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SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
tDOUQlAS
LibRARy
C7__t2__SS(
queeN's uNiveRsiiy
AT klNQSTZON
Presented by
Dr. A.R.M. Lower. I965.
kiNQSTON ONTARIO CAN At) A
HISTORY
THE PENAL LAWS
AGAINST THE
IRISH CATHOLICS;
FROM THE TREATY OF LIMERICK TO THE UNION.
WITH AN INDEX.
By SIR HENRY PARNELL. BART. M. P.
[Contimied from JSo. XXXIX.]
NEW EDITION, CORRECTED FOR THE PAMPHLETEER
EXCLUSIVELY.
LONDON :
1822.
C^ir N^t.r''' of^ool
A
HISTORY
PENAT. LAWS,
J. HOUGH the treaty of Limerick was now violated in every point,
the spirit of persecution was still restless and unsatisfied. How-
ever great was the ingenuity of the legislators who produced that
master- piece of oppression, the act to prevent the farther growth
of Popery, it was found that another act was still wanting to ex-
plain and amend it. Such an act passed in the year 1709.'
The 1st clause provides, that no Papists shall be capable of
taking any annuity for life.
The following is the 3d clause, every word of which is of value,
in order to show the vexations with which the unfortunate Catho-
lics of Ireland have been exposed : <' And, be it, further enacted,
by the authority aforesaid, that where and as often as any child or
children of any Popish parent or parents hath, or have heretofore
professed or conformed him, her, or themselves, to the Protestant
religion, as by law established, and enrolled in the High Court of
Chancery, a certificate of the Bishop of the diocese in which he, she,
or they shall inhabit or reside, testifying his, her, or their being a
Protestant, and conforming him, her, or themselves, to the church
of Ireland, as by law established, it shall and may be lawful for
the High Court of Chancery ^ upon a hill founded upon this act, to
oblige the said Papist parent^ or ^^aren^^, to discover upon oath
the fill value of all his, her, or their estate, as well personal as
real, clear, over and above all real incumbrances and debts con-
' 8th Anne, c. 3.
29] Sir H. Parnell o?i the Penal Laxis, S;c, 433
tracted, bona fide, for valuable consideration, before the enrolment
of such certificate, and thereupon to make such order for the sup-
port and mainicnance of such Protestant child or children, by the
distribution of the said real and personal estate, to and among such
Protestant child or children, for the present support of such Pro-
testant child or children ; and also to and for the portion or por-
tions, and future maintenance or maintenances, of such Protestant
child, or children, after the decease of such Popish parent or parents,
as the said court shall judge fit."
The 12th clause provides, that all converts in public employments,
members of parliament, barristers, attorneys, or officers of any
courts of law, shall educate their children Protestants.
By the 14th clause, the Popish wife of a Papist, having power
to make a jointure, conforming, shall, if she survives her husband,
have such provision, not exceeiling the power of her husband, to
make a jointure, as the Chancellor shall adjudge.
By the 15th clause, the Popish wife of a Papist, not being other-
wise provided for, conforming, shall have a proportion out of his
chattels, notwithstanding any will or voluntary disposition, and
the Stat. 7th W. III. 6.
The 16th clause provides, that a Papist teaching school publicly,
or in a private house, or as usher to a Protestant, shall be deemed
and prosecuted as a Popish regular convict.
The 18th clause provides, that Popish priests, who shall be con-
verted, shall receive 30/. per annum, to be levied and paid by
Grand Juries.
The 20th clause provides, whimsically enough, for the reward
of discovering Popish clergy and schoolmasters, viz.
For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general,
or other person exercising any foreign ecclesias-
tical jurisdiction --------- s£50 0 0
For discovering each regular clergyman, and each se-
cular clergyman, not registered ----- ^20 0 0
For discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher - ^10 0 0
The 21st clause empowers two Justices to summon any Papist
of 18 years of age, and if he shall refuse to give testimony where
and when he heard mass celebrated, and who and what persons
were present at the celebration of it, and likewise touching the
residence and abode of any priest or Popish schoolmaster to com-
mit him to jail, without bail, for 12 months, or until he shall pay
20/.
By the 25th clause, no priest can officiate except in the parish for
which he is registered, by 2d Anne, c. 7.
