reign, might really seem to have left little or nothing to be done in the way of strengthening the Protestant interest. And, in truth, the main harvest of legislative persecution was by this time pretty well gathered in. Still, some valuable gleanings remained for the delectation of future labourers in the Protestant vineyard; and the ingenious industry of Protestant legislators was still able to find work for itself. The Parliament of George I. amused its leisure with acts for "better regulating" the town of Galway and the city of Kilkenny, and "strengthening the Protestant interest therein;" passed a militia bill with clauses for seizing Papists' horses, and taxing Papists double towards the costs of the militia; excluded Papists from the constabulary and night watch (with liability to pay handsomely for Protestant substitutes), and shut them out from voting at vestries held for the rebuilding and repairing of Protestant churches.

Their successors in the ensuing reign were equally zealous, and more successful. In the first year of George II., by a clause casually introduced, thrown in by the way as an amendment, into an act for regulating elections (1 Geo. II., c. 9), Papists were deprived of the elective franchise; fivesixths of the people of Ireland were swept out of the constitution, such as it was, at one stroke, without notice and without debate. The appetite for persecution kept on growing by what it fed on. By other acts of this reign Papists were forbidden to practise as barristers; Protestant losses from the privateers of Popish enemies were to be made good by Protestant grand jury levies on Popish goods and lands; all marriages to be thereafter celebrated by any Popish priest, between Protestants and Papists, were annulled, and every Popish priest who should solemnize such marriage was to be

HANGED.

For this last refinement in the art and science of persecution, Ireland was indebted to no ignorant fanatic,—to no brutal and savage bigot, but to that pink and pattern of gentlemanly decorum, Lord Chesterfield.

If to the preceding we add the Arms Bill of 1776 (15 and 16 Geo. III., c. 21), subjecting every Papist, male or female, to fine and imprisonment, pillory and whipping, for refusing to deliver up arms, or neglecting to appear, when summoned, before any justice of the peace, to give information against any Papist whom he or she might know to keep arms; and the act of 1782 (21 and 22 George III., c. 48), extending to Ireland all Popish penal- ties and disabilities then existing in Great Britain,- -we believe we shall have given a pretty complete account of that unutterably base and cruel series of legislative enactments known as the Irish Catholic Penal Code-that hideous offspring of religious bigotry, party spite, and class insolence—that system of slow political torture and civil death-that "viciously perfect" system, as Burke calls it, which was

"Full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed in all its parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people,—and the debasement, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."*

We have given these things in all their odious and disgusting detail, because otherwise the real spirit of Irish Protestant legislation-the animus of that Irish Protestant ascendancy which, though with clipped claws and drawn teeth, still growls and snarls, and means the mischief which it is too

* Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe.

feeble to perform-cannot be thoroughly understood. This Irish Catholic Penal Code was not struck off at a heat-was not made in a hurry, in the tumultuous furor of revolution, when men's excited passions goad them on to violences and wrongs from the bare thought of which they would, in quiet times, shrink back appalled ;—it was a thing done on system; deliberately planned, deliberately executed, slowly and carefully perfected at intervals spread over little less than ninety years. It was devised and matured in times of profound tranquillity. During all those ninety years the Irish Catholics never once revolted, never once showed a disposition or desire to revolt. In the rebellion of 1715-in the rebellion of 1745-the Catholics of Ireland were quiet and loyal. In 1759, when a French invasion was expected in the south, the Catholics came forward with a tender of their allegiance, and with the offer of money aid to government, which offer the Lord Lieutenant "graciously received." They were all along patient and quiet, from very broken-spiritedness-submissive under every fresh infliction-humbly grateful for the smallest relaxation in the execution of the code of intolerance. Still the system went on; every parliamentary session produced some new act of pains and penalties, or some Commons' vote for a more stringent execution of existing acts. Some writers on this chapter of Irish history have endeavoured to discover a motive for the enactment of this penal code, in the anxiety of the ascendant party to protect, against all peril or possibility of counter-revolution, estates which they held under the forfeitures and attainders of the times of Cromwell and Charles II. Dr. Madden lays it down that—

Thus

"These laws, in which fanaticism and intolerance seem to have been carried to their most savage excess, were not, in fact, derived from either passion. They were designed for the protection of property which had been unjustly acquired, the tenure of which was derived from an act of parliament passed by the possessors themselves, and which was therefore liable to be repealed when they ceased to command a majority in the legislature. *** We have said that these laws were dictated by self-interest, and not by religious passion; the proof is easy and irrefutable-it is notorious that the laws prohibiting Catholic worship were executed far less strictly than those which excluded from public offices, civil professions, and lucrative industry."

