A CENTURY OF GLOOM.--THE PENAL LAWS.
William III., of Orange, was inclined to observe, in good faith,
the articles agreed upon at the surrender of Limerick, namely,
to allow the conquered liberty of worship, citizen rights, so
much as remained to them of their property, and the means for
personal safety recognized before the departure of Sarsfield and
his men.
The lords justices even issued a proclamation commanding "all
officers and soldiers of the army and militia, and all other
persons whatsoever, to forbear to do any wrong or injury, or to
use unlawful violence to any of his Majesty's subjects, whether
of the British or Irish nation, without distinction, and that
all persons taking the oath of allegiance, and behaving
themselves according to law, should be deemed subjects under
their Majesties' protection, and be equally entitled to the
benefit of the law."--(Harris, "Life of William.")
This first proclamation not having been generally obeyed,
another was published denouncing "the utmost vengeance of the
law against the offenders;" and the author above quoted adds
that "the satisfaction given to the Irish was a source of
lasting gratitude to the person and government of William."
It is even asserted that, not only did the new monarch thus
ratify the treaty of Limerick, but that "he inserted in the
ratification a clause of the last importance to the Irish, which
had been omitted in the draught signed by the lords justices and
Sarsfield. That clause extended the benefits of the capitulation
to "all such as were under the protection of the Irish army in
the counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo. A great
quantity of Catholic property depended on the insertion of this
clause in the ratification, and the English Privy Council
hesitated whether to take advantage of the omission. The honesty
of the king declared it to be a part of the articles."
The final confirmation was issued from Westminster on February
24, 1692, in the name of William and Mary.
But the party which had overcome the honest leanings of James I.,
if he ever had any, and of his son and grandson, was at this
time more powerful than ever, and could not consent to extend
the claims of justice and right to the conquered. This party was
the Ulster colony, which Cromwell's settlement had spread to the
two other provinces of Leinster and Munster, and which was
confirmed in its usurpation by the weakness of the second
Charles. The motives for the bitter animosity which caused it to
set its face against every measure involving the scantiest
justice toward its fellow-countrymen may be summed up in two
words--greed and fanaticism.
Until the time when the first of the Stuarts ascended the
English throne, all the successive spoliations of Ireland, even
the last under Elizabeth, at the end of the Geraldine war, were
made to the advantage of the English nobility. Even the younger
sons of families from Lancashire, Cheshire, and Dorsetshire, who
"planted" Munster after the ruin of the Desmonds, had noble
blood in their veins, and were consequently subject more or less
to the ordinary prejudices of feudal lords. The life of the
agriculturist and grazier was too low down in the social scale
to catch their supercilious glance. The consequence of which was,
that the Catholic tenants of Munster were left undisturbed in
their holdings. Instead of the "dues" exacted by their former
chieftains, they now paid rent to their new lords.
But the rabble let loose on the island by James I. was afflicted
with no such dainty notions as these. To supercilious glances
were substituted eyes keen as the Israelites', for the "main
chance." The new planters, intent only on profit and gain,
thought with the French peasant of an after-date, that, for
landed estate to produce its full value, "there is nothing like
the eye of a master." The Irish peasant was therefore removed
from at least one-half the farms of Ulster, and driven to live
as best he might among the Protestant lords of Munster. And in
order to have an entirely Protestant "plantation," it became
incumbent on the new owners so to frame the legislation as to
deprive the Irish Catholics of any possibility of recovering
their former possessions. Thus, laws were passed declaring null
and void all purchases made by "Irish papists."
Who has not witnessed, at some period in his life, the effect
produced on the people in his neighborhood by one avaricious but
wealthy man, intent only on increasing his property, and
profiting by the slavish labor of the poor under his control?
Who has not detested, in his inmost soul, the grinding tyranny
of the miser gloating over the hard wealth which he has wrung
from the misery and tears of all around him, and who boasts of
the cunning shrewdness, the success of which is only too visible
in the desolation that encircles him? Imagine such scenes
enacted throughout a large territory, beginning with Ulster,
spreading thence to Munster and Connaught, and finally through
the whole island, and we have an exact picture of the effects of
the Protestant "plantation." Each year, almost, of the
seventeenth century witnessed fresh swarms of these foreign
adventurers settling on the island, interrupted in their
operations only by the Confederation of Kilkenny, but
multiplying faster and faster after the destruction of that
truly national government, until at the time now under our
consideration, "Scotch thrift," as it is called, had become the
chief virtue of most of the owners of land--Scotch thrift, which
is but another name for greed.
It were easy to show, by long details, that this great
characteristic of the new "plantation" would suffice to explain
that general and terrible pauperism which has since become the
striking feature of once-happy Ireland. But only a few words can
be allowed.
It is the fanaticism of the new "planters" which will chiefly
occupy our attention. These were composed, first, of the Scotch
Presbyterians of Knox, whom James I. had dispatched, and
afterward of the ranting soldiers and officers of Cromwell's
army, more Jew than Christian, since their mouths were ever
filled with Bible texts of that particular character wherein the
wrath of God is denounced against the impious and cruel tribes
of Palestine. It is doubtful whether the ideas of God and man,
promulgated and spread among the people by Calvin and Knox, have
ever been equalled in evil consequences by the most
superstitious beliefs of ancient pagans. Let us look well at
those teachings. According to them, God is the author of evil:
he issues forth his decrees of election or reprobation,
irrespective of merit or demerit; inflicting eternal torments on
innumerable souls which never could have been saved, and for
whom the Son of God did not die. What any rational being must
consider as the most revolting cruelty and injustice, these men
called acts of pure justice executed by the hand of God. God
saves blindly those whom he saves, and takes them home to his
bosom, though reeking with the unrepented and unexpiated crimes
of their lives--unexpiable, in fact, on the part of man--merely
because they persuade themselves that they are of "the elect."
In that system, man is a mere machine, unendowed with the
slightest symptom of free-will, but inflated with the most
overbearing pride; deeming all others but those of his sect the
necessary objects of the blind wrath of God, cast off and
reprobate from all eternity in the designs of Providence; for
whom "the elect" can feel no more pity or affection than
redeemed men can for the arch-fiend himself, both being alike
redeemless and unredeemed.
No system of pretended religion, invented by the perverted mind
of man, under the inspiration of the Evil One, could go further
in atrocity than this.
Yet such was the pure, undiluted essence of Calvinism in its
beginning. In our times its doctrines have been radically
modified, as its adherents could not escape the soothing
operations of time and calm reason. But, at the period of which
we speak, its absurd and revolting tenets were fresh, and taken
religiously to the letter.
The new colonists, therefore, believed, and acted on the belief,
that all men outside of their own body were the enemies of God
and had God for their enemy. What a convenient doctrine for men
of an "itching palm! " The papists, in particular, were worse
than idolaters, and to "root them out" was only to render a
service to God. In the event of this holy desire not being
altogether possible of execution, the nearest approach to the
goodly work was to strip them of all rights, and render the life
of such reprobates more miserable than the death which was to
condemn them to the eternal torments planned out for them in the
eternal decrees, and so give them a foretaste here of the life
destined for them hereafter.
The reader, then, may understand how the Scotch Presbyterians of
the time, overflowing as they were with free and republican
ideas as far as regarded their own welfare, when it came to a
question of extending the same to their Catholic fellow-men, if
they would have admitted the term, scouted such a preposterous
and ungodly idea. These latter were unworthy the enjoyment of
such benefit. And thus the hoot of Protestant ascendancy,
"Protestant liberty and right! " came up as war-cries to stifle
out all efforts tending to extend even the most ordinary
privileges of the liberty which is man's by nature, to any but
Protestants of the same class as themselves.
Here a curious reflection, full of meaning, and causing the mind
almost to mock at the type of a free constitution, presents
itself. The eighteenth century witnessed the development of the
British Constitution as now known. It embraced in its bosom all
British citizens, raising up the nation to the pinnacle of
material prosperity, while at the same time and all through it,
whole classes of citizens of the British Empire, both in Great
Britain and Ireland, were openly, unblushingly, legally, without
a thought of mercy or pity--not to mention such an ugly word as
logic--denied the protection of the common charter and the
common rights.
Under Cromwell the doctrines of Calvin and Knox did not show
themselves quite so obtrusively. The officers and soldiers of
his armies, in common with their general, thought the
Presbyterian Kirk too aristocratic and unbending. They formed a
new sect of Independents, now called Congregationalists. But the
chief feature of the new religious system became as productive
of evil to Ireland as the stern dogmas of Calvin ever could be.
The principle that the Scriptures constituted the only rule of
faith was beginning to bear its fruits. It is needless to remark
that Holy Scripture, when abandoned to the free interpretation
of all, becomes the source of many errors, as it may be the
source of many crimes. The historian and novelist even have ere
now frequently told us to what purpose the "Word of God " was
manipulated by Scottish Covenanter and Cromwellian freebooter.
The Covenanter, or freebooter, saw in the antagonists of his
"real rebellion" and opposers of the designs of his dark policy,
only the enemies of God and the adversaries of his Providence.
He believed himself divinely commissioned to destroy Catholics
and butcher innocent women and children, as the armies of Joshua
were authorized to fight against Amalek, and possess themselves
of a country occupied by a people whose cruel idolatry was
ineradicable, and rendered them absolutely irreconcilable. Thus
to the stern and odious tenets of Calvinism the new invaders
joined the fanaticism of self-deluded Jews, never having
received any commission from the God whom they blasphemed, yet
bearing themselves with all the solemnity of his instruments.