The 30th clause provides for the discovery of all trusts agreed
to be undertaken in favor of Papists ^ and enables any Protestant
VOL. XX. Pam, NO. XL. 2 E
434 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [30
to file a bill in Chancery against any person concerned in any sale,
lease, mortgage, or incumbrance, in trust for Papists, and to com-
pel him to discover the same ; and it further provides, that all
issues to be tried in any action founded upon this act, shall be
tried by none but known Protestants.
The 37th clause provides, that no Papist in trade, except in the
linen trade, shall take more than two apprentices.
The following are the other acts passed in this reign concerning
the Catholics. —
An act to prevent Popish clergy from coming into the king-
dom.'
An act for registering Popish clergy. By which all the Catho-
lic clergy then in the kingdom were required to give in their
names and places of abode at the next quarter sessions : by this
act they are prohibited from employing curates. -
An act to amend this act.^
An act to explain and amend an act to prevent Papists being so-
licitors or sheriffs, &c.-*
Clauses are introduced into this act, by which Catholics are pre-
vented from serving on Grand Juries ; and by which, in trials upon
any statute for strengthening the Protestant interest, the plaintiff
might challenge a Papist, which challenge the judge was to allow.
During all Queen Anne's reign, the inferior civil officers, by
order of Government, were incessantly harassing the Catholics,
with oaths, imprisonments, and forfeitures, without any visible cause
but hatred of their religious profession. In the year 1708, on the
bare rumor of an intended invasion of Scotland by the Pretender,
forty-one Roman Catholic noblemen and gentlemen were impri-
soned in the castle of Dublin ; and, when they were afterwards
set at liberty, the Government was so sensible of the wrong done
to them, that it remitted their fees, amounting to 800Z. A custom
that had existed from time immemorial, for infirm men, women,
and children, to make a pilgrimage every summer to a place called
St. John's well, in the county of Meath, in hopes of obtaining re-
lief from their several disorders, by performing at it certain acts
of penance and devotion, was deemed an object worthy of the se-
rious consideration of the House of Commons ; who accordingly
passed a vote, that these sickly devotees " were assembled in that
place to the great hazard and danger of the public peace, and safety
of the kingdom." They also passed a vote, on the 17th March,
1705, " That all magistrates and other persons whatsoever, who
* 2d Anne, 0.3. ~ 2d Anne, c. 7. ^ 4th Anne, c. 2.
♦ 6th Anne, c. 1. See also 6 Anne, c. 16. §. 6. and 8 Anne, c. 3. §. 26.
concerning Priests marrying Protestants.
31] against the Irish Catholics. 435
neglected or omitted to put them (the penal laws) in due execu-
tion, were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom j"' and in June,
1705, they resolved, "That the saying and hearing of mass, by
persons who had not taken the oath of abjuration, tended to advance
the interest of the Pretender ; and that such judges and magistrates
as wilfully neglected to make diligent inquiry into, and to discover
such wicked practices, ought to be looked upon as enemies to her
Majesty's Government."^ And, upon another occasion, they re-
solved, " That the prosecuting and informing against Papists was
an honorable service to the Government."^
GEORGE I.
The following acts of Parliament were passed in this reign, for
the purpose of strengthening the system which had been adopted by
William and Anne, for preventing the growth of Popery.
An act to make the militia of this kingdom more useful.^
By the 11th and 12th clauses of this act, the horses of Papists
may be seized for the militia.
By the ^th and 18th clauses, Papists are to pay double towards
raising the militia.
By the 16th clause, Popish house-keepers in a city, are to find
fit Protestant substitutes.
An act to restrain Papists from being high or petty constables,
and for the better regulating the parish watches,^
An act for the more effectual preventing fraudulent conveyances,
in order to multiply votes for electing members to serve in Par-
liament, &c.^
By the 7th clause of this act, no Papist can vote at an election,
unless he takes the oaths of allegiance and abjuration.
An act for the better regulating the town of Galway, and for
strengthening the Protestant interest therein.^
An act for the better regulating the corporation of the city of
Kilkenny, and strengthening the Protestant interest therein.*
An act by which Papists resident in towns, who shall not pro-
vide a Protestant watchman to watch in their room, shall be sub-
ject to certain penalties.'
By the 12th Geo. I. c. 9. §. 7. No Papist can vote at any ves-
try held for the purpose of levying or assessing money for rebuild-
ing and repairing parish churches.
' Com. Jour. 3. 289. ' Tb. 319. ^ lb. 319. "^ 2d G. I. c. 9.
