As a result of these financial operations between 1850 and 1860 the permanent taxation of Ireland was raised by two and a quarter millions per annum, a far higher percentage of increase than in Great Britain; whilst the proportion of the Irish to the British revenue, which in the first sixteen years of the century was betweenth and th, rose in the years after 1852 toth or th. There was not only nothing in the circumstances of Ireland to justify this increase, but her social and economic condition was such as imperatively demanded a diametrically opposite policy. For during the preceding decade the poor law system had been established in Ireland, involving an immense increase of local rates; the Corn Laws had been repealed, causing the rapid destruction of the Irish export trade in cereals; Ireland had suffered great losses through the potato disease and its consequences, such as a vast diminution of population; and a great decline had been taking place in her manufacturing industries. In fact, the treatment meted out to her was the very reverse of the pledge given by Ministers at the time of the Union that Ireland should have special "exemptions and abatements" of taxation, and should not be unfairly taxed out of proportion to her resources. But party pledges are like lovers' vows, and seldom conform to the ordinary rules of morality.1

1 See the joint and separate Reports, as well as the Minutes of Evidence of the Royal Commission on the Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland, 1896.

CHAPTER III

CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, 1829

"It (the Penal Code) was intended to degrade and impoverish, to destroy in its victims the spring and buoyancy of enterprise, to dig a deep chasm between Catholics and Protestants. These ends it fully attained. It formed the social condition; it regulated the disposition of property; it exercised a most enduring and pernicious influence upon the character of the people, and some of the worst features of the latter may be traced to its influence.) It may indeed be possible to find in the Statute-books both of Protestant and Catholic countries laws corresponding to most parts of the Irish Penal Code, and in some respects introducing its most atrocious provisions, but it is not the less true that that code, taken as a whole, has a character entirely distinct. (It was directed not against the few, but against the many. It was not the persecution of a sect, but the degradation of a nation. It was the instrument employed by a conquering race supported by a neighbouring power to crush to the dust the people among whom they were planted, and indeed when we remember that the greater part of it was in force for nearly a century, that the victims of its cruelties formed at least three-fourths of the nation, that this degrading and dividing influence extended to every field of social, political, professional, intellectual, and even domestic life, and that it was enacted without the provocation of any rebellion, and in defiance of a statute which distinctly guaranteed the Irish people from any further persecution on account of their religion, it may justly be regarded as one of the blackest pages in the history of persecution." JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

DR. JOHNSON once exclaimed to Boswell

"The Irish are in a most unnatural state; for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no instance, even in the ten persecutions, of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholics. Did we tell them we have conquered them, it would be above-board; to punish them by confiscation and other penalties, as rebels, was monstrous injustice."

Now Johnson was a Tory, and may have been predisposed to regard the Catholics of Ireland with an exaggerated affection induced by pity for their treatment at the hands of his own party. But Brougham1 was a versatile Whig of a vastly different mould, and what was his opinion of the matter? On bringing forward a motion, in 1823, in regard to the administration of the law in Ireland, he said

"The law of England esteemed all men equal. It was sufficient to be born within the King's allegiance to be entitled to all the rights the

1 Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux, Lord Chancellor of England.

loftiest subject of the land enjoyed. None were disqualified; the only distinction was between natural-born subjects and aliens. Such, indeed, was the liberality of our system in the times which we called barbarous, but from which, in these enlightened days, it might be as well to take a hint, that if a man were even an alien-born, he was not deprived of the protection of the law. In Ireland, however, the law held a directly opposite doctrine. The sect to which a man belonged, the cast of his religious opinions, the form in which he worshipped his Creator, were grounds on which the law separated him from his fellows, and bound him to the endurance of a system of the most cruel injustice."

The history, forsooth, of the Roman Catholics in Ireland during the eighteenth century is instructive to a student of national character as showing the capacity for blundering possessed by some people, as also the want of moral principle, the ignorance and the intolerance of men who actually regarded themselves as the true and only type of what a nation of gentlemen should be.

The penal laws against Catholics, which existed in the time of Charles II, had never been very oppressively observed. By the letter of the law Catholics had been excluded from corporations and from certain civil offices; they had been subject to fines for non-attendance at the places of worship of the Established Church on Sundays; and the Chancellor had the power of appointing a guardian to the child of a Catholic parent.1 The Treaty of Limerick followed in 1691. By the first article of Limerick, the Roman Catholics were to enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as were consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they enjoyed in the reign of Charles II, whilst further security was hereafter to be afforded them. By the second article, all the inhabitants or residents of Limerick or any other garrison, all officers and soldiers then in arms in various counties, and all such as were under their protection in those counties, were to hold possession of their estates and all rights and titles which they had held under Charles II, whilst all persons were to be allowed to practise their several callings as freely as they had done under that monarch. This was fair enough; but Dopping,2 Bishop of Meath, proclaimed from the pulpit that Protestants were not bound to keep faith with Papists; whilst Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief Justice Robinson declared from the Bench that the law did not even suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Catholic. The Protestants were not slow to take the hint. The Act of 1695, in spite of the declarations contained in the

1 Six penal laws against recusants had been in force before the time of William of Orange. Between the seventh year of William's reign and the twenty-ninth of that of George II twenty-four Acts were passed against the Catholics.

2 Anthony Dopping, D.D. (1643–1697), bishop successively of Kildare and Meath.

Articles of Limerick, deprived the Roman Catholics of the power of educating their own children either at home or abroad, and of the privilege of being guardians either of their own or of any other person's children. Another Act of the same year took away from them their right of possessing or bearing arms, or of keeping any horse worth more than £5, and a later one of 1697 ordered the expulsion of every Roman Catholic priest from Ireland. In fact, the Articles of Limerick had been repudiated. But the violators of treaties had only just begun.

Three other Acts affecting Roman Catholics were passed during William's reign. One of 1697 forbade the inter-marriage of Protestants and Papists-and what a grievance is included in these few words! A second of 1698 stripped Papists of the power of being solicitors, whilst a third Act of the same year prohibited their employment as gamekeepers. These laws were harsh, but not inconsistent with the temper of the murderer of the MacDonalds of Glencoe. When the good Queen Anne came to the throne these measures were continued, and two Acts, which Burke described as the "ferocious Acts of Anne," were passed for the prevention of the further growth of Popery. By the first of these, a Papist having a Protestant son was debarred from selling, mortgaging, or devising any portion of his estate; whilst the son, of however tender an age, was to be taken from his father's hands and confided to the care of a Protestant relation. The estate of a Papist, who had no Protestant heir, was to be divided equally among his sons. The Papist was declared incapable of purchasing real estate or of taking land on lease for more than thirty-one years. He was further declared incapable of inheriting real estate from a Protestant, and was disqualified from holding any office, civil or military. With twenty exceptions, Papists were forbidden to reside in Limerick or Galway; and advowsons, the property of Papists, were vested in the Crown. Thus the Roman Catholics were deprived of every office, civil and military; were forbidden to educate their own offspring, and debarred from purchasing real estate; were incapable by law of following a profession, carrying a gun, or riding a decent horse; were moreover forced to see premiums placed upon the apostasy of their own children; and under this load of savage legislation were expected to turn their white faces to England, and bless her in their unmitigated misery; were expected to live in Ireland with the flame of British loyalty burning in their breasts.1

In order to prevent any invasion of the penal law, such as the deposition of property in the friendly hands of a Protestant, or

1 Appendix XVIII, extract from speech by Sir Theobald Butler,

pretended conversions to the Established Church, a resolution was carried unanimously in the Irish Lower House on the 17th of March, a few days after the passage of the Act of 1704, " that all magistrates and other persons whatsoever, who neglected or omitted to put it in due execution, were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom." In June 1705 the same assembly decided "that the saying or hearing of mass by persons who had not taken the oath of abjuration tended to advance the interest of the Pretender"; and they also resolved unanimously, as an encouragement to the trade of informers, "that the prosecuting and informing against Papists was an honourable service to the Government." In 1708 an Act was passed suppressing the "Patron" fairs in Ireland, which were religious gatherings at certain holy wells dedicated to the patron saint, St. John. This Act imposed a fine of ten shillings (and in default of payment a whipping) upon every person "who shall attend or be present at any pilgrimage or meeting held at any holy well, or imputed holy well." A fine of £20 was, moreover, to be inflicted upon any one who should build a booth, or sell ale, victuals, or other commodities at such pilgrimages or meetings; and magistrates were required to demolish all crosses, pictures, and inscriptions set up publicly as emblems of the Catholic faith.1

In 1709, the Parliament, finding that its enactments had no effect upon the steadfastness of the Catholic believer, passed another measure, the second of the ferocious Acts of Anne, empowering the Court of Chancery to compel the Papist to discover his estate, and at the same time to make an order for the maintenance of an apostate child out of the proceeds of it. The Act of 1704 had made it illegal for a Papist to take lands on a lease of more than a certain term of years; the Act of 1709 now disabled him from receiving a life annuity. The Act of 1704 had compelled the registry of priests; that of 1709 now forbade their officiating in any parish except that in which they were registered. The present Act also enjoined that the wife of a Papist, if she became a Protestant, was to receive a jointure out of her husband's estate, a provision which must have proved an excellent cement for conjugal fidelity. A popish priest abandoning his religion was to receive an annuity of £30 a year. Two justices might compel any Papist to state on oath when and

1 Another law of 1708 enacted—

"That from the first of Michaelmas Term, 1708, no Papist shall serve, or be returned to serve, on any Grand Jury in the Queen's Bench, or before Justices of Assize, Oyer and Terminer, or gaol-delivery or Quarter Sessions, unless it appear to the Court that a sufficient number of Protestants cannot then be had for the service; and in all trials of issues (that is, by petty juries) on any presentment, indictment, or information, or action on any statute, for any offence committed by Papists, in breach of such laws, the plaintiff or prosecutor may challenge any Papist returned as juror, and assign as a cause that he is a Papist, which challenge shall be allowed."