There is consequently nothing to surprise us in the atrocities
committed by the Scotch troops in 1641, when they first invaded
the island from the north, as little as there is in the numerous
massacres which first attended the march of the troops of
Cromwell, Ireton, and other leaders, and which were only
discontinued when the voice of Europe rose up in revolt at the
recital, and they themselves became thoroughly convinced that
the complete destruction of the people was impossible, and the
only next best thing to be done was to export as many as could
be exported and reduce the rest to slavery.
Thus did the new colony commence its workings, and it is easy to
comprehend how such intensely Protestant doctrines, remaining
implanted in the breasts of the people who came to make Ireland
their home, could not fail to oppose an insurmountable barrier
to the fusion of the new and the old inhabitants, and impart a
fearful reality to the theory of "Protestant ascendancy" and
"Protestant liberty and right "--the liberty and right to
oppress those of another creed.
These watchwords form the key to the understanding of all the
miseries and woes of Irishmen during the whole of the eighteenth
century. We now turn to contemplate the commencement of the
workings of this fanatic intolerance which ushered in the
century of gloom.
The lords justices had just returned, after concluding the
treaty of peace with Sarsfield, when the first mutterings of the
thunder were heard that presaged the coming storm. Dr. Dopping,
the Protestant Bishop of Meath, while preaching before them on
the Sunday following their return to Dublin, reproached them
openly in Christ Church for their indulgence to the Irish, and
urged that no faith was to be kept with such a cruel and
perfidious race. This sort of doctrine has been heard before,
and from men of the stamp of Dr. Dopping; it is still heard
every day, but it is generally thrown into the teeth of
Catholics and saddled on them as their doctrine, however
frequently refuted.
The doctor stated broadly that with such people no treaties were
binding, and that therefore the articles of Limerick were not to
be observed.
William and his Irish government endeavored to check this
intemperance; but the feelings of the sectarians were too ardent
to be thus easily smothered, and the greater the opposition they
encountered, the more they insisted on proclaiming their views,
to which naturally they gained many adherents among the
colonists of the Protestant plantation.
The Irish Parliament soon assembled in Dublin. The majority,
imbued with the gloomy Calvinism of the times, and fearing to
face the opposition of the respectable minority of Catholic
members, who had come to take their seats, passed an act
imposing a new oath, in contradiction to one of the articles of
the treaty. That oath included an abjuration of James's right de
jure, a renunciation of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and
(as though that were not enough to exclude Catholics) a
declaration against the doctrine of transubstantiation and other
fundamental tenets of their creed. Persons who refused to take
this oath were debarred from all offices and emoluments, as well
as from both Houses of the Irish Parliament.
The Catholic members were compelled to withdraw at once; and no
Catholic ever took part in the legislation of his own country
from that day until the Emancipation in 1829.
After this withdrawal, which in the times of the French
Convention would have been called an epuration, the Irish
Parliament became the bane of the country. In fact, it only
represented parliamentary England, and subjected Ireland to
every measure required by English ultraists for the attainment
of their selfish purposes. Possessed by a gloomy fanaticism, its
main object was to root out of the island every vestige that
remained of the religion which had once flourished there. All
its legislative spirit was concentrated in the two questions:
Are the laws already in existence against the further growth of
Popery rigidly enforced? and, cannot some new law be introduced
to further the same object.?
Many a time were these two questions put in the assembly called
the Irish Parliament, until near the end of the eighteenth
thunder were heard that presaged the coming storm. Dr. Dopping,
the Protestant Bishop of Meath, while preaching before them on
the Sunday following their return to Dublin, reproached them
openly in Christ Church for their indulgence to the Irish, and
urged that no faith was to be kept with such a cruel and
perfidious race. This sort of doctrine has been heard before,
and from men of the stamp of Dr. Dopping; it is still heard
every day, but it is generally thrown into the teeth of
Catholics and saddled on them as their doctrine, however
frequently refuted.
The doctor stated broadly that with such people no treaties were
binding, and that therefore the articles of Limerick were not to
be observed.
William and his Irish government endeavored to check this
intemperance; but the feelings of the sectarians were too ardent
to be thus easily smothered, and the greater the opposition they
encountered, the more they insisted on proclaiming their views,
to which naturally they gained many adherents among the
colonists of the Protestant plantation.
The Irish Parliament soon assembled in Dublin. The majority,
imbued with the gloomy Calvinism of the times, and fearing to
face the opposition of the respectable minority of Catholic
members, who had come to take their seats, passed an act
imposing a new oath, in contradiction to one of the articles of
the treaty. That oath included an abjuration of James's right de
jure, a renunciation of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and
(as though that were not enough to exclude Catholics) a
declaration against the doctrine of transubstantiation and other
fundamental tenets of their creed. Persons who refused to take
this oath were debarred from all offices and emoluments, as well
as from both Houses of the Irish Parliament.
The Catholic members were compelled to withdraw at once; and no
Catholic ever took part in the legislation of his own country
from that day until the Emancipation in 1829.
After this withdrawal, which in the times of the French
Convention would have been called an epuration, the Irish
Parliament became the bane of the country. In fact, it only
represented parliamentary England, and subjected Ireland to
every measure required by English ultraists for the attainment
of their selfish purposes. Possessed by a gloomy fanaticism, its
main object was to root out of the island every vestige that
remained of the religion which had once flourished there. All
its legislative spirit was concentrated in the two questions:
Are the laws already in existence against the further growth of
Popery rigidly enforced? and, cannot some new law be introduced
to further the same object.?
Many a time were these two questions put in the assembly called
the Irish Parliament, until near the end of the eighteenth
Popery, and, in the next place, it makes evident the necessity
there is of cultivating and preserving a good understanding
among all Protestants in this kingdom."'
Let the reader bear in mind that language such as this, and its
result in the shape of atrocious legislation, continued
throughout the whole of the eighteenth century in Ireland, and
he will find no difficulty in understanding the meaning of
Edmund Burke's words when he said : "The code against the
Catholics was 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." And, elsewhere: "To render men patient under the
deprivation of all the rights of human nature, every thing which
could give them a knowledge and feeling of those rights was
rationally forbidden. To render humanity fit to be insulted, it
was fit that it should be degraded."
But it is very pertinent to our purpose to give a sketch of
those good laws, as Wharton calls them, before seeing how the
Irish preferred to submit to them rather than lose their faith
by "conforming." The subject has been already investigated by
many writers, and of late far more completely than formerly. But
the authors never presented the laws as a whole, contenting
themselves, for the most part, by transcribing them in the
chronological order in which they were enacted, or, if
occasionally they endeavored to combine and thus present a more
striking idea of the effect which such laws must have produced
on the people, they were never, as far as is known to the writer,
reduced to a plan, and consequently fail to bring forth the
effect intended to be produced by them.
It is impossible here to give the text of those various laws--
impossible even to give a fairly accurate idea of the whole.
They shall be classified, however, to the best of our ability,
and as fully as circumstances permit.
Mr. Prendergast seems to consider their ultimate object always
to have been the robbing of the Irish of their lands, or
securing the plunder if already in possession. That this was one
of the great objects always kept in view in their enactment, we
do not feel inclined to contest; but that it was their only or
even chief cause, we may be allowed to question, with the
greatest deference to the opinion of the celebrated author of
the often-quoted "Cromwellian Settlement."
We believe those laws to have been produced chiefly by sectarian
fanaticism; or, if some of their framers, such as Lord Wharton,
possessed no religious feelings of any kind, and could not be
called fanatics, their intent was to pander to the real
fanaticism of the English people, as it existed at the time, and
particularly of the colony planted in Ireland, which hated
Popery to the death, and would have given all its possessions
and lands for the destruction of the Scarlet Woman.
In order to attain the great result proposed, the aim of the
"penal statute" was one in its very complexity. For it had to
deal with complex rights, which it took away one after another
until the unity of the system was completed by the suppression
of them all.
We classify these under the heads of political, civil, and human
rights. The result of the whole policy was to degrade the Irish
to the level of the wretched helots under Sparta, with this
difference: while the slaves of the Lacedaemonians numbered but
a few thousands, the Irish were counted by millions.
The system, as a whole, was the work of time, and, under William
of Orange--even under Queen Anne--it had not yet attained its
maturity, though the principal and the severest measures were
carried and put in force from the very beginning. The ingenious
little devices regarding short and small leases, the possession
of valuable horses, etc., were mere fanciful adjuncts which the
witty and inventive legislators of the Hanoverian dynasty were
happy enough to find unrecorded in the statute-books, and which
they had the honor of setting there, and thus adding a new
piquancy and vigorous flavor to the whole dish.
Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, the system may be
said to have reached its perfection. After that time it would,
in all likelihood, have been impossible to improve further, and
render the yoke of slavery heavier and more galling to the Irish.
The beauty and simplicity of the whole consisted in the fact
that the great majority of these measures were not decreed in so
many positive and express terms against Catholics in the form of
open and persecuting statutes. It was merely mentioned in the
laws that, to enjoy such and such a particular right, it was
necessary that every subject of the crown should take such and
such an oath, which no Catholic could take. Thus, the entire
Irish population was set between their religion and their rights,
and at any moment, by merely taking the oath, they were at
liberty to enjoy all the privileges which rendered the colonists
living in their midst so happy and contented, and so proud of
their "Protestant ascendency."