5 2d G. I. c. 10. — This act expired in three years, and was not renewed.
<' 2d Geo. I. c. 19- " 4th Geo. I. c. l.i. ** 4ili Geo. I. c. lli.
^ Glh Geo. I. c. 10.
1
436 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [32
These acts of Parliament originated in the same spirit of per-
secution, which disgraced the reigns of William and Anne, and
were, like the penal laws against the Catholics of those reigns, pal-
pable violations of the treaty of Limerick. Though a glimmering
of toleration had found its way into the councils of England, and
given rise to " an act for exempting Protestant dissenters of this
Country (Ireland) from certain penalties to 'which they 'were sub-
Jecty" the CathoHcs were excluded, by a particular clause, from any
benefit of it. And though it was in this reign that the first act*
passed "for discharging all persons in offices and employments from
all penalties "which they had incurred by not qualifying themselves,
'pursuant to an act to prevent the further grcwth of Popery" the
favor conferred by it was wholly to the Protestant dissenters, as no
Catholic had been placed in any public office since the passing
of that penal law.
The loyalty of the Catholics was in this reign put to a complete
trial, by the Scotch rebellion of 1715. If, after having fought
three campaigns in support of James's pretensions to the throne of
Ireland ; after having experienced the infraction of every part of
the treaty of Limerick, and been exposed to a code of statutes, by
which they were totally excluded from the privileges of the con-
stitution ; and if, after they had become subject " to the worst
of all oppressions, the persecution of private society and private
manners,"' they had embarked in the cause of the invader, their
conduct would have been that of a high spirited nation, goaded
into a state of desperation by their relentless tormentors, and if
their resistance had been successful, their leaders would have ranked
among the Tells and Washingtons of modern history. — But so
far from yielding to the natural dictates of revenge, or attempting
to take advantage of what was passing in Scotland to regain their
rights, they did not follow the example of their rulers, in violating,
upon the first favorable opportunity, a sacred and solemn compact ;
and thus they gave the strongest testimony, that they had wholly
given up their former hopes of establishing a Catholic prince upon
the throne. Their loyalty was not, however, a protection to them
against the oppressions of their Protestant countrymen. The pe-
nalties for the exercise of their religion, were generally and rigidly
inflicted. Their chapels were shut up, their priests dragged from
their hiding-places, hurried into prisons, and from thence sent into
banishment.
' 6th Geo. I. c. 9. * Btirke's Letter to a Peer of Ireland.
33] against the Irish Catholics. 437
GEORGE II.
In this reign, the following additional disabilities were imposed
upon the Catholics. —
By the 1st G. II. c. 9. sect. 7. no Papist can vote at an election
without taking the oath of supremacy. However great the op-
pression which the Catholics had experienced during former reigns,
this measure altogether completed their entire exclusion from the
benefits of the Constitution, and from the opportunity of regaining
their former just rights. It was because this privilege had begun
to operate amongst Protestants in a manner very favorable to the
Catholics, and to bring about a feeling of regret for their sufferings,
and a coalition between the two parties to oppose the influence of
the English Government as a common cause of grievances, that
Primate Boulter advised the Ministers to pass this law. His
principle of government for Ireland, was to uphold the English in-
terest by the divisions of the inhabitants ; and, on this occasion, it
induced him to adopt the desperate resolution of disfranchising, ut
one stroke, above five-sixths of its population."
By the first clause of 1st Geo. II. c. 30. barristers, six clerks,
&c. are required to take the oath of supremacy.
By the second clause all converts, &c. are bound to educate
their children as Protestants.
By 7th Geo. II. c. 5. sect. 12. barristers or solicitors, marry-
ing Papists, are deemed Papists, and made subject to all penalties
as such.
By 7th Geo. II. c. 6. no convert can act as a justice of the peace,
whose wife, or children, under 16 years of age, are educated Pa-
pists.
The 13th Geo. II. c. 6. is an act to amend former acts for dis-
arming Papists.
By the 6th clause of this act, Protestants educating their children
as Papists, are made subject to the same disabilities as Papists are.
By 9th Geo. II. c. 3. no person can serve on a petty jury, unless
seized of a freehold of 51. per annum, or, being a Protestant, un-
less possessed of a profit rent of 15/. per annum under a lease for
years.
