Thus the laws stand with regard to the property already acquired, to its mode of descent, and to family powers. Now as to the new acquisition of real property, and both to the acquisition and security of personal, the law stands thus:—
All persons of that persuasion are disabled from taking or purchasing, directly or by a trust, any lands, any mortgage upon land, any rents or profits from land, any lease, interest, or term of any land, any annuity for life or lives or years, or any estate whatsoever, chargeable upon, or which may in any manner affect, any lands.
One exception, and one only, is admitted by the statutes to the universality of this exclusion, viz., a lease for a term not exceeding thirty-one years. But even this privilege is charged with a prior qualification. This remnant of a right is doubly curtailed: 1st, that on such a short lease a rent not less than two thirds of the full improved yearly value, at the time of the making it, shall be reserved during the whole continuance of the term; and, 2ndly, it does not extend to the whole kingdom. This lease must also be in possession, and not in reversion. If any lease is made, exceeding either in duration or value, and in the smallest degree, the above limits, the whole interest is forfeited, and vested ipso facto in the first Protestant discoverer or informer. This discoverer, thus invested with the property, is enabled to sue for it as his own right. The courts of law are not alone open to him; he may (and this is the usual method) enter into either of the courts of equity, and call upon the parties, and those whom he suspects to be their trustees, upon oath, and under the penalties of perjury, to discover against themselves the exact nature and value of their estates in every particular, in order to induce their forfeiture on the discovery. In such suits the informer is not liable to those delays which the ordinary procedure of those courts throws into the way of the justest claimant; nor has the Papist the indulgence which he [it?] allows to the most fraudulent defendant, that of plea and demurrer; but the defendant is obliged to answer the whole directly upon oath. The rule of favores ampliandi, &c., is reversed by this act, lest any favor should be shown, or the force and operation of the law in any part of its progress be enervated. All issues to be tried on this act are to be tried by none but known Protestants.
It is here necessary to state as a part of this law what has been for some time generally understood as a certain consequence of it. The act had expressly provided that a Papist could possess no sort of estate which might affect land (except as before excepted). On this a difficulty did, not unnaturally, arise. It is generally known, a judgment being obtained or acknowledged for any debt, since the statute of Westm. 2, 13 Ed. I. c. 18, one half of the debtor's land is to be delivered unto the creditor until the obligation is satisfied, under a writ called Elegit, and this writ has been ever since the ordinary assurance of the land, and the great foundation of general credit in the nation. Although the species of holding under this writ is not specified in the statute, the received opinion, though not juridically delivered, has been, that, if they attempt to avail themselves of that security, because it may create an estate, however precarious, in land, their whole debt or charge is forfeited, and becomes the property of the Protestant informer. Thus you observe, first, that by the express words of the law all possibility of acquiring any species of valuable property, in any sort connected with land, is taken away; and, secondly, by the construction all security for money is also cut off. No security is left, except what is merely personal, and which, therefore, most people who lend money would, I believe, consider as none at all.
Under this head of the acquisition of property, the law meets them in every road of industry, and in its direct and consequential provisions throws almost all sorts of obstacles in their way. For they are not only excluded from all offices in Church and State, which, though a just and necessary provision, is yet no small restraint in the acquisition, but they are interdicted from the army, and the law, in all its branches. This point is carried to so scrupulous a severity, that chamber practice, and even private conveyancing, the most voluntary agency, are prohibited to them under the severest penalties and the most rigid modes of inquisition. They have gone beyond even this: for every barrister, six clerk, attorney, or solicitor, is obliged to take a solemn oath not to employ persons of that persuasion,—no, not as hackney clerks, at the miserable salary of seven shillings a week. No tradesman of that persuasion is capable by any service or settlement to obtain his freedom in any town corporate; so that they trade and work in their own native towns as aliens, paying, as such, quarterage, and other charges and impositions. They are expressly forbidden, in whatever employment, to take more than two apprentices, except in the linen manufacture only.
In every state, next to the care of the life and properties of the subject, the education of their youth has been a subject of attention. In the Irish laws this point has not been neglected. Those who are acquainted with the constitution of our universities need not be informed that none but those who conform to the Established Church can be at all admitted to study there, and that none can obtain degrees in them who do not previously take all the tests, oaths, and declarations. Lest they should be enabled to supply this defect by private academies and schools of their own, the law has armed itself with all its terrors against such a practice. Popish schoolmasters of every species are proscribed by those acts, and it is made felony to teach even in a private family. So that Papists are entirely excluded from an education in any of our authorized establishments for learning at home. In order to shut up every avenue to instruction, the act of King William in Ireland has added to this restraint by precluding them from all foreign education.
This act is worthy of attention on account of the singularity of some of its provisions. Being sent for education to any Popish school or college abroad, upon conviction, incurs (if the party sent has any estate of inheritance) a kind of unalterable and perpetual outlawry. The tender and incapable age of such a person, his natural subjection to the will of others, his necessary, unavoidable ignorance of the laws, stands for nothing in his favor. He is disabled to sue in law or equity; to be guardian, executor, or administrator; he is rendered incapable of any legacy or deed of gift; he forfeits all his goods and chattels forever; and he forfeits for his life all his lands, hereditaments, offices, and estate of freehold, and all trusts, powers, or interests therein. All persons concerned in sending them or maintaining them abroad, by the least assistance of money or otherwise, are involved in the same disabilities, and subjected to the same penalties.
The mode of conviction is as extraordinary as the penal sanctions of this act. A justice of peace, upon information that any child is sent away, may require to be brought before him all persons charged or even suspected of sending or assisting, and examine them and other persons on oath concerning the fact. If on this examination he finds it probable that the party was sent contrary to this act, he is then, to bind over the parties and witnesses in any sum he thinks fit, but not less than two hundred pounds, to appear and take their trial at the next quarter sessions. Here the justices are to reexamine evidence, until they arrive, as before, to what shall appear to them a probability. For the rest they resort to the accused: if they can prove that any person, or any money, or any bill of exchange, has been sent abroad by the party accused, they throw the proof upon him to show for what innocent purposes it was sent; and on failure of such proof, he is subjected to all the above-mentioned penalties. Half the forfeiture is given to the crown; the other half goes to the informer.
It ought here to be remarked, that this mode of conviction not only concludes the party has failed in his expurgatory proof, but it is sufficient also to subject to the penalties and incapacities of the law the infant upon whose account the person has been so convicted. It must be confessed that the law has not left him without some species of remedy in this case apparently of much hardship, where one man is convicted upon evidence given against another, if he has the good fortune to live; for, within a twelvemonth after his return, or his age of twenty-one, he has a, right to call for a new trial, in which he also is to undertake the negative proof, and to show by sufficient evidence that he has not been sent abroad against the intention of the act. If he succeeds in this difficult exculpation, and demonstrates his innocence to the satisfaction of the court, he forfeits all his goods and chattels, and all the profits of his lands incurred and received before such acquittal; but he is freed from all other forfeitures, and from all subsequent incapacities. There is also another method allowed by the law in favor of persons under such unfortunate circumstances, as in the former case for their innocence, in this upon account of their expiation: if within six months after their return, with the punctilious observation of many ceremonies, they conform to the Established Church, and take all the oaths and subscriptions, the legislature, in consideration of the incapable age in which they were sent abroad, of the merit of their early conformity, and to encourage conversions, only confiscates, as in the former case, the whole personal estate, and the profits of the real; in all other respects, restoring and rehabilitating the party.