It was hoped, no doubt, that, if at first and for a certain time,
the faith of the Irish would stand proof and prompt them to
sacrifice every thing held dear in life, rather than surrender
that faith, nevertheless, worn out at length, and disheartened
by wretchedness, unable longer to sustain their heavy burden,
they would finally succumb, and, by the mere action of such an
easy thing as recording an oath in accordance with the law,
though against their conscience, become men and citizens. It was
what the French Conventionalists of 1793 called "desoler la
patience" of their victims.
This unholy hope was disappointed; and, with the exception of a
comparatively few weak Christians among their number, the nation
stood firm and preferred the "ignominy of the cross of Christ"
to the enjoyments of this perishable life.
Their political rights were, as was seen, the first to be taken
away. The Parliament of 1691 required of its members the oath
referred to, and for the repudiation of which, all the Catholic
members were compelled at once to withdraw. But the contrivance
of swearing being found such an excellent instrument to use
against men possessed of a conscience, the ruling body--now
reduced to the former Protestant majority--required that the
same oath be taken by all electors, magistrates, and officers of
whatever grade, from the highest to the lowest in the land.
The oath itself was an elastic formula, capable of being
stretched or contracted, according to circumstances, so that, by
the addition of an incidental phrase or two, it might be framed
to meet new exigencies, and give expression to the lively
imagination of ingenious members of Parliament. It would be
curious to collect an account of the variety of shapes it
assumed, and to comment on the different occasions which gave
rise to these different developments. A long history of
persecuting frenzy might thus be condensed into a commentary of
a comparatively few pages. Even at the so-called Catholic
Emancipation it was not abolished; on the contrary, it was
sacredly preserved, and two new formulas drawn up, the one for
the Protestant and the other for the Catholic members of the
legislature, Lords and Commons, and so it remains, to this day,
except that the most offensive clauses of the last century have
disappeared.
Imagine, then, the spectacle offered by the island whenever an
election for representatives, magistrates, or petty officers,
took place; whenever those entitled to select holders of offices
which were not subject to election, made known the persons of
their choice. This vast array of aristocratic masters was chosen
from the ranks of the English colonists, and had for its avowed
object to preserve the Protestant ascendency, and consequently
grind under the heel of the most abject oppression the whole
mass of the population of the island. There was no other meaning
in all these political combinations and changes, recurring
periodically, and heralded forth by the voice of the press and
the thunder of the hustings. Politics in Ireland was nothing
else than the expression given to the despotism of an
insignificant minority over almost the entire body of the people.
For, despite all their repressive measures, the enemies of the
Catholic faith could never pretend even to a semblance in point
of numbers, much less to a majority, over the children of the
creed taught by Patrick. Ireland remained Catholic throughout;
and its oppressors could not fail to feel the bitter humiliation
of their constant numerical inferiority. Hence the words quoted
in the speech of Wharton, the lord-lieutenant.
This has always been the case, in spite of the combination of a
multitude of circumstances adverse to the spread of the Catholic
population. It may not be amiss to give room for the statistics
and remarks of Abbe Perraud on this most interesting subject,
contained in his book on "Ireland under British rule."
"In 1672, the total population of Ireland was 1,100,000 (it is
to be remembered that this was after the massacres and
transportations of Cromwell's period). Of that number
800,000 were Catholics.
50,000 " Dissenters.
150,000 " Church-of-Ireland men.
"In 1727, the Anglican Primate of Ireland, Boulter, Archbishop
of Armagh, wrote to his English colleague, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, that 'we have, in all probability, in this kingdom,
at least five Papists for every Protestant.' Those proportions
are confirmed by official statistics under Queen Anne.
"In 1740, according to a kind of official census, confirmed by
Wakefield, the number of Protestant heads of families did not
exceed 96,067.
"Twenty-six years later, the Dublin House of Lords caused a
comparative table of Protestant and Catholic families to be
drawn up for each county. The result was the following:
Protestant families . . 130,263
Catholic families . . 305,680
"In 1834, exact statistical returns being made of the members of
each communion, the following was the result: The total
population being estimated at 7,943,940, the Church-of-Ireland
members amounted only to the number of 852,064. The remaining 7,
091,876 were thus divided:
Presbyterians . . . . . . 642,350
Other Dissenters . . . . 21,808
Catholics . . . . . . . 6,427,718
"The censuses of 1841 and 1851 contained no information upon
this important question. Thirty years had therefore elapsed
since official figures had given the exact proportions of each
Church.
"This silence of the Blue Books had given rise, among the
Protestant press of England and Ireland, to the opinion, too
hastily adopted on the Continent by publicists of great weight,
that emigration and famine had resulted in the equalization of
the numbers of Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. The evident
conclusion joyfully drawn from this supposed fact by the
defenders of the Anglican Church was, that the scandal of a
Protestant establishment in the midst and at the expense of a
Catholic people was gradually dying away.
"The forlorn hope of the Tory and Orange press went still
further. They boldly disputed Ireland's right to the title of
Catholic. So, although, ten years and twenty years before, these
same journals furiously opposed the admission of religious
denominations into the statistics of the census, yet, when the
census of 1861 drew near, they quite as loudly demanded its
insertion. They made it a matter of challenge to the Catholics.
"The ultramontane journals accepted the challenge. The Catholics
unanimously demanded a denominational census. The results were
submitted to the representatives of the nation in July, 1861. No
shorter, more decisive, or more triumphant answer could have
been given to the sarcasms and challenges of the old Protestant
party."
We confine ourselves here to the total sums, leaving out minor
details:
Catholics . . . . . . . . 4,490,583
Establishment . . . . . . 687,661
Dissenters . . . . . . . 595,577
Jews . . . . . . . . . . 322
Thus in this century, as throughout the whole of the century of
gloom, the island is truly and really Catholic.
By way of contrast, a few words on the same subject may not be
out of place with reference to England. We have already stated,
and given some of the reasons for so doing, that, at the death
of Elizabeth, England was already Protestant to the core.
In his "Memoirs," vol. ii., Sir John Dalrymple has published a
curious official report of the numbers of Catholics in England,
in the reign of William of Orange, found after his death in the
iron chest of that vigilant monarch. From this authentic
document we take the following extract:
Number of Freeholders in England.1 (1 Dr. Madden's "Penal Laws.")
Conformists. Papists. Non-Conformists.
Province of
Canterbury, 2,123,362 93,151 11,878
Province of
York, 353,892 15,525 1,978
Totals 2,477,254 108,676 13,856
It is known also that, under George III., the number of
Catholics in the whole of Great Britain did not exceed sixty
thousand, so thorough had been the separation of England from
the true Church.
To return to the ostracism of a whole nation from its political
rights. No individual really belonging to it could take the
slightest share in the administration of its affairs. They were
all left to the control of aliens, whose boast it was that they
were English; and whose chief object was to secure English
ascendency, and subject every thing Irish to the rule of force.
Yet all this while a new era was dawning on the world; a
multitude of voices were proclaiming new social and political
doctrines; all were to be free, to possess privileges that might
not be intrenched upon--to wit, a voice in the affairs of the
nation, trial by their peers, no taxation without due
representation, and the like--while a whole nation by the
unanimous consent of the loudest of these freedom-mongers was
excluded from every benefit of the new ideas, was literally
placed in bondage, and left without the possibility of being
heard and admitted to the enjoyment of the common rights,
because the one voice which would have declared in their favor,
which in former times had so often and so loudly spoken, when so
to speak was to offend the powers of this world, was deprived of
the right of being heard. The doctrine that the Papal supremacy
was a usurpation, and the Pope himself an enemy of freedom, was
laid down as a cardinal principle. After such public
renunciation of former doctrines, all these new and so-called
liberal theories were a mere delusion and a snare. There was no
possibility of effectually securing freedom, in spite of so much
promised to all and granted to some; no possibility of really
protecting the rights of all. The public right newly proclaimed
ended finally in might. Majorities ruled despotically over the
minorities, and, as the despotism of the multitude is ever
harsher and more universal than that of any monarch, the reign
of cruel injustice was let in upon Ireland. And in her case the
injustice was peculiarly aggravated, inasmuch as it was a small
alien minority which trampled under foot the rights of a great
native majority.
But, although the deprivation of political rights is perhaps
more fatal to a nation than that of any other, on account of
what follows in its train, particularly in the framing of the
laws, nevertheless the deprivation of civil rights is generally
more acutely felt, because the grievances resulting from it meet
man at every turn, at every moment of his life, in his household
and domestic circle. In fact, the penal laws stripped Catholics
of every civil right which modern society can conceive, and it
was chiefly there that the ingenuity of their oppressors labored
during the greater part of a century to make a total wreck of
Irish welfare.
Those rights may be classified generally as the right of
possessing and holding landed property, the right of earning an
honorable living by profession or trade, the right of protection
against injustice by equal laws, the right of fair trial before
condemnation: such are the chief. It is doubtful if there is any
thing of importance left of which a citizen can be deprived,
unless indeed he be openly and unjustly deprived of life.
It has been already indicated how the policy of England, with
regard to Ireland, from that first invasion, in the time of
Henry II., was prompted by the desire of gaining possession of
the soil, and how after seven hundred years of struggle it
succeeded in attaining its object; so that the whole island had
been confiscated, and in some instances two or three times over.
The object of the penal laws, therefore, could not be to deprive
the Irish of the land which they no longer possessed, but to
prevent them acquiring any land in any quantity whatever, and
from reentering into possession, by purchase or otherwise, of
any portion of their own soil and of the estates which belonged
to their ancestors. So harsh and cunning a design, we doubt not,
never entered the minds of any former legislators, even in pagan
antiquity.