By 9th Geo. II. c. 6. sect. 5. persons robbed by privateers, during
war with a Popish prince, shall be reimbursed by grand jury pre-
' Primate Boulter, in his Letter of this year to the Archbishop of Canter-
bury (1st. vol. p. 210.) says, '• There are, probably, iu this kingdom, five Par
pists, at least, to one Protestant."
438 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [34
sentment, and the money be levied upon the goods and lands of
Popish inhabitants only.
The 19th Geo. II. c. 5. is an act for granting a duty on hawkers
and pedlars to the society of Protestant charter-schools."
Tiie 19th Geo. 11. c. 13. is an act to annul all marriages between
Protestants and Papists, or celebrated by Popish priests.-
By the 23rd Geo. II. c. 10. sect. 3. every Popish priest who shall
celebrate any marriage contrary to 12th Geo. I. c. 3. and be thereof
convicted, shall be hanged.
Of these last acts, and of Lord Chesterfield's administration, Mr.
Burke gives the following account — " This man, while he was
duping the credulity of the Papists with fine words in private, and
commending their good behaviour during a rebellion in Great Bri-
tain, as it well deserved to be commended and rewarded, was capa-
ble of urging penal laws against them in a speech from the throne,'
' The following is the preamble of the charter fur erecting these schools.
'♦George II. by the grace of God, &c. Forasmuch as we have received in-
formation, by the petition of the lord primate, lord chancellor, archbishops,
noblemen, bishops, judges, gentry, and clergy, of our kingdom of Ireland,
that in many parts of the said kingdom, there are great tracts of land al-
most entirely inhabited by Papists, who are kept by their clergy in great
ign(»rance of the true religion, and bred up in great dissatisfaction to the
Government. That the erecting of English Protestant schools in those places,
is absoluteli/ necessary for their conversion ; that the English parish schools al-
ready established, are not sufficient for that purpose ; nor can the residence of
the parochial clergy only fully answer that end." — Catholics are excluded by
this charter from being subscribers to, or members of this society. Vid. Re-
port of Committee of Irish H. of Commons, 14 v4p. 1788. Ir. Comrn. Journ.
12 Jp. 810.
The children admitted into the schools are orphans, or the children of
Catholic and other poor natives of Ireland, who, from their situation in life,
are not likely to educate them as Protestants. They are apprenticed at the
age of fourteen years, with a fee of seven guineas with each female, and of
five guineas with each male, into Protestant families. The society give a
portion of five pounds to every person educated in these schools, upon his
or her marrying a Protestant.
In Sept. 1806, the number of children in the schools were 2130.
The funds of the society consist in lands, funded property, and an annual
grant of Parliament. — They amount to about 34,000/. per annum. From the
year 1754, 31 Geo. II. c. 1. to the 1st January, 1808, there has been granted
by Parliament to this society 491,326/. besides certain duties on hawkers
and pedlars, from 1754 to 1786.
By the a3rd G. II. c. 11. the society may appoint persons to take up beg-
gar children, and sei:d them to the charter schools, and when old enough
bind them apprentices.
1 By the same act, §. 8. a child received with the parent's consent, is deemed
a child of the public, and may be disposed of though claimed by the parent.
* The first act on this head is 6 Anne, c. 16. 1, &c. 8 Anne, c. 3. Sect. 26.
' " The measures that have hitherto been taken to prevent the growth of
Popery, have, I hope, had some, and will still have a greater effect; however I
leave it to your consideration whether nothing further can be done, either by
new laws, or by more effectual execution of those in being, to secure the nation
35] against the Irish Catholics, 430
and of stimulating with provocatives the wearied and half exhausted
bigotry of the Parliament of Ireland. They set to work, but they
were at a loss what to do ; for they had already almost gone
through every contrivance which could waste the vigor of their coun-
try : but, after much struggle, they produced a child of their old age,
the shocking and unnatural act about marriages, which tended to
finish the scheme for making the people not only two distinct par-
ties for ever, but keeping them as two distinct species in the same
land. Mr. Gardiner's humanity was shocked at it, as one of the
worst parts of that truly barbarous system, if one could well settle
the preference, where almost all the parts were outrages on the
rights of humanity and the laws of nations."*
Of the conduct of the Catholics during the Scotch rebellion of
1745, fortunately for them, but greatly to the shame of those who
accuse them of being actuated by religious principles inconsistent
with their duty to their sovereign, there is on record an irrefutable
document. In the year 1762, upon a debate in the House of Lords,
about the expediency of raising five regiments of Catholics for the
King of Portugal, the Primate, Dr. Stone, in answer to the usual
objections that were urged on all occasions against the good faith
and loyalty of that body, declared in his place, " that in the year
1747, after that rebellion was entirely suppressed, happening to be
in England, he had an opportunity of perusing all the papers of
the rebels, and their correspondents, which were seized in the cus-
tody of Murray, the Pretender's secretary ; and that, after having
spent much time, and taken great pains in examining them, not
without some share of the then common suspicion, that there might
be some private understanding and intercourse between them and
the Irish Catholics, he could not discover the least trace, hint, or
intimation of such intercourse or correspondence in them, or of
any of the latter's favoring or abetting, or having been so much
as made acquainted with the designs or proceedings of these rebels.
