who should abandon their religion. Whether or not they accepted this bribe was held to be of small importance, as their ranks were rapidly thinned by death, and precautions had been taken that the vacancies should not be refilled.
The Catholic people were placed in a position like that of the Forty Martyrs, who were exposed naked on the frozen lake, surrounded by warm baths and comfortable houses, which they could enter by renouncing their faith. The deepest and holiest instincts of human nature were appealed to against the most sacred convictions which man is capable of holding. If the father wished to educate his child, schools abounded, but he could enter them only by abandoning his religion. He was not, indeed, forced to send his children to these Protestant schools, but it was made impossible for him to send them to any other. His tyrants went farther. They spared no pains to make it impossible that an Irish Catholic should learn anything even by stealth. All Catholic schoolmasters were banished from Ireland, and, in case of return, were to suffer death.
The law made express provision for the money necessary to defray the expenses of transporting these obnoxious persons. Nay, it went yet farther. There were schools on the continent of Europe to which a few Irish children might possibly find their way. This danger was foreseen and met. An act was passed prohibiting Catholics from sending their children across the Channel without special permission, and the magistrates were authorized to demand at any time that parents should produce their children before them. Beyond this it was not possible to go. All that human enactments can do to degrade the
mind of a whole people to a state of brutish ignorance was done. And let us remark that this applied not to the Irish only, but to all Catholics who spoke the English language. The English government took from them every opportunity of knowledge, made it criminal for them to know anything; and then they were denounced by English writers almost universally as the foes of learning and as lovers of ignorance. We know of no harder or more cruel fate in all history, nor of a more striking example of the injustice of the world towards the church. Even here in the United States we Catholics are still suffering the consequences of this unparalleled infamy. But we have hardly entered on the subject of the Penal Laws: we are as yet on the threshold.
The enforced ignorance of the Irish Catholics was but a preparation for innumerable other legal outrages. From all the honorable careers of life they were mercilessly shut out—from the army; the navy, the magistracy, and the civil service. That a Catholic was not permitted to become an educator we have already seen. As little was he allowed to perform the functions of barrister, attorney, or solicitor. He could neither vote nor be elected to office. Shut out from all public life, from every liberal profession, disfranchised, ignorant, despised, was anything else needed to make the Irish Catholic the most wretched of men? His land had been confiscated, he had been robbed; he was a beggar; but might he not hope gradually to lift himself out of the degradation of his poverty? To regain ownership of the soil was out of the question. He was disqualified by law, which, however, permitted him to become a tenant—not to do him a favor,
but solely for the benefit of the landlord, to whose arbitrary will he was made a slave. This is but half the truth. The iniquity of the law mistrusted the rectitude of human nature even in an Irish landlord. He was therefore compelled to be unjust to his tenant; to give him but short leases; to force him to pay at least two-thirds of the value of the produce of his farm; to punish him for improving his land by augmenting the rent; and, lest there should be any doubt as to the seriousness of these barbarous enactments, a premium was offered for the discovery of instances of their violation in favor of Catholic tenants. The landlord was not allowed to be just, but he was free to be as heartless and inhuman as he pleased. His tenants had no rights, they belonged to a despised race, they professed an idolatrous religion, and their extermination had been the cherished policy of the English government for six hundred years. If there was no hope here for the Irish Catholic, might he not, with better prospects, turn to commercial or industrial pursuits?
Without, for the present, taking a larger view of this question, it will be sufficient to consider the restrictions placed upon Catholics in this matter. Commerce and manufacture were controlled by municipal and trading corporations of which no Irish Catholic could be a member. This of itself, at a time when monopoly and privilege were everywhere recognized, gave to Protestants the entire business of the country.
Prohibitory laws were therefore not needed. But no security could lull to rest the fierce spirit of the persecuting Protestant oligarchy. A Catholic could not acquire real estate; he could not even rent land,
except on ruinous terms; he could not exercise a liberal profession or fill a public office; he was unable to engage in commerce or manufacture; he had no political rights, no protection from the law; and, to make all this doubly bitter, his masters were at once the enemies of his race and his religion. This, one would think, ought to have been enough to satisfy the worst of tyrants. But it is of the nature of tyranny that the more it oppresses, the more it feels the necessity of inflicting new wrongs upon its victims. Every motive that incites men to activity and labor had been taken from the Catholics, and yet their oppressors, with the cowardice which naturally belongs to evil-doers, were still fearful lest some of them might, by chance or good fortune, acquire wealth enough to lift them above the immediate necessities of life. A universal threat was therefore held over all who possessed anything. A Catholic was not allowed to own a horse worth more than five pounds; any Protestant in the kingdom might take the best he had by paying him that sum. Whenever it was deemed necessary to call out the militia, the law declared all horses belonging to Catholics subject to seizure; and twenty shillings a day for the maintenance of each troop was levied on the papists of the country. Whenever property was destroyed, the law assumed that the Catholics were the offenders, and they were forced to indemnify the owners for their loss. They were taxed for the support of the government, in which they were not allowed to take part and from which they received no protection; for the maintenance of the Established Church, in which they did not believe and which was already rich
with the spoils of the Catholic Church.