The great stimulus to exertion in civil society consists of the
acquisition of property, chiefly of land. In feudal times
seignorial estates could be purchased by none but those of noble
blood; but with allodial estates it was different all through
Europe. Yet just at the time when feudal laws were passing into
disuse the Irish were prevented, by carefully-drawn enactments,
from purchasing even a rood of their native soil. "The
prohibition had been already extended to the whole nation by the
Commonwealth government, and when the lands forfeited by the
wars of 1690 came to be sold at Chichester House in 1703, the
Irish were declared by the English Parliament incapable of
purchasing at the auction, or of taking a lease of more than two
acres."--(Prendergast.)
The same author adds in a note: "But it was when the estate was
made the property of the first Protestant discoverer, that
animation was put into this law. Discoverers then became like
hounds upon the scent after lands secretly purchased by the
Irish. Gentlemen fearing to lose their lands, found it now
necessary to conform--namely, to abjure Catholicism. Between
1703 and 1709 there were only thirty-six conformers in Ireland;
in the next ten years (after the Discovery Act), the conformists
were one hundred and fifty."
But the full object was not only to prevent the Irish from
becoming even moderately rich in land; they were to be reduced
to actual pauperism. Hence the prohibitory laws did not stop at
this first outrage; almost impossible occurrences were supposed
and provided for, lest there might be a chance of their
realization at some time. It was actually provided that, if the
produce of their farms brought a greater profit to the Irish
than was expected, notwithstanding all these measures against
the possible occurrence of such an evil, the lease was void, and
the "discoverer" should receive the amount.
There was no loop-hole by which the people might escape from
this degradation. But there was still the chance left of
engaging in trade, acquiring personal property by its practice,
and becoming the owners of a sum of money in bank, or of a
dwelling-house in the city. The English law of succession was
understood to be a law for all, and consequently, in some out-of-
the-way cases, a stray Irish family might be found in course of
time with an elder branch possessed of a fair amount of property,
and able to emerge from the dead level of the common misery.
Such a possibility could not of course be permitted by the
English colonists who ruled the land. So the law of gavelkind,
to which the Irish had at one time been so attached, was now to
be forced upon them, and upon them alone of all the British
subjects. It was decreed that, upon the death of every Irishman,
whatever of personal property he left behind him was to be
divided equally among all his children, who, being generally
numerous, would each receive but a trifle, and so perpetrate the
pauperism of the race.
Where the surprise, then, in finding the whole nation reduced
since that time to a state of the most abject poverty? It was
the will of the rulers that so it should be, and their scheme,
guarded and enforced by so many legislative acts, could not fail
to succeed in producing the effect intended. Granting even the
smallest amount of truth in what is so often flung at the Irish
as a reproach--their carelessness and want of foresight--how
could it be otherwise, to what cause can such failings, even if
they exist, be assigned, save to the utter impossibility of
succeeding in any effort which they chose to make?
The true origin of the state in which the Irish at home now
appear to the eyes of foreign travellers, is the deliberate
intention, sternly acted upon for more than a century, to make
the island one vast poorhouse.
The wretched situation in which they have ever since remained,
confessed by all to be without parallel on earth, is certainly
not to be laid at the door of the present population of England,
nor even to the colony still intrenched on Irish soil; but with
what right can it be brought forward as a reproach against the
Irish themselves, when its real cause is so evident, and when
history speaks so plainly on the subject?
All sensible Englishmen of our days will readily acknowledge
that, without indulging in mutual recrimination, the duty of all
is to repair the injuries of the past, and to do away with the
last remnants of its sad consequences. Wounds so deep and many
in a nation cannot be healed by half measures; and it is only a
thorough change of system, and a complete reversal of
legislation, that can leave the English of to-day without
reproach.
Pauperism, then, is the necessary misfortune, not the crime of
Ireland; we may even go further, and assert that, if millions of
Irishmen have lived and died paupers, owing to the barbarous
laws enacted for that special purpose, few indeed among them
have been reduced even by hard necessity and the extreme of
misery to manifest a pauper spirit and a miserly bent.
There is no doubt that the almost invariable result of suffering
and want is to create selfishness in the sufferer, and cause him
to cling desperately to the little he may possess. Self
preservation and self-indulgence, in such a case, form the law
of human nature, and no one even expects to find a really poor
man generous, when he can scarcely meet his bare necessities and
the imperious wants of his family. It is the peculiarity of the
Irish to know how to combine generosity with the deprivation
almost of the common necessaries of life. When masters of their
own soil, a large hospitality and a free-handed "bestowing of
gifts"--such, we believe, was the Irish expression--was
universal among them; the poorest clansman would have been
ashamed not to imitate, in his degree, the liberal spirit of his
prince. They often gave all they had, regardless of the future;
and, when their chieftains demanded of the clansmen what the
Book of Rights imposed upon them, their exclamation was, "Spend
me but defend me."
Though the people of Erin have been reduced to the sad necessity
of forgetting that old proverb of the nation, the spirit which
gave rise to it lives in their hearts and is proved by their
deeds. What other nation, even the richest and most prosperous,
could have accomplished what the world has seen them bring to-
pass during this century? The laws which, so long ago, forbade
them to be generous, and prohibited them from providing openly
for the worship of their God, for the education of their
children, for the help of the sick and needy among them, have at
last been made inoperative by their oppressors. But, when they
were at length left free to follow the freedom and generosity of
their hearts, they found--what? In their once beautiful and
Christian country, a universal desolation; the blackened ruins
of what had been their abbeys, churches, hospitals, and asylums;
the very ground on which they stood stolen away from them, and
the Protestant establishment in full enjoyment of the revenues
of the Catholics. They found every thing in the same state that
they had known for centuries. Nothing was restored to them. They
were at liberty to spend what they did not possess, since they
were as poor as men could be. Every thing had to be done by them
toward the reestablishing of their churches, schools, and
various asylums, and they had nothing wherewith to do it.
There is no need of going item by item over what they did. The
present prosperous state of the Irish Catholic public
institutioris-- churches, schools, and all--is owing to their
poorly-filled pockets. God alone knows how it all came about. We
can only see in them the poor of Christ, rich in all gifts,
"even alms-deeds most abundant."
It is only too evident that the degradation which the English
wished to fasten upon them forever, could not be accomplished
even by the measures best adapted to debase a people. The Celtic
nature rose superior to the dark designs of the most ingenious
opponents, and continued as ever noble, generous, and
openhearted. Nevertheless, the sufferings of the victims were at
times unutterable; and one of the inevitable effects of such
tyrannical measures soon made itself fearfully active and
destructive in the shape of those periodical famines which have
ever since devastated the island.
In the days of her own possession, there was never mention of
famine there. The whole island teemed with the grain of her
fields, consumed by a healthy population, and was alive with
vast herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. What were the heca-
tombs of ancient Greece compared with the thousands of kine
prescribed annually by the Book of Rights? Who ever heard of
people perishing of want in the midst of abundance such as this?
Even during the fiercest wars, waged by clan against clan, we
often see the image of death in many shapes, but never that of a
large population reduced to roots and grass for food.
When, later on, the wars of the Reformation transformed Munster
into a wilderness, and we read for the first time in Irish
history of people actually turning green and blue, according to
the color of the unwholesome weeds they were driven to devour in
order to support life, at least it was in the wake of a terrible
war that famine came. It was reserved for the eighteenth century
to disclose to us the woful spectacle of a people perishing of
starvation in the midst of the profoundest peace, frequently of
the greatest plenty, the food produced in abundance by the labor
of the inhabitants being sold and sent off to foreign countries
to enrich absentee landlords. Nay, those desolating famines at
last grew to be periodical, so that every few years people
expected one, and it seemed as though Ireland were too barren to
produce the barely sufficient supply of food necessary for her
scanty population. The people worked arduously and without
intermission; the land was rich, the seasons propitious; yet
they almost constantly suffered the pangs of hunger, which
spread sometimes to wholesale starvation. This was another
result of those laws devised by the English colonists to keep
down the native population of the island, and prevent it from
becoming troublesome and dangerous. Such was the effect of the
humane measures taken to preserve the glory of Protestant
ascendency, and secure the rights and liberties of a handful of
alien masters.
It is proper to describe some of those awful scourges, which
have never ceased since, and at sight of which, in our own days,
we have too often sickened. For the Emancipation of 1829 was far
from removing all the causes of Irish misery. On the 17th of
March, 1727, Boulter, the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, wrote
to the Duke of Newcastle: "Since my arrival in this country, the
famine has not ceased among the poor people. The dearness of corn
last year was such that thousands of families had to quit their
dwellings, to seek means of life elsewhere; many hundred perished."
At the same period Swift wrote: "The families of farmers who pay great
rents, live in filth and nastiness, on buttermilk and potatoes."
The following is a short and simple description of the famine of
1741, given by an eye-witness, and copied by Matthew O'Connor
from a pamphlet entitled "Groans of Ireland," published in the
same year:
"Having been absent from this country some years, on my return
to it last summer, I found it the most miserable scene of
distress that I ever read of in history. Want and misery on
every face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roads
spread with dead and dying bodies; mankind the color of the
docks and nettles which they fed on; two or three, sometimes
more, on a car, going to the grave for want of bearers to carry
them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they
perished. The universal scarcity was followed by fluxes and
malignant fevers, which swept off multitudes of all sorts, so
that whole villages were laid waste. If one for every house in
the kingdom died--and that is very probable--the loss must be
upward of four hundred thousand souls. If only half, a loss too
great for this ill-peopled country to bear, as they are mostly
working people. When a stranger travels through this country,
and beholds its wide, extended, and fertile plains, its great
flocks of sheep and black cattle, and all its natural wealth and
conveniences for tillage, manufacture, and trade, he must be
astonished that such misery and want should be felt by its
inhabitants."