And what," he said, " he wondered at most of all was, that in all
his researches, he had not met with any passage in any of these
papers, from which he could infer, that either their holy father,
the pope, or any of his cardinals, bishops, or other dignitaries of
that church, or any of the Irish clergy, had either diiectly, or in-
directly, encouraged, aided, or approved of the commencing or
carrying on of that rebellion."^
against tlie greater number of Papists, whose speculative errors would only
deserve pity if iheir pernicious induence upon civil society did not both re-
quire and authorise restraint."— S/)eecA to both Houses of Parliament, October
8, 1745. — Com. Jour. 7. 642.
' Inciter to a Peer in Ireland.
* Curry, Rev. of the civil wars of Ireland, 2. 261.
440 Sii* H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [36
Those of the clergy of England, who lately took so active a part
in exciting and upholding the infamous outcry of " No Popery" —
will do well to compare this declaration of Primate Stone, with the
following statement of the conduct of the Irish clergy, immediately
upon the breaking out of the Scotch rebellion. They will learn
how easily it is, even for the grave profession of the church to com-
mit errors, and to pollute its sacred character, by embarking in the
controversy of party politics. " The bishops wrote pastoral letters
to their respective diocesans, to excite the members of the estab-
lished church to enforce all the penal statutes, and with equal wis-
dom and charity, and a ready obedience did the clergy follow the
example and directions of their superiors, and apply the whole
power of their body to support the fanatic politics of the day. In
their inflammatory sermons they excited religious animosity by
reviving the most shocking circumstances of the Irish rebellion of
1 64-1, and of the gun-powder plot in England in 1605. These
transactions were studiously aggravated, and the crimes, whether
real or supposed, committed by Catholics, dead more than a cen-
tury before, were imputed to all those who survived of the same
religious persuasion."'
If the conduct of the bishops and clergy was improper, on ac-
count of its inconsistency with those principles of universal charity,
that the gospel inculcated, it was still more so, from there being no
grounds even of suspicion, that the Catholics were disloyal. Be-
sides, it was indecent in the last degree for those, who were en-
dowed by the state for the purpose only of discharging the functions
of a religious profession, to degrade their sacred character by assum-
ing the duties of the civil magistrates, and embarking in all the tu-
mult and passion of political persecution. The conduct of the
Catholic priests at this period forms a contrast, by no means cre-
ditable to those who teach the superior tolerance of the Protestant
religion, and ground their animosities against the Catholics on
the supposed illiberallty which controls their principles. This op-
pressed and indigent body of men, instead of taking offence at the
proceedings of the bishops and clergy of the established church,
** co-operated with their Protestant brethren, to maintain order and
tranquillity. Their pastoral letters, public discourses from the pul-
pit, and private admonitions, were equally directed for the service
of the Government."^ Yet these clergy were the members of that
church, the principles of which are stated to be of such a nature
by many of the English clergy, as to render it absolutely impossible^
that a Catholic can be a good subject.
' Ciirry Rov. 2. 259.
' Ciiesterheld's Work.s 1. 130. Ir. Ed.
37] against the Irish Catholics. 44<t
On the 26th September, 1757, the Duke of Bedford was sworn
in Lord Lieutenant. His open declarations of liberal sentiments
towards the Catholics, and some communications that were made
for the first time since the passing of the ferocious act of Anne to
prevent the growth of Popery, of an intention to repeal some part
of the penal laws, encouraged them to hope for a change in the
system of Irish government. Ten days after his arrival, the Ca-
tholic clergy of Dublin, influenced by these communications, read
the following exhortation to their respective congregations. It
forms the first and a very important document in proof of the suf-
ferings, the resignation, and the loyalty of the Catholic body. It is
one peculiarly deserving of attention, as being well calculated to re-
move the ignorance and prejudices of those who still persist in
calumniating the Catholic clergy of Ireland, and representing them
as enemies to the King and Constitution.
