Never was there a system so cunningly devised or worked out in such detail as this famous "Penal Code." For two centuries it served to supply fanatical persecutors in every land with instruments of torture ready to hand. "It would not be difficult," said Goldwin Smith,7 "to point to persecuting laws more sanguinary than these But it would be difficult to point to any more insulting to the best feelings of man or more degrading to religion." Nothing was left undone. Everything was foreseen with cold-blooded and calculating ingenuity Violence was united to hypocrisy, perfidy to corruption, and the highest honours and rewards were reserved for the apostate and the informer. It is "vicious perfection."8

Catholic worship was tolerated, but only on sufferance. All public ceremonies and all pilgrimages were prohibited; even bells and crosses were interdicted. The ordination of any new clergymen was forbidden by law; decree of banishment was passed against all bishops and members of religious orders, and death was to be their punishment in case they returned to Ireland. Secular priests could not exercise their office under pain of deportation, until they had registered themselves and taken, not merely an oath of allegiance, but an oath of abjuration, which their Church forbade them to take. Every Papist was ordered, under pain of fine, to inform against his clergyman. On the other hand, a public pension was assigned by the State to every priest who should turn Protestant.9 That is how the clergy were dealt with. As for the Catholic laity, they were deprived of all political rights whatever.

The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," said a Lord Chancellor upon one occasion. They were forbidden to act as teachers'

7 Irish History and Irish Character, p. 127. 8 Works II., II; III., 313; VI., 18.

9 See Lecky (op. cit., I., 296 and 297) as to the proposed law for inflicting the punishment of castration upon unregistered priests. A Bill to this effect was drawn up by the Irish Privy Council, but the English Government refused to sanction it.

under pain of banishment, and under pain of death in case they returned from banishment. They were forbidden to have their children educated, except by Protestants, or to have them educated abroad. They were debarred from obtaining any public employment or practising any liberal profession except that of medicine. They could not hold property in land, or take land on lease for a longer term than thirty years, and then only on the harshest conditions. If they engaged in trade or industry, they had to pay a special tax and could not employ more than two apprentices. They were forbidden to carry arms or to own a horse of greater value than £5. They could not act as guardians of their own children, nor marry a Protestant wife, nor inherit an estate from a Protestant relative. Moreover, the property of a Catholic was equally divided between his children on his death, the law of primogeniture being confined to Protestants. The object of this last provision was, of course, to secure that if a Catholic chanced to make a fortune it should soon be dissipated.

The trade of the informer was encouraged by ample rewards; £20 for an unregistered priest, £50 for a bishop. "Priest-hunting " was quite a lucrative profession. But if a Catholic became a Protestant all was changed. Instead of a slave he had become a master, and the law heaped favours upon him. The Lord Chancellor saw to it that he had a preferential claim to succeed to the estate of his parents, and if he were the eldest of several children he at once acquired the sole legal ownership of all the family property, his parents retaining merely a life-estate. Moreover, with a view to making converts to Protestantism, whilst Catholics were forbidden to engage in educational pursuits, the country was studded over with Protestant schools, where the children of Papists could receive free tuition.

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"There was thus established," in the oft-quoted words of Burke,10 a complete system full of coherence and 10 Letters to Sir H. Langrishe, Works III., 343.

consistency, well digested and 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." It was not merely the persecution of a religion, it was an attempt to degrade and demoralise a whole nation.II It was sought at any cost to keep Papists in misery, ignorance and slavery, and this with. no other purpose save to assure the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. The "planters" who had come to Ireland in the time of Cromwell or William III. knew how precarious was their title to the land, and they thus sought to adopt means that could not fail to assure their position.

"Pure religious fanaticism," writes Lecky,12 "does not indeed appear ever to have played a dominant part in this legislation. The object of the Penal Laws, even in the worst period, was much less to produce a change of religion than to secure property and power by reducing to complete impotence those who had formerly possessed them." Fanaticism, as Perraud 13 remarks, served merely as cloak to cupidity, a circumstance which hardly tended to make it less hateful.