At the time these lines were written, the astonishment was
sincere, and the answer to the question "How can this be?"
seemed impossible; the phenomenon utterly inexplicable. In our
own days, when this same picture of woe has been so often presented
in the island, the reasons for it are well known; and what seems
inexplicable is that, the cause being so clear, and the remedy
so simple, the remedy has not yet been thoroughly applied.
In 1756 and 1757, the same scenes were repeated, with the same
frightful results. Charles O'Connor, at that time the champion
of his much- abused countrymen, wrote thus, in his letter to Dr.
Curry, May 21, 1756:
"Two-thirds of the inhabitants are perishing for want of bread;
meal is come to eighteen-pence a stone, and, if the poor had
money, it would exceed by--I believe--double that sum. Every
place is crowded with beggars, who were all house-keepers a
fortnight ago, and this is the condition of a country which
boasts of its constitution, its laws, and the wisdom of its
legislature."
These words, although sweeping enough, and universally
applicable, are far from conveying to our minds, to-day, the
real picture of the state of the country. When the writer speaks
of "meal," it must be understood to mean rye, oats, and, barley;
and even this coarse and heavy food being, as he remarks,
inaccessible to the poor, potatoes had become the only bread of
the country, and the inhabitants were perishing for the want of it.
For the first time in the history of the two nations, the
English Government thought of relieving the distress of the
people, and to this purpose applied the magnificent sum of
twenty thousand pounds. Such was the generous amount granted by
a wealthy and prosperous country to procure food for the
inhabitants of an island as large as Ireland is known to be. As
to effecting any change in the laws, which were really the cause
of this unutterable misery, such an idea never entered into the
heads of the legislators. Hence it is not surprising to hear
that "the distress in the interior of the country revived the
frightful image of the miseries of 1741, nor did the calamity
cease, until the equilibrium between the population and the
means of subsistence was restored by the accumulated waste of
famine and pestilence;" that is to say, until all those had been
destroyed whom the laws of the time could, as they had been
designed to do, destroy.
These details appear calculated only to shock the feelings of
the reader, already sufficiently acquainted with the lot of the
Irish cottier and laborer, from the beginning of the last
century. Nevertheless, we cannot close this part of our subject
without giving publicity to the following description of the
mass of the Irish population in 1762, by Matthew O'Connor:
"The popery laws had, in the course of half a century,
consummated the ruin of the lower orders. Their habitations,
visages, dress, and despondency, exhibited the deep distress of
a people ruled with the iron sceptre of conquest. The lot of the
negro slave, compared with that of the Irish helot, was
happiness itself. Both were subject to the capricious cruelty of
mercenary task-masters and unfeeling proprietors; but the negro
slave was well-fed, well clothed, and comfortably lodged. The
Irish peasant was half starved, half naked, and half housed; the
canopy of heaven being often the only roof to the mud-built
walls of his cabin. The fewness of negroes gave the West India
proprietor an interest in the preservation of his slave; a
superabundance of helots superseded all interest in the comfort
or preservation of an Irish cottier. The code had eradicated
every feeling of humanity, and avarice sought to stifle every
sense of justice. That avarice was generated by prodigality, the
hereditary vice of the Irish gentry, and manifested itself in
exorbitant rack-rents wrung from their tenantry, and in the low
wages paid for their labor. Since the days of King William, the
price of the necessaries of life had trebled, and the day's hire-
-fourpence-- had continued stationary. The oppression of tithes
was little inferior to the tyranny of rack-rents; while the
great landholder was nearly exempt from this pressure, a tenth
of the produce of the cottier's labor was exacted for the
purpose of a religious establishment from which he derived no
benefit. . . . The peasant had no resource: not trade or
manufactures--they were discouraged; not emigration to France--
the vigilance of government precluded foreign enlistment; not
emigration to America --his poverty precluded the means. Ireland,
the land of his birth, became his prison, where he counted the
days of his misery in the deepest despondency."
Is it to be wondered at that conspiracies, secret associations,
and insurrections, were the result; or should the wonder be that
such commotions were less universal and prolonged?
The craving of hunger is perpetual in Ireland. Multitudes of
details from a multitude of different and independent sources
might be brought forward to show this.
Duvergier de Hauranne, a Frenchman who visited the island in
1826, writes: "Ireland is the land of anomalies; the most
deplorable destitution on the richest of soils. . . . Nowhere
does man live in such wretchedness. The Irish peasant is born,
suffers, and dies--such is life for him."
In 1836, Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare, being asked what was the
state of the population, wrote: "What it has always been; people
are perishing as usual."
In 1843, Mr. Thackeray, as little a friend to Ireland as he was
a foe to his own country, recounting what he saw in his travels,
said that, in the south and west of the island, the traveller
had before him the spectacle of a people dying of hunger, and
that by millions, in the very richest counties.
There is no need of repeating what has been written of the
fearful scourge that swept over the country in 1846 and 1847.
The details are too harrowing. At last even the London Times had
to acknowledge the cause of these calamities: "The ulcer of
Ireland drains the resources of the empire. It was to be
expected that it should be so. The people of England have most
culpably and foolishly connived at a national iniquity. Without
going back beyond the Union (in 1800), and only within the last
half-century, it has been notorious all that time that Ireland
was the victim of an unexampled social crime. The landlords
exercise their rights there with a hand of iron, and deny their
duty with a brow of brass. Age, infirmity, sickness, every
weakness, is there condemned to death. The whole Irish people is
debased by the spectacle and contact of beggars and of those who
notoriously die of hunger; and England stupidly winked at this
tyranny. We begin now to expiate a long curse of neglect. Such
is the law of justice. If we are asked why we have to support
half the population of Ireland, the answer lies in the question
itself; it is that we have deliberately allowed them to be
crushed into a nation of beggars!"
The writers of the Times laid the true cause of that appalling
misfortune at the door of the landlords. They would not trace
back the origin of the evil beyond 1800: they could not or would
not appreciate the Christian heroism displayed by the nation
while under the infliction of such a fatal scourge. But it must
not be forgotten by all admirers of virtue that, in the midst of
a distress which baffles description, many of the victims of
famine were at the same time martyrs to honesty and faith. "Come
here and let us die together," said a wife to her husband,
"rather than touch what belongs to another."
The civil right of acquiring land and enjoying its products has
so far been the only one considered by us; and the subject has
been entered upon at some length, as agriculture has at all
times formed the chief occupation of the Irish people. But the
penal laws embraced many other objects; and, as their intent was
evidently to debase the people and reduce it to a state of
actual slavery and want, other civil rights were equally invaded
by their tyrannical provisions.
A portion of the population in all countries devotes itself to
the intellectual pursuits necessary for the life of every
cultivated nation. Whoever chooses must have the right of
devoting his life to the professions of medicine and law, of
entering the Church or the army, if his tastes run in any one of
those directions. Not so in Catholic Ireland. The oath to be
taken by every barrister prevented the Catholic Irishman from
devoting his powers to such a purpose. There was only one Church
for him, and that one proscribed. In the army not only could he
not attain to any rank, but he was not allowed to enter it even
as a private, the holding of a musket being prohibited to him.
So that, through mere fanatical hatred of every thing Catholic,
England deprived herself for a whole century of the services of
a people, forming to-day more than half of her army and navy,
whose efforts have helped to cover her flag with honor, and
whose memorable absence from the English ranks at Fontenoy wrung
that bitter expression from the heart of George II. when the
victorious tide of the English battle was rolled back by the Irish
brigade, "Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects!"
These few words are enough to show that the penal laws were in
reality a decree of outlawry against the Irish--stamping them,
not as true subjects, but as mere slaves and helots, fit only to
be hewers of wood and drawers of water at the bidding of their
lords and masters.
But there are mere human rights, inalienable in man, and sacred
among all nations, which were trampled upon in that desolated
land together with all inferior rights. Such are the rights of
worshipping God, of properly educating children, of preserving a
just subordination in the family and promoting harmony and
happiness among its members. These natural rights were more
openly and shamelessly violated, if that were possible, than all
others; and this in itself would have made the eighteenth
century one of gloom and woe for Irishmen.
It was for their religion chiefly that the Irish had undergone
all the calamities and scourges which have been described. Had
they only, at the very beginning of the Reformation, bowed to
the new dogma of the spiritual supremacy of the English kings;
had they a little later accepted the Thirty-nine Articles of
Queen Elizabeth; had they, at a subsequent epoch, opined in
chorus with the Scotch Presbyterians, and given the Bible as
their authority for all kinds of absurdities and atrocities,
mental and moral; had they, in a word, as they remarked to
Sussex, changed their religion four times in twelve years, they
would have escaped the wrath of Henry VIII., the crafty and
cruel policy of Elizabeth, the shifty expediency of the Stuarts,
the barbarity of the Cromwellian era, and finally the ingenious
atrocities of the penal laws.
Even if, in the midst of some of the extremities to which they
had been reduced, they had at any time resolved to conform and
take the oaths prescribed, all their miseries would have been at
an end, and their immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges of British citizens secured. From time to time, in
individual cases, they witnessed the sudden and magical effect
produced by conformity on the part of those who gave up
resistance altogether, and who, from whatever motive, bowed to
the inevitable conditions on which men were admitted to live
peaceably on Irish soil, and to the enjoyment of the blessings
of this life; such condition being the abjuration of Catholicity.