Exhortation of the Roman Catholic Clergy of Dublinj read from
their Altars on the 2d of October j 1757.
It is now time, Christians, that you return your most grateful
thanks to the Almighty God, who, after visiting you with a scarcity,
which approached near unto a famine, has been graciously pleased,
like a merciful father, to hear your prayers, and feed you with a
plentiful harvest ; nor ought you to forget those kind benefactors,
who, in the severest times, mindful only of the public good, gene-
rously bestowed, without any distinction of persons, those large cha-
rities, by wiiich thousands were preserved, who otherwise must have
perished the victims of hunger and poverty. We ought especially
to be most earnest in our thanks to the chief governors and magis-
trates of the kingdom, and of this city in particular, who, on this
occasion, proved the fathers and saviours of the nation. But as
we have not a more effectual method of showing our acknowledg-
ment to our temporal governors, than by an humble, peaceful, and
obedient behaviour ; as hitherto, we earnestly exhort you to con-
tinue in the same happy and Christian disposition, and thus, by
degrees, you will entirely efface in theii minds those evil impres-
sions, which have been conceived so much to our prejudice, and
industriously propagated by our enemies. A series of more than
sixty years spent, with a pious resignation, under the hardships of
very severe penal laws, and with the greatest thankfulness for the
lenity and moderation, with which they were executed, ever since
the accession of the present royal family, is certainly a fact which
must outweigh, in the minds of all unbiassed persons, any mis-
conceived opinions of the doctrines and tenets of our holy church.
You know that it has always been our constant practice, as mi-
442 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [30
nisters of Jesus Christ, to inspire you with the greatest horror for
thefts, frauds, murders, and the like abominable crimes ; as being
contrary to the laws of God and nature, destructive of civil
society, condemned by our most holy church, which, so far from
justifying them on the score of religion, or any other pretext
whatsoever, delivers the unrepenting authors of such criminal prac-
tices over to Satan.
We are no less zealous than ever in exhorting you to abstain
from cursing, swearing, and blaspheming ; detestable vices, to
which the poorer sort of our people are most unhappily addicted,
and which must, at one time or other, bring down the vengeance
of heaven upon you in some visible punishment, unless you abso-
lutely refrain from them.
It is probable, that from hence some people have taken occasion
to brand us with this infamous calumny, that we need not fear to
take false oaths, and consequently to perjure ourselves ; as if we
believed that any power upon earth could authorise such damna-
ble practices, or grant dispensations for this purpose. How unjust
and cruel this charge is, you know by our instructions to you both
in public and private, in which we have ever condemned such doc-
trines as false and impious. Others, likewise, may easily know it
from the constant behaviour of numbers of Roman Catholics, who
have given the strongest proofs of their abhorrence of those tenets,
by refusing to take oaths, which, however conducive to their tem-
poral interest, appeared to them entirely repugnant to the principles
of their religion.
We must now intreat you, dear Christians, to offer up your most
fervent prayers to the Almighty God, who holds in his hands the
hearts of kings and princes, beseech him to direct the counsels
of our rulers, to inspire them with sentiments of moderation and
compassion towards us. We ought to be more earnest at this
juncture, in our supplications to heaven ; as some very honorable
personages have encouraged us to hope for a mitigation of the
penal laws. Pray then the Almighty to give a blessing to these
their generous designs, and to aid their counsels, in such a man-
ner, that, whilst they intend to assist us, like kind benefactors, they
may not, contrary to their intentions, by mistaking the means, most
irretrievably destroy us.
To conclude, be just in your dealings, sober in your conduct,
religious in your practice, avoid riots, quarrels, and tumults ; and
thus you will approve yourselves good citizens, peaceable subjects,
and pious Christians.