We question the validity of this explanation. The fears of self-interest would account for a violent and sweeping proscription, enacted, in the heat of revolutionary conflict, to strengthen the hands of a new and unsettled government; but we cannot so account for a prolonged series of legal tyrannies and insults spread over the greater part of a century. Burke goes nearer to the truth of the matter when he says—

"The new English interest was settled with as solid a stability as anything in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression which were made after the last event [the reduction of Ireland in 1691] were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effect of their fears, but of their security.”+

That the laws against Catholic worship were less strictly executed than those excluding from civil office and restricting the acquisition of property, is intelligible enough. The latter, from the very nature of them, executed

* « The United Irishmen, their Lives, and Times,” vol. i., pp. 20-21.
† Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe.

themselves; but a strict execution of laws for putting down the religious faith of three millions of human beings, is a clear matter-of-fact impossibility. Our own theory of the penal code is a very simple one. That code expresses the insolence of a tyrannical and victorious faction, flushed with conquest, jealous of its monopoly of power, fond of asserting and enjoying that monopoly, proud of its assumed superiority of race, confident in the irresistible might of England to back it in all its misdoings, and bigoted to its own creed as a symbol of military and political ascendancy and English connexion. As Arthur Young says, "The domineering aristocracy of 500,000 Protestants feel the sweets of having two millions of slaves."

This domineering aristocracy of five hundred thousand Protestants over two millions of slaves we find not in the statute-book alone, nor on the journals of the House of Commons alone. We meet it everywhere in the Ireland of the eighteenth century, pervading with one universal poison all social relations. The men, and the class of men, who, as legislators, ignored the existence of five-sixths of their own people, as landlords ground the faces of the poor with every imaginable insolence and oppression. Arthur Young's description of the Irish landlord of his time gives us a full-length picture of the oligarch of the Protestant ascendancy, carrying all the vices of the basest legislation that the world has seen into the relations and business of private life :

*

*

"The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman Catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience, in whatever concerns the poor, to no law but that of his will. *** A long series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an almost unlimited submission. Speaking a language that is despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor find themselves, in many cases, slaves, even in the bosom of written liberty. * A landlord in Ireland can scarcely invent an order which a servant, labourer, or cotter, dares to refuse to execute. Nothing satisfies him but an unlimited submission. Disrespect, or anything tending towards sauciness, he may punish with his cane or his horsewhip, with the most perfect security. A poor man would have his bones broken if he offered to lift his hand in his own defence. Knocking down is spoken of in the country in a manner that makes an Englishman stare. * * * Nay, I have heard anecdotes of the lives of people being made free with, without any apprehension of the justice of a jury. But let it not be imagined

«Tour in Ireland," vol. ii., p 34.

†These Commons' Journals are well worth consulting, as an index to the spirit of Irish Protestant legislation and legislators. They afford a most apt commentary on the enormities of the Statutes at Large. We there see how careful and zealous were the faithful Protestant Commons that the executive should be in harmony with the legisla ture. Session after session, we find them voting, and resolving, and addressing, to get the laws against Popery and Papists (such of them as were not in their nature selfexecutory) more strictly put in force. Whenever anything went wrong, at home or abroad, they took it out on the poor Catholics. The familiar designation of five-sixths of the Irish people was, in House-of-Commons' dialect, the domestic enemy, the common enemy. This was an established phrase in the parliamentary vocabulary. "in the reign of George I.," says Plowden ( History of Ireland," vol. ii., p. 70), "scarcely an address concerning the Catholics reached the crown, which did not brand them with this appellation."

The judicial power faithfully co-operated with the legislative and executive, in giving effect to this wicked and horrible system. The law courts ruled that the penal laws against Popery, being remedial statutes,-"made to prevent a mischief from the increase of Papists," -were to be interpreted not, like other penal laws, strictly in favour of the culprit, but liberally in favour of the Protestant interest. See the Lord Chancellor's dictum in Ogles v. Archbold." Howard's Special Cases on the Popery Laws," p. 18.

that this is common; formerly it happened every day, but law gains ground. It must strike the most careless traveller to see whole strings of cars whipt into a ditch by a gentleman's footman to make way for his carriage; if they are overturned, and broken in pieces, no matter-it is taken in patience; were they to complain, they would, perhaps, be horsewhipped. The execution of the law lies very much in the hands of justices of the peace, many of whom are drawn from the most illiberal class in the kingdom. If a poor man lodges a complaint against a gentleman, or any animal that chooses to call itself a gentleman, and the justice issues out a summons for his appearance, it is a fixed affront, and he will infallibly be called out. *** It is a fact, that a poor man having a contest with a gentleman, must but I am talking nonsense, they know their situation too well to think of it. They can have no defence but by means of protection from one gentleman against another, who probably protects his vassal as he would the sheep he intends to eat.

"The colours of this picture are not charged. To assert that all these cases are com mon, would be an exaggeration; but, to say that an unfeeling landlord will do all this with impunity, is to keep strictly to truth."*

Add to this, the constant grating and rasping of the CHURCH NUISANCE,the alien, intrusive church, with tithe-proctors for its apostles, an armed constabulary for its evangelists and field-preachers, and no other divine service to perform than the service of writs,—and what possibly could come of the combination but that which did come-insurrection, outrage, murder; the outbreaking, in all its various forms, of that stern, savage sense of justice, in the rights and mights of which down-trodden and crushed humanity will turn again, and take a wild revenge on its oppressors! In the year 1762 was first heard a name of fearful significance in Irish history-the WHITEBOYS; the first, in time, of that series of combinations of misery and famine against oppression, which, continued through the Oak Boys, Right Boys, Defenders, Ribbonmen, and others, have lasted down to our own time-defying all the powers of law and military force, yielding only an occasional and precarious submission to the pacificators of Catholic Associations and Repeal Associations-waging the wild, barbarous war of outraged nature against a yet more barbarous social state, which, in practice as in theory, refused to recognise the existence of the people.