But so few were found to take advantage of this easy chance
forever held out to them, that a man might well wonder at their
constancy did he not reflect that they set their duty to God
above all things. The fact is patent--they had a conscience, and
knew what it meant.
Having then surrendered their all for the sake of their religion,
the free exercise of that might at least have been left them;
and since the choice lay between the two alternatives of
enjoying the natural right of worshipping their God or
submitting to all the sacrifices previously mentioned (seemingly
the meaning of the various oaths prescribed by law), it can only
be looked upon as an additional cruelty to violently deprive
them of what they chose to preserve at all cost. But the authors
of the statutes did not see the matter in this light. They could
not lose such an opportunity of inflicting new tortures on their
victims; on the contrary, they would have considered all their
labor lost had they not endeavored to coerce the very thing
least subject to coercion, the religious feeling of the human
soul. Accordingly, the resolution was taken to deprive them of
every possible facility for the exercise of their religion, that
the fire within might give no sign of its warmth.
True, the Irish Catholics were not, as the Christians under the
edicts of old Rome, to be summoned before the public courts and
there abjure their religion or die. It is strange that the
rulers of Ireland stopped short at this; that they invented
nothing in their laws at least equivalent, unless the statutes
that compelled every person under fine to be present at
Protestant worship on Sundays be interpreted to mean, what it
very much resembles, an attempt at coercion of the very soul.
Still there was no edict openly proscribing the name of Catholic,
and punishing its bearer with death.
But the measures adopted and actually enforced were in reality
equivalent, and would more effectually than any pagan edict have
produced the same result, if the Irish race had shown the least
wavering in their traditional steadiness of purpose.
The first of the measures devised for this end would have been
completely efficacious with any other people or race. It was a
twofold measure: 1. All bishops, priests, and monks, were to
depart from the kingdom, liable to capital punishment should
they return. 2. All laymen were to be compelled to assist at the
Protestant service every Sunday, under penalty of a fine for
each offence: the fine mounting with the repetition of the
offence, so that, in the end, it would reach an enormous sum.
Only let such a policy as this be persevered in for a quarter of
a century in any country on earth except Ireland, and, in that
country the Catholic religion will cease to exist.
"The Catholic clergy," says Matthew O'Connor--and the reader
will remember he was a witness of what he described-- "submitted
to their hard destiny with Christian resignation. They repaired
to the seaport towns fixed for their embarcation, and took an
everlasting farewell of their country and friends, of every
thing dear and valuable in this world. Many of them were
descending in the vale of years, and must have been anxious to
deposit their bones with the ashes of their ancestors; they were
now transported to foreign lands, where they would find no fond
breast to rely upon, no 'pious tear' to attend their obsequies.
Yet their enemies could not deprive them of the consolations of
religion: that first-born offspring of Heaven still cheered them
in adversity and exile, smoothed the rugged path of death, and
closed their last faltering accents with benedictions on their
country, and prayers for their persecutors.
"Such as were apprehended after the time limited for deportation,
were loaded with irons and imprisoned until transported, to
attest, on some foreign shore, the weakness of the government,
and the cruelty of their countrymen. Some few, disabled from age
and infirmities from emigration, sought shelter in caves, or
implored and received the concealment of Protestants, whose
humane feelings were superior to their prejudices, and who
atoned, in a great degree, by their generous sympathy, for the
wanton cruelty of their party.
"The clause inflicting the punishment of death on such as should
return from exile was suited only for the sanguinary days of
Tiberius or Domitian, and shocked the humanity of an enlightened
age. William of Orange, whose necessities compelled him to give
his sanction to the clause, would never consent to its execution."
Nevertheless, it was afterward enforced on several occasions,
and, during the whole century of penal laws, it not only
remained on the statute-book ad terrorem, but whatever clergyman
disregarded it could only expect to be treated with its utmost
rigor. From Captain South's account, it appears that in 1698 the
number of clergy in Ireland consisted of four hundred and ninety-
five regulars and eight hundred and ninety-two seculars; and the
number of regulars shipped off that year to foreign parts
amounted to four hundred and twenty-four--namely, from Dublin,
one hundred and fifty-three; from Galway, one hundred and ninety;
from Cork, seventy-five; and twenty-six from Waterford.
But such a measure was of too sweeping a character to be carried
out to the letter; many of the proscribed priests, seculars for
the most part, escaped the pursuit of the government spies, and
remained concealed in the country. The bishops had all been
obliged to fly; but a few years later, under Anne, several
returned, for they knew that, without the exercise of their
religious functions, the Catholic religion must have perished;
and, in order that they might continue the succession of the
priesthood, confirm the children, and encourage the people to
stand firm in their faith, they ran the hazard of the gibbet. Of
this fact the persecutors soon became aware, and the Commons of
Ireland declared openly that "several popish bishops had lately
come into the kingdom, and exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction
within the same, and continued the succession of the Romish
priesthood by ordaining great numbers of popish clergymen, and
that their return was owing to defect in the laws."
To cover this defect, they invented the "registry law." They did
not state in express terms their intention of exporting them
again, but their object was clearly manifested by the subsequent
enactment of 1704. By the registry law "all popish priests then
in the kingdom should, at the general quarter sessions in each
county, register their places of abode, age, parishes, and time
of ordination, the names of the respective bishops who ordained
them, and give security for their constant residence in their
respective districts, under penalty of imprisonment and
transportation, and of being treated as 'high traitors' in case
of return."
It is clear that, with the execution of this law, the exertions
of the police and of informers would have been superfluous, as
the clergy were compelled to act as their own police and inform
on themselves. The act, moreover, seems to have been prepared
with a view to another bill, which was soon after passed, for
total expulsion. It was therefore nothing else than a
preliminary measure devised to insure the success of this second
act, and prevent the recurrence of the former "defect in the
laws."
A new explanatory statute was accordingly drawn up, requiring
the clergy to take the oath of abjuration before the 23d of
March, 1710, under the penalties of transportation for life, and
of high-treason if ever after found in the country. This bill,
then, set them the alternative of abandoning either their
country or their principles.
At the same time, for the encouragement of informers, the
Commons resolved that "the prosecuting and informing against
papists was an honorable service." Never before had a like
declaration issued from any body in any nation, least of all by
legislators, in favor of the confessedly meanest of all
occupations; and it is doubtful if the most tyrannical of the
Roman Caesars would ever have thought of mentioning the
"honorable service" of the delatores whom they employed for the
speedy destruction of those whose wealth they coveted. "Genus
hominum," says Tacitus, "publico exitio repertum."
While on this subject, it has been remarked that most of the
Irish informers amassed wealth by their bills of "discovery,"
whereas those of the days of Tiberius generally fell victims to
their own artifices.
The eagerness for blood-money tracked the clergy to their
loneliest retreats, and dragged them thence before persecuting
tribunals, by whose sentence they were doomed to perpetual
banishment. They must all have finally disappeared from the
island, if the people, at last grown indignant at such baseness
and cruelty, had not, by the loudness of their execrations,
checked the activity of the priest-hunters. Wherever they dared
show themselves, they were pelted with stones, and exposed to
the summary vengeance of a maddened people.
The detestable "profession" became at last so infamous and
unprofitable that foreign Jews were almost the only ones found
willing to undertake this "honorable service;" and it is stated
in the "Historia Dominicana," that one Garzia, a Portuguese Jew,
was the most active of those human blood-hounds, and that, in
1718, he contrived to have seven of the proscribed clergy
detected and apprehended.
We cannot speak of the most revolting measure ever intended to
be taken against Catholic priests; namely mutilation, so long
and with such energy denied by Protestants, who were themselves
indignant at the mere mention of it, but now clearly proved by
the archives of France, where documents exist showing that the
non-enactment of such an infamy was solely due to the severe
words of remonstrance sent to England by the Duke of Orleans,
regent of France during the minority of Louis XV.
As late as the middle of the century, in 1744, a sudden increase
of rigor took place; intentions of conspiracy were ascribed to
Catholics as usual, and without any motive whatever, unless it
was caused by the sight of some religious houses, which had been
quietly and unobtrusively reopened during the few years previous.
All at once the government issued a proclamation for "the
suppression of monasteries, the apprehension of ecclesiastics,
the punishment of magistrates remiss in the execution of the
laws, and the encouragement of spies and informers by an
increase of reward."
It was a repetition of the old story; a cruel persecution broke
out in every part of the island. From the country priests fled
to the metropolis, seeking to hide themselves amid the multitude
of its citizens. Others fled to mountains and caverns, and the
holy sacrifice was again offered up in lone places under the
bare heavens, with sentinels to watch for the "prowling of the
wolf," and no other outward dignity than that the grandeur of
the forest and the rugged mountains gave.
In the cities the Catholics assisted at the celebration of the
divine mysteries in stable-yards, garrets, and such obscure
places as sheltered them from the pursuit of the magistrates. On
one occasion, while the congregation (assembled in an old
building) was kneeling to receive the benediction, the floor
gave way, and all were buried beneath the ruin; many were killed,
the priest among others; some were maimed for life, and
remained to the end of their lives monuments of the cruelty of
the government. The dead and dying, and the wounded, were
carried through the streets on carts; and the sad spectacle at
last moved the Protestants themselves to sympathy. The
government was compelled to give way, and allow the persecuted
Catholics to enjoy without further molestation the private
exercise of their religion.