Instead, however, of a repeal taking place of any of the penal
laws, rumors began very generally to prevail, of its being the in-
39] against tfie Irish Catholics. 443
tention of Government to proceed to carry into effect a bill, that
had been prepared by the former administration, for altering the
law respecting the registry of the clergy. The existing law, which
passed in the reign of Queen Anne, had been found too penal to
admit of its being carried into execution ; and thus, by an excess
of tyranny, was the object of it wholly defeated. In the place of
this law, it had been proposed to pass one with such provisions,
that it should, like the other penal laws, execute itself; and upon
this project being now revived, the Catholics, for the first time
since 1704, took measures as a body, to vindicate their religious
and civil principles. Mr. Charles O'Connor, the celebrated Irish
scholar and antiquarian, with the assistance of Dr. Curry, the
author of the Review of the Civil Wars of Ireland, and Mr. Wyse,
of Waterford, exerted themselves with good effect in persuad-
ing their suffering countrymen of the necessity of coming for-
ward to induce their rulers to admit them into a participation of the
privileges of the Constitution. As a ground-work of their future
labor. Dr. O'Keefe, the titular Bishop of Kildare, proposed, at a
meeting held at Lord Trimbleston's, a declaration of the principles
of their church, as far as they could bear upon their civil duties, to
be signed by the chiefs of their body, and published as an answer
to the misrepresentations and calumnies they had labored under
since the reformation of the national religion : this declaration was
unanimously adopted ; it was signed by many clergymen and gentle-
men of rank and property, and sent to Rome, as the act and
deed of the Irish Catholics. It is as follows :
Whereas certain opinions and principles, inimical to good order
and government, have been attributed to the Catholics, the existence
of which we utterly deny ; and whereas it is at this time peculiarly
necessary to remove such imputations, and to give the most full
and ample satisfaction to our Protestant brethren, that we hold no
principle whatsoever, incompatible with our duty as men or as
subjects, or repugnant to liberty, whether political, civil, or reli-
gious.
Now we, the Catholics of Ireland, for the removal of all such
imputations, and in deference to the opinion of many respectable
bodies of men, and individuals among our Protestant brethren, do
hereby in the face of our country, f all Europe, and before God,
make this our deliberate and solemn declaration :
1st. We abjure, disavow, and condemn the opinion, that princes,
excommunicated by the pope and council, or by any ecclesiastical
authority 'whatsoever, may therefore be deposed or murdered by
their subjects, or any other persons. We hold such doctrine in
detestation, as wicked and impious ; and we declare that we do
444 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [40
not believe, that either the pope, with or without a general coun-
cil, or auT/ prelate or priest y or any ecclesiastical po'wer whatsoever,
can absolve the subjects of this kingdom, or any of them, from their
allegiance to his Majesty King George the Third, who is by autho-
rity of Parliament, the lawful King of this realm.
2d. We abjure, condemn, and detest, as unchristian and impious,
the principle, that it is lawful to murder, destroy, or any ways in-
jure any person whatsoever, for or under the pretence of being
heretics ; and we declare solemnly before God, that we believe that
no act, in itself unjust^ immoral, or wicked, can ever be justijied
oi' excused by, or under pretence or color, that it was done either
Jor the good of the church, or in obedience to any ecclesiastical
pcfwer whatsoever.
3d. We further declare, that we hold it as an unchristian and
impious principle, that "no faith is to be kept with heretics."
This doctrine we detest and reprobate, not only as contrary to our
religion, but as destructive of morality, of society, and even of com-
mon honesty ; and it is our firm belief, that an oath made to any
person, not of the Catholic religion, is equally binding as if it were
made to any Catholic whatsoever.
4th. We have been charged with holding as an article of our
belief, that the pope, with or without the authority of a general
council, or that certain ecclesiastical powers can acquit and ab-
solve us, before God, from our oath of allegiance, or even from
the just oaths and contracts entered into between man and man.
Now we do utterly renounce, abjure, and deny, that we hold or
maintain any such belief, as being contrary to the peace and hap-
piness of society, inconsistent with morality, and above all, repug'
nant to the true spirit of the Catholic religion.
5th. We do further declare, that we do not believe that the pope
of Rome, or any other prince, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or
ought to have, any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superio-
rity, or pre-eminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm.
6th. After what we have renounced, it is immaterial, in a po-
litical light, what may be our opinion or faith in other points, re-
specting the pope : however, for greater satisfaction we declare,
that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither are we thereby
required to believe or profess, " that the pope is infallible," or that
we are bound to obey any order, in its own nature immoral, though
the pope, or any ecclesiastical power, should issue