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CHAPTER XV.

THE REVOLUTION AND THE PENAL CODE.

MR. FROUDE has given full details of the penal legislation which followed the Revolution of 1689, while lamenting all this trouble entailed by the weakness of William III. in not imitating the exterminating policy of Cromwell. But surely the Penal Code might have satisfied any moderate and reasonable lover of persecution. A mild summary of it is given by Hallam, who says: The penal laws against papists have scarce a parallel in European history, unless it be that of the Protestants in France, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, who yet were but a feeble minority of the whole people. No papist was allowed to keep a school, or to teach any in private houses, except the children of the family. Severe penalties were denounced against such as should go themselves, or send others, for education beyond seas in the Romish religion; and on probable information given to a magistrate, the burden of proving the contrary was thrown on the accused; the offence not to be tried by a jury, but by justices at the quarter sessions. Intermarriages between persons of different religions, and possessing any estates in Ireland, were forbidden; the children, in case of either parent being Protestant, might be taken from the other to be educated in that faith. No papist could be a guardian to any child; but the Court of Chancery might appoint some relation, or other person, to bring up the ward in the Protestant religion. The eldest son, being a Protestant, might turn his father's estate in fee-simple into a tenancy for life, and thus secure his own inheritance. But if the children were all papists, the father's lands were to be of the nature of gavelkind, and descend equally among them. Papists were disabled from purchasing lands, except for terms of not more than thirty-one years, at a rent not less than two-thirds of the full value. They

were even to conform within six months after any title should accrue by descent, devise, or settlement, on pain of forfeiture to the next Protestant heir; a provision which seems intended to exclude them from real property altogether, and to render the other supererogatory. Arms, says the poet, remain to be plundered; but the Irish legislature knew that the plunder would be imperfect and insecure while the arms remained; no papist was permitted to retain them, and search might be made by any two justices. The bare celebration of Catholic rites was not subjected to any fresh penalties; but regular priests, bishops, and others claiming jurisdiction, and all who should come into the kingdom from foreign parts, were banished, on pain of transportation in case of neglecting to comply, and of high treason in case of returning from banishment. Lest these provisions should be evaded, priests were required to be registered; they were forbidden to leave their own parishes; and rewards were held out to informers, who should detect the violation of these statutes, to be levied on the Popish inhabitants of the country. To have exterminated the Catholics with the sword, or expelled them like the Moriscoes of Spain, would have been a little more repugnant to justice and humanity, but incomparably more politic.'1

Such was the grand scheme which the collective wisdom of two parliaments devised for the evangelisation of a kingdom, after the light of Christianity had been shining on the nations for sixteen hundred years. There is not a base propensity in our fallen nature to which it did not minister temptation; not a virtue in the human heart which it did not strive to undermine; not a noble passion which it did not aim to pervert. It loosened the tenderest ties of life, and poisoned the vital springs of society. It rooted up confidence, and planted suspicion in the family, in the neighbourhood, everywhere. It made mammon, perfidy, and ingratitude household gods, which children were taught to worship; and it brought to the altars of Protestantism feigned consciences and rotten hearts. Where it won a convert, it ruined a soul; for if natural religion be destroyed, what foundation have we left for Christianity?

Mr. Froude has devoted a considerable portion of his volume

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on Ireland to a picturesque description of the moral and social state of the country under the operation of this code, by way of illustrating Irish ideas,' and the characteristics of Irish human nature. I may observe on this, in the first place, that it is not fair to judge of any people in a state of subjection, of compulsory impoverishment, compulsory ignorance, and consequent degradaWhen the English went to destroy the crops in some parts of the country, they were astonished at the abundance of corn, the good cultivation, and the settled appearance of the landscape, which, in some districts, they said would favourably compare with the best parts of England at that time. But what must have been the appearance of those districts when the corn had been destroyed by the English armies, and the houses burnt? And let us remember how often this process of destruction was repeated. From the Invasion till the Reformation, or rather till the complete conquest of the country by Cromwell, the two nations which peopled it were in a state of constant warfare. There was on both sides a struggle for existence-society was disorganised, and there was little time or inclination for the study of literature or the work of education. Great social degeneracy was inevitable. We may judge of the temper of those times, when there was yet no distinction of Protestant and Catholic, from the advice coolly given to the Government of Henry VIII. by Robert Cowley, afterwards Master of the Rolls in Dublin.