But that this was not a willing concession on the part of the
reigning power is manifest enough from the steady, unswerving,
contrary policy pursued until that time. It was simply forced to
give way to outraged public opinion, then openly opposed
throughout Europe to persecution for conscience' sake.
With religion education was also proscribed. Already, under
William of Orange, had papist school-masters been forbidden to
teach, but the penalty of their disobedience to the law did not
go beyond a fine of a few pounds. So that the Irish youth could
still, with some precautionary prudence, find teachers of the
Greek and Latin languages, of mathematics, history, and
geography. In Munster particularly schools and academies of
literature flourished; the ardor of the people for the
acquirement of knowledge could not be balked by such paltry
obstacles as the laws of William III.
But the Irish Parliament under Anne could not rest satisfied
with such mild measures. By the "Explanatory Act" of 1710, the
school-master in Ireland was subjected to the same punishment as
the priest whom he accompanied everywhere. Prison,
transportation, death itself, became the reward of teaching. And
in proportion as other laws, severer yet, prevented the people
from sending their children abroad to be educated, and these
laws were renewed occasionally and made more stringent and
effective, the result was the total impossibility of Catholic
children receiving any education higher than that of the house.
The final result is known to all. The "hedge-school" was
established, that being the only way left of imparting
elementary knowledge; and it required Irish ingenuity and Irish
aptitude for shifts to invent such a system, for system it was,
and carry it through for so long a time.
But even the last sanctuary of home was yet to be sacrilegiously
invaded; the most sacred of human rights could not be left to
the persecuted people, and the strongest bonds of family
affection were if possible to be broken asunder. What tyranny
had never yet dared attempt in any age or country was to become
a law in Ireland; and that holy feeling by which the members of
a family are held together, in obedence to one of the most
necessary and solemn commandments of God, could not be left
undisturbed in the bosom of an Irish child. The father's rule
over his children and the honor and love due by the child to its
parent, were, in fact, declared by English legislation of no
value, and fit subjects for cruel interference, introducing
irresistible temptation.
Yes, by the laws enacted in the reign of Anne, the son was to be
set against the father, and this for the sake of religion! It
was a part of the Irish statutes, and for a long time it took
occasional effect, that any son of a Catholic who should turn
Protestant at any age, even the tenderest, should alone succeed
to the family estate, which from the day of the son's conversion
could neither be sold nor charged even with a debt of legacy.
From that same day the son was taken from his father's roof and
delivered into the custody of some Protestant guardian. No tie,
however sacred, no claim, however dear, was respected by those
statesmen, who at the very time were the loudest to boast of
their love for freedom, while trampling under foot the most
indispensable rights of Nature.
The wickedest ingenuity of man could certainly not go beyond
this to debase, degrade, and destroy a nation. After
unprecedented calamities of former ages, we find millions of men
reduced by other men, calling themselves Christians, to a
condition of pagan helots, deprived of all rights and treated
more barbarously than slaves. And all the while they were
allowed, induced, encouraged to put an end to their misery by
simply saying one word, taking one oath, "conforming " as the
expression had it. Nevertheless they steadily refused to speak
that word, to take that oath, to conform; that is to say, to
abjure their religion. A few, weak in faith, or carried away by
sudden passion, a burst of despair, subscribe to the required
oath, assist as demanded at the religious services on Sunday,
suddenly rise to distinction, are sure of preserving their
wealth, or even enter into sole possession of the family
property, to the exclusion of all its other members. But such
rare examples, instead of rousing the envy of the rest, excite
only their contempt and execration. To them they are henceforth
apostates, renegades to their faith, cast out from the bosom of
the nation; and their countrymen hug their misery rather than
exchange it for honors and wealth purchased by broken honor,
lost faith, and cowardly desertion of the cause for which their
country was what it was.
While the cowards were so few, and the brave men so many, the
latter constituting indeed the whole bulk of the people, they
were knit together as a band of brethren, never to be estranged
from each other. If any thing is calculated to form a nation, to
give it strength, to render it indestructible, imperishable, it
is undoubtedly the ordeal through which they passed without
shrinking, and out of which they came with one mind, one purpose,
animated by one holy feeling, the love of their religion, and
the determination to keep it at all hazard.
Yes, at any moment throughout this long century, they might have
changed their condition and come out at once to the enjoyment of
all the rights dear to men, by what means is best expressed in
the few words of Edmund Burke:
"Let three millions of people" (the number of Irishmen at the
time he spoke) "but abandon all that they and their ancestors
have been taught to believe sacred, and forswear it publicly in
terms most degrading, scurrilous, and indecent, for men of
integrity and virtue, and abuse the whole of their former lives,
and slander the education they have received, and nothing more
is required of them. There is no system of folly, or impiety, or
blasphemy, or atheism, into which they may not throw themselves,
and which they may not profess openly and as a system,
consistently with the enjoyment of all the privileges of a free
citizen in the happiest constitution in the world."
Thus does the reason of man commend their constancy; but that
constancy required something more than human strength. God it
was who supported them. He alone could grant power of will
strong enough to uphold men plunged for so long a time in such
an abyss of wretchedness. To him could they cry out with truth:
"It is only owing to Divine mercy that we have not perished;"
misericordias Domini, quod non sumus consumpti!
But human reason can better comprehend the effect produced on a
vast multitude of people by oppression so unexampled in its
severity. An immense development of manhood and self-dependence,
an heroic determination to bear every trial for conscience' sake,
and a certainty of succeeding, in the long-run, in breaking the
heavy chain and casting off the intolerable yoke --such was the
effect.
It has been asserted by some authors, who have written on that
terrible eighteenth century in Ireland, that the spirit of the
people was entirely broken, that there was no energy left among
them, and that the imposition of burdens heavier still, were
such a thing possible, could scarcely elicit from them even the
semblance of remonstrance. It was only natural to think so; but,
in our opinion, this is only true of the external despondency
under which the people was bowed, but utterly false with respect
to a lack of mental energy.
There certainly was no general attempt at insurrection on their
part; nor did they take refuge in that last resource of despair--
death after a vain vengeance. If the writers referred to would
have preferred this last fatal resource of wounded pride, they
are right in their estimate of the Irish; but they forget that
the victims were Christians, and could lend no ear to a
vengeance which is futile and a despair which is forbidden.
There was a better course open before them, and they followed it:
to resign themselves to the will of a God they believed in and
for whom they suffered, and wait patiently for the day of
deliverance. It was sure to come; and if those then living were
doomed not to see that happy day, they knew that they would
leave it as an inheritance to their children.
Those writers would doubtless have been satisfied of the
existence of a will among the people, and their conduct would
have met with greater approval, had the attempts of some
individuals at private revenge been more general and successful;
if the bands of Rapparees, White Boys, and others, had wrought
more evil upon their oppressors, although they could not prepare
them to renew the struggle on a large scale with better prospect
of success.
But this could not be; success could never have been reached by
such a road, and it was useless to attempt it. At that time,
there existed no possibility of the Irish recovering their
rights by force. Meanwhile Providence was not forgetful of those
who were fighting the braver moral battle of suffering and
endurance for their religion. It was preparing the nation for a
future life of great purposes, by purifying it in the crucible
of affliction, and preserving the people pure and undebased.
Nowhere has the period of calamity been so protracted and so
severe. Ireland stands alone in a history of wretchedness of
seven centuries' duration. She stands alone, particularly
inasmuch as, with her, the affliction has gone on continually
increasing until quite recently, unrefreshed by periods of
relief and glimpses of bright hope. The sinking spirits of the
people, it is true, have been buoyed up from time to time by
sanguine expectations; but only to find their expectations
crowned with bitter disappointment and sink deeper again in the
sea of their afflictions.
Nevertheless, through all that time the Irish continued morally
strong, and ready at the right moment to leap into the stature
of giants in strength and resolution. How they did so will be
seen, and the simplicity of the explanation will be matter for
surprise. But it is fitting first to set in the strongest light
the assertion that the Irish were really debased by the
calamities of that age, that they possessed no self-dependence
at a time when that was the only thing left to them.
This view is thus expressed in Godkin's "History of Ireland:"
"Too well did the penal code accomplish its dreadful work of
debasement on the intellects, morals, and physical condition of
a people sinking in degeneracy from age to age, till all manly
spirit, all virtuous sense of personal independence and
responsibility was nearly extinct, and the very features--vacant,
timid, cunning, and unreflective--betrayed the crouching slave
within."
And the writer, a well-disposed Protestant, did not see how it
could well be otherwise, and took it for granted that every one
would admit the truth of his assertions without the slightest
hesitation.
For he adds, a little farther on: "Having no rights of franchise-
-no legal protection of life or property--disqualified to handle
a gun, even as a common soldier or a game-keeper-- forbidden to
acquire the elements of knowledge at home or abroad--forbidden
even to render to God what conscience dictated as his due--what
could the Irish be but abject serfs? What nature in their
circumstances could have been otherwise? Is it not amazing that
any social virtue could have survived such an ordeal--that any
seeds of good, any roots of national greatness could have
outlived such a long tempestuous winter? "
Still Mr. Godkin was mistaken; the Irish had suffered no
"debasement of the intellects, of the morals, not even of the
physical condition," notwithstanding the plenitude of causes
existing to bring such results about.