Of these Whiteboys, the following is not the completest account we have met with, but it is the earliest; and, having been written at the time and on the spot by an observant, right-hearted man, it possesses the value and interest of an original authority. In 1764, an English gentleman of Kent, on a tour in the then remote and unknown colony of Ireland, writes thus to his friend :

"You have frequently met with accounts in the public papers of the insurrections of the Whiteboys, as they are called in this country. From the people of fortune who have been sufferers by them, and who, too generally in this kingdom, look on the miserable and oppressed poor in the most contemptible light, the accounts of these insurgents have, for the most part, been too much exaggerated to be depended on. I have hinted, in the former part of this letter, that the severe treatment and oppression the lowest class of the inhabitants, in some parts of this kingdom, have met with from their priests

"Tour in Ireland" (made in the years 1776-1778), vol. ii., pp. 29-30. On this subject of the character and social position of the Irish landlord class, we find the most perfect unanimity in the reports of the English tourists of that time. Thus Bush says, in his "Hibernia Curiosa ” (1764)—“ If in any part of the kingdom there are any wild Irish to be found, it is in the western parts of this province (Connaught), for they have the least sense of law and government of any people in Ireland, I believe, except that of their haughty and tyrannic landlords."

and subordinate landlords, was the principal cause of those disturbances they have met with from them. I have but too much reason to believe this remark was well grounded, from the observations I had an opportunity of making in the midst of the country where these insurgents have given the greatest disturbance.

"The origin of their denomination of 'Whiteboys' was from the practice of wearing their shirts withoutside of their clothes, the better to distinguish each other in the night-time. It happened that we were at Kilkenny, on our road to Waterford, at the very time of the last considerable insurrection of these unhappy wretches, in the south of Kilkenny county, not far from Waterford. I was naturally led to inquire into the cause of these insurrections, and the pretensions of the insurgents themselves for creating these disturbances.

"From the people of easy and affluent circumstances it is natural to suppose the accounts would be very different from such as were given by those of the same class with the delinquents. By comparing these, however, with the obvious appearance of things in the country, I soon had sufficient reason to believe their disquiet arose, in general, from the severe treatment they met with from their landlords and the lords of the manors, and principally from their elergy. Our road to Waterford lay through the very midst of these unhappy insurgents, and we were consequently advised to take a different route. Why?-whence should be the fear? We have neither deprived them of their common rights nor their potatoes. They have no quarrel with us, who have never injured them. Persuade your insatiable priests, of every denomination, to act themselves the precepts of charity and humanity they preach, and they will be as safe in their houses by night, as we shall probably be, in the midst of them by day.

"We rode through the country, in which they were assembled in great numbers, but the very day before the last considerable engagement they had with the troops quartered at the towns in the neighbourhood, but met with no molestation from any of them. The very next day after we came to Waterford the news was brought of this engagement, about four or five miles from the town. The opinions and representations of the inhabitants of the town were various on the merits of the affair; but it was easy to distinguish the sentiments of the humane from the aggravated representations of those whose inveterate prejudices against these unhappy sufferers instigated them to set these disturbers of the peace of their country in the worst point of view, and, without any apparent candour in their representations, to place the rise of them in an idle, turbulent, and rebellious disposition of the insurgents. The very officers of the troops wished they would drive the whole fraternity of parsons out of the country; and with good reason; for, if the parsons cannot live here on the great tithes of the corn, and about which they have seldom any disputes with their parishioners, how is the unhappy peasant to subsist on the produce of ten or fifteen perches of potatoes, the whole provision, perhaps for a twelvemonth, for himself and family?—yet even the very tenth of these is demanded by the insatiable, unrelenting priest.

"On the day after the engagement, we left Waterford for Carrick-on-Suir, and, in our way, met with some of the troops that had been engaged with the Whiteboys, and were asked if we had seen any of them lurking about in companies. But their inquiries were ill-directed; for we would sooner have headed them, and attacked the first parson's house we had met with, than discovered their retreat.

"I made it my business to inquire, in the most friendly manner, of some of these unhappy sufferers of the lowest class, as they fell in my view, the reason of their exposing themselves to so much danger, by raising such disturbances in their country. To which their answers were invariably to this effect:-that their lives were of little value to them; that the severe and hard dealing they had met with from their priests and the lords of the manors had made them desperate; that the former wanted to reduce the small subsistence they had to live on, and the latter deprived them of the very few privileges and common rights they had, from time immemorial, enjoyed; that against these only were their resentments pointed, and to recover their long-standing privileges was the sole cause of their exposing themselves, or other people, to any danger, and not from any disposition to rebel against their king or the peace of their country.

"I cannot but acknowledge, in favour of them, that the general civility of the people, with the apparent honesty and candour of their accounts, gave the greatest credit to their representations."*

*Bush's "Hibernia Curiosa," pp. 132-137.