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The very living of the native Irish,' said he, doth clearly consist in two things [corn and cattle]. Take these away, and they are past for ever to recover, or yet annoy any subject in Ireland. Take first from them their corns, and as much as cannot be husbanded, burn and destroy the same, so as the Irishry cannot live thereupon. Then to have their cattle and beasts, which will be most hardiest to come by, as they shall be in woods; and yet by reason that the several armies, as I devised, should proceed at once in continuance of one year-the same cattle shall be dead, destroyed, stolen, eaten!'

Here are English ideas' with a vengeance, delivered by a judge. Of course the Irish must have been very stupid not to have received them with gratitude! And this reminds me of a fallacy which pervades the historian's treatment of the Irish.

He suggests comparisons with England, not as it existed then, but as it exists now. It would be quite easy, from the best English writers of the eighteenth century, to fill volumes with records of barbarities to match the worst things he has brought against the unfortunate race on whose character he has fastened, like a woman who clothes her step-daughter in rags, starves her almost to death, beats her black and blue, drives her into mischief, and then calls her neighbours to behold the contrast between this persecuted child and her own well-clad, well-fed, highly-cultured pet daughter, declaring that the other is a graceless reprobate, that she can get no good out of her, and that it is all in the incurable depravity of her nature.

The Irish had excuse enough for smuggling in the eighteenth century, because their legitimate trade had been deliberately destroyed, from the most odiously, the most vulgarly selfish motives. But in the ruling country-the civilised country, the land of monopolies-smuggling prevailed at the same time, and with all its demoralising consequences. Mr. Buckle might have reminded Mr. Froude of this, if he had not read Harriet Martineau's History of England.' Smuggling was very common around the English coasts, and the smugglers,' says Mr. Buckle, 'accustomed to the commission of every crime, contaminated the surrounding population, introducing vices formerly unknown, caused the ruin of entire families, spread, wherever they went, drunkenness, theft, and dissoluteness, which were the natural habits of so vagrant a life.'1

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Want of truth is supposed to be a characteristic of the Irish peasantry, a characteristic which is said to belong to every subjugated and oppressed people-duplicity and falsehood being the only available defence of the weak against the impulsive fury of the strong, producing abject servility, one of the worst effects of tyranny. It is supposed that ruling nations are exempt from this vice, and especially England, the most truthful of them all. But what says Mr. Buckle, who has enquired into the subject? He says, 'All are agreed in this, that the perjury habitually practised in England, and of which Government is the immediate creator, is so general that it has become a source

'History of Civilisation,' vol. i. p. 256. Sce Martineau's History,' vol. i. p. 341.

of national corruption, has diminished the value of human testimony, and shaken the confidence which men naturally place in their fellow men.' Oxford and Cambridge are the eyes of England. Through them her cultured men the lords of human kind'-see the true, the beautiful, and the good. And what does Sir William Hamilton, the great philosopher, say of the Universities? He says, 'But if the perjury of England stands pre-eminent in the world, the perjury of the English Universities, and of Oxford in particular, stands pre-eminent in England.'

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Again, Englishmen love freedom, and they boast of a constitution the envy and admiration of the world. Well, so late as the year 1799 a law was passed by the English Parliament against public lecturing, circulating libraries, and reading rooms, without a special license from the Government. No man, without such license, was permitted to lend or sell a newspaper, a pamphlet or a book of any kind, even to a person residing in the same house.

At the close of the last century the Slave Trade was in full vigour in England. It was carried on openly by the most religious and respectable men in Liverpool. They prayed that God might speed the vessel freighted with human beings for sale, and they were careful to say 'D.V.,' or 'God willing,' in connection with the proceedings of their diabolical traffic. George III., who wished that every family in England should have a copy of the Bible, was their patron saint. When the law was invoked against the traders, he strained his prerogative in favour of the slave-dealing violators of it in the West Indies; and at one of his levées he turned his back insultingly upon Mr. Wilberforce, disgusted with his Anti-Slavery advocacy. In one year-1786-England had 130 ships engaged in the abominable traffic, and in that same year they carried off 42,000 innocent human beings into slavery. The trade was not finally abolished till 1807. Englishmen have carried it on since in many countries, and the world never heard more dreadful accounts of wrong and outrage of this kind than those which have reached us lately from the South Sea Islands, where human

1 Discussions on Philosophy,' &c. p. 528. Buckle, vol. i. p. 260.

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