Their intellect had been kept in ignorance. Unable to procure
instruction for their children, except by stealth and in
opposition to the laws, few of them could acquire even the first
elements of mental culture. But the intellect of a nation is not
necessarily debased on that account. As a general rule, it is
true that ignorance begets mental darkness and error, and will
often debase the mind and sink the intellectual faculties to the
lowest human level. But this happens only to people who, having
no religious substratum to rest upon, are left at the mercy of
error and delusions. One great thought, at least, was ever
present to their minds, and that thought was in itself
sufficient to preserve their intellect from being degraded; it
was this "Man is nobler than the brute and born to a higher
destiny." This truth was deeply engraved in their minds; and in
defence of it they battled, and fought, and bled, all down the
painful course of their history.
Had the intellect of the nation been really debased, would not
their religious principles have been the first things to be
thrown overboard? Would they not have adopted unhesitatingly all
the tenets successively proposed to them by the various
"reformers" of England? What is truth, when there is no mind to
receive it? It requires a strong mind indeed to say, "I will
suffer every thing, death itself, rather thin repudiate what I
know comes from God." It is useless to dwell longer on these
considerations. The man who sees not in such an heroic
determination proof of a strong and noble mind may be possessed
of a great, but to common-sense people it will look like a very
limited intelligence.
Mr. Godkin cannot have duly weighed his expressions when he
spoke of the debasement of morals among the Irish. It is no
hyperbole to speak of the nation as a martyr; a martyr in any
sense of the word: to the Christian, a Christian martyr. And yet
it is by that fact guilty of immorality, or, as he puts it,
debased in morals! The point is not worth arguing. But in
contrasting the two nations, the nation debased and the nation
that wrought its debasement, we are irresistibly reminded of the
words used by Our Lord in reference to John the Baptist, then in
prison and liable at any moment to be condemned to death: "What
went ye out in the desert to see? A man clothed in soft
garments? Lo! they that are clothed in soft garments dwell in
the houses of kings."
If we would find a people really debased in morals, we must go
to those whose material prosperity breeds corruption and gives
to all the means of satisfying their evil passions. The orgies
of the Babylonians under their last king, of the effeminate
Persians later on, of the Roman patricians during the empire,
need no more than mention. The cause of the immorality
prevailing at these several epochs is well known, and has been
told very plainly by conscientious historians, some of them
pagans themselves. But, that a people ground down so long under
a yoke of iron, gasping for very breath, yet refusing to
surrender its belief and the worship of its God as its countless
saints worshipped him, to follow the wild vagaries of sectarians
and fanatics, should at the same time be accused of corruption
and debasement of its morals, is too much for an historian to
assert or a reader to believe.
But, beyond all argument, it has been generally conceded, in
spite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had been
preeminently moral and Christian. No one has dared accuse them
of open vice, however they may have been accused of folly.
Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many who,
careful to conceal their own failings, are ever, ready to "cast
the first stone" at them. It would be well for them to ponder
over the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers of the woman
taken in adultery; when perhaps they may think twice before
repeating the time-worn accusation.
Coming to the "people sinking in degeneracy from age to age;" if
by this is meant that, for a whole century, many of them have
suffered the direst want and died of hunger, that scanty food
has impressed on many the deep traces of physical suffering and
bodily exhaustion, no one will dispute the fact, while the blame
of it is thrown where it deserves to be thrown. But it will be a
source of astonishment to find that, despite of this, the race
has not degenerated even physically; that it is still, perhaps,
the strongest race in existence, and that no other European, no
Englishman or Teuton, can endure the labor of any ordinary
Irishman. In the vast territory of the United States, the public
works, canals, roads, railways, huge fabrics, immense
manufactories, bear witness to the truth of this statement, and
the only explanation that can be satisfactorily given for this
strange fact is, that their morals are pure and they do not
transmit to their children the seeds of many diseases now
universal in a universally corrupt society.
There remains the final accusation of the "very features--
vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective--betraying the
crouching slave within."
Granting the truth of this--which we by no means do, every
school-geography written by whatever hand attesting the contrary
to-day--where would have been the wonder that they, subjected so
long to an unbending harshness and never-slumbering tyranny,
accustomed to those continual "domiciliary visits" so common in
Ireland during the whole of last century, dragged so often
before the courts of "justice," to be there insulted, falsely
accused, harshly tried and convicted without proof--were obliged
to be continually on their guard, to observe a deep reserve, the
very opposite to the promptings of their genial nature, to
return ambiguous answers, full, by the way, of natural wit and
marvellous acuteness? It was the only course left them in their
forlorn situation. They pitted their native wit against a
wonderfully devised legislation, and often came off the victors.
Suppose it were true, was it not natural that, under such a
system of unrelaxing oppression and hatred toward them, their
faces should be "vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective,
betraying the crouching slave within?"
Could they give back a proud answer, when a proud look was an
accusation of rebellion? Are prudence, cunning, and just reserve,
vacancy and want of reflection? The man who penned those words
should remember the choice of alternatives ever present to the
mind of an Irishman, however unjustly suspected or accused--the
probability of imprisonment or hanging, of being sent to the
workhouse or transported to the "American plantations."
The Irishman must have changed very materially and very rapidly
since Mr. Godkin wrote. The features he would stamp upon him
might be better applied to the Sussex yokel or the English
country boor of whatever county. The generality of travellers
strangely disagree with Mr. Godkin. They find the Irishman the
type of vivacity, good humor, and wit; and they are right. For,
under the weight of such a load of misery, under the ban of so
terrible a fate, the moral disposition of the Irishman never
changed; his manhood remained intact. To-day, the world attests
to the same exuberance of spirits, the same tenacity of purpose,
which were ever his. This indeed is wonderful, that this people
should have been thus preserved amid so many causes for change
and deterioration. Who shall explain this mystery? What had they,
all through that age of woe, to give them strength to support
their terrible trials, to preserve to them that tenacity which
prevented their breaking down altogether? Something there was
indeed not left to them, since it was forbidden under the
severest penalties; something, nevertheless, to which they clung,
in spite of all prohibitions to the contrary.
It was the Mass-Rock, peculiar to the eighteenth century, now
known only by tradition, but at that time common throughout the
island. The principal of those holy places became so celebrated
at the time that, on every barony map of Ireland, numbers of
them are to be found marked under the appropriate title of
"Corrigan-Affrion"--the mass-rock.
Whenever, in some lonely spot on the mountain, among the crags
at its top, or in some secret recess of an unfrequented glen,
was found a ledge of rock which might serve the purpose of an
altar, cut out as it were by Nature, immediately the place
became known to the surrounding neighborhood, but was kept a
profound secret from all enemies and persecutors. There on the
morning appointed, often before day, a multitude was to be seen
kneeling, and a priest standing under the canopy of heaven, amid
the profound silence of the holy mysteries. Though the surface
of the whole island was dotted with numerous churches, built in
days gone by by Catholics, but now profaned, in ruins, or
devoted to the worship of heresy, not one of them was allowed to
serve for a place where a fraction even of the bulk of the
population might adore their God according to the rites approved
of by their conscience. Shut off from these temples so long
hallowed by sweet remembrance as the spots once occupied by the
saints and consecrated to the true worship of their God, this
faithful nation was consecrating the while by its prayers, by
its blood, and by its tears, other places which in future times
should be remembered as the only spots left to them for more
than a century wherein to celebrate the divine rites.
This was the only badge of nationality they had preserved, but
it was the most sacred, the surest, and the sweetest. Who shall
tell of the many prayers that went up thence from devoted minds
and hearts, to be received by angels and carried before the
throne of God? Who shall say that those prayers were not
hearkened to when to-day we see the posterity of those holy
worshippers receiving or on the point of receiving the full
measure of their desires?
There, indeed, it was that the nation received its new birth; in
sorrow and suffering, as its Saviour was born, but for that very
reason sacred in the eyes of God and man. Their enemies had
sworn complete separation from them, eternal animosity against
them; the new nation accepted the challenge, and that complete
separation decreed by their enemies was the real means of their
salvation and of making them a People.
As has already been observed, the various attempts to make
Protestants of them, attempts sometimes cunning and crafty, at
others open and cruel, always persevered in, never lost sight of,
began to imbue the people with a new feeling of nationality,
never experienced before, and constantly increasing in intensity.
This was witnessed under the Tudors. Their infatuation for the
Stuart dynasty served the same end, and it may be said that,
from all the evils which that attachment brought upon them,
burst forth that great recompense of national sentiment which
almost compensated them for the terrible calamities which
followed in its train. It was under Charles I. that the
Confederation of Kilkenny first gave them a real constitution,
better adapted for the nation than the old regime of their Ard-
Righs.
But it was chiefly under the English Commonwealth, when they
were so mercilessly crushed down by Cromwell and his brutal
soldiery, when there seemed no earthly hope left them, that the
solid union of the old native with the Anglo-Irish families,
which had already been attempted--and almost successfull by the
Confederation of Kilkenny yet never consummated was finally
brought about once for all; their common misery uniting them in
the bonds of brotherly affection, blotting out forever their
long-standing divisions and antipathies which had never been
quite laid aside.
It was thus that the nation was formed and prepared by martyrdom
for the glorious resurrection, the greater future kept in store
for it by Providence; the people all the while remaining
undebased under their crushing evils.
Lastly, the intensity of the suffering produced by the penal
laws, during the eighteenth century, linked the nation in closer
bonds of union still, and this time gave them a unanimity which
became invincible. Their final motto was then adopted, and will
stand forever unchanged. In the clan period it was "Our sept and
our chieftain;" under the Tudors, "Our religion and our native
lords;" under the Stuarts it suddenly became "God and the King;
"--it changed once more, never to change again: it was embraced
in one word, the name of Him who had never deserted them, who
alone stood firm on their side--"Our God!"