in fee were probably fewer than in any equal area in Western Europe, parts of Spain only excepted. The consequence was an unexampled complication of titles. The landlord in chief was often known only as having dominion over the estate; leases of large tracts had been granted for very long terms of years; these were again subdivided to those who subdivided them once more, and so on indefi nitely. Mortgages brought a new and numerous class of claimants. Thus humane connection between the tenant and landlord was not provided for. Leases were in the last resort most frequently given at will; and then what defence had the Irish Catholic against his Protestant superior? Hence the thatched mud cabin, without window or chimney; the cheap fences; the morass undrained; idleness in winter; the tenant's concealment of good returns, and his fear to spend his savings in improving his 1763. farm. Hence, too, the incessant recurrence of the deadliest epidemics, which made of Ireland the land of typhus fever, as Egypt was that of the plague. To the native Irish the English oligarchy appeared not in the attitude of kind proprietors, whom residence and a common faith, long possession and hereditary affection, united with the tenantry, but as men of a different race and creed, who had acquired the island by arms, rapine, and chicane, and derived revenues from it through extortionate agents. This state of society, as a whole, was what ought not to be endured; and the English were conscious of it. The common law respects the right of self-defence; yet the Irish Catholics, or popish recusants as they were called, were, by one universal prohibition, forbidden to use or keep any kind of weapons whatsoever, under penalties which the crown could not remit. Any two justices might enter a house and search for arms, or summon any person whomsoever, and tender him an oath, of which the repeated refusal was punishable as treason. Such was the Ireland of the Irish; a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and did not fear to provoke. Their industry within the kingdom was prohibited or repressed by law, and then they were calumniated as naturally idle; their savings could not be invested on equal terms in trade, manufactures, or real property, and they were called improvident; the gates of learning were shut on them, and they were derided as ignorant. In the midst of privations, they were cheerful. Suffering for generations under acts which offered bribes to treachery, their |