Such were the famous Penal Laws, destined to exercise so disastrous and so lasting an influence upon the future of Ireland. Dr. Johnson, a strong Tory, said of them-14 "There is no instance even in the ten persecutions of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholics." These laws remained in full force for half a century; but in the latter half of the eighteenth century their severity was relaxed. They had already produced the result that was aimed at. more could be expected from them. Not that they had

11 Lecky op. cit. I., 283.

12 Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. 3rd edition, I., 19.

Nothing

13 Op. cit. II., 463. Cf. Lecky, op. cit. II., 286. De Beaumont, op cit, I., 120. Arthur Young, Tour in Ireland, II., 141.

14 Lecky, op. cit. I., 302.

succeeded in destroying Catholicism. Priests living in concealment, and perpetually at the mercy of informers, had continued to celebrate the rites of the proscribed religion in undiscovered "mass-houses." Nor had Catholic education been stamped out. Small groups of Catholic children continued to receive instruction contrary to law in "hedge-schools," and always at the risk of prosecution. "The passion for knowledge," says Lecky,15 "among the Irish poor was extremely strong, and the zeal with which they maintained their hedge schools under the pressure of abject poverty, and in the face of the prohibitions of the penal code, is one of the most honourable features in their history." It is true indeed that, as apostacy was a condition precedent to all worldly success, a certain number of Papists joined the Anglican Church. Yet even in this direction the success attained was trifling. It is estimated that from 1703 to 1738 only 1,000 Catholics embraced the Protestant religion. The Anglican Primate Archbishop Boulter tells us that in the time of direst persecution an appreciably greater number of Protestants turned Catholic, than Catholics Protestant.16

What then, it may be asked, was the result of the Penal Laws? The answer is to be found in the stream of exiles whom they hunted from Ireland, and in the condition to which they reduced those of their victims who remained in Ireland.

Emigration robbed the country of the best elements of her population, and, as in Cromwell's time, soldiers, gentry, and men of the middle classes alike fled from persecution. Each year saw a flight of the "wild geese," as they were called, who followed the example of the garrison of Limerick, which to the number of 14,000 men had enlisted in the French army immediately after the signing of the Treaty. The armies of all the Catholic powers soon contained large contingents of Irishmen. Irishmen became

15 Op. cit. II., 202.

16 Lecky, op. cit. II., 289 to 290-as to Primate Boulter's remark see Matthew Arnold, Irish Essays, p. 70.

Grandees of Spain and Magnates of the Holy Roman Empire. Nugent, Brown, and Lacy attained distinction in the service of Maria-Theresa. The O'Neills and O'Donnells found asylum in Spain. A Wall became Prime Minister, an O'Mahony an Ambassador of that country. But France, beyond all other countries, was a second fatherland to the Irish exiles, and men like Tyrconnell, Dillon, and Lally, became famous in her service. A historian (though his statement is plainly exaggerated) has reckoned at 450,000 the number of Irish who perished in French armies from 1691 to 1745.17 Who has not heard of the glory of the "Irish Brigade," which for a whole century carried on to every French battlefield its banner with the brave motto, "Semper et Ubique Fideles," struck the decisive blow, under Clare, at Fontenoy, and on the evening of Dettingen wrung from King George II. the celebrated imprecation, "God curse the laws that made these men my enemies " ?18

But in their own country these same laws transformed the Catholics into a race of slaves. Weakened by massacres and emigration, the nation stooped unresistingly beneath the burden of oppression. The mass of the population was reduced to the condition of serfs, of pariahs, and Ireland, deprived of its natural leaders by the disappearance of almost all the old families, ceased to be a nation, and became instead an inert mass of exhausted and hopeless humanity. There was an advance, it may be, in private morality and individual piety, but will and character grew weak in the course of the unending struggle. Now that they had sunk to the condition of

17 MacGeoghegan, Histoire d'Irlande, Paris, 1758 to 1763, III., 754. Cf. Lecky op. cit. II., 262. Cf. O'Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigade, 1851.

18 It shows the dreadful results of persecution_that whilst Irish soldiers and generals were seeking refuge in France, French Protestants came to seek a home in Ireland. William III. had a regiment of French Protestants at the Boyne to whom he said " Messieurs, vos persecuteurs sont devant vous." It was a French Protestant named Crommelin who imported the industry of weaving into Ireland. French names, such as Le Fanu, La Touche, Saurin, Lefroy, are still common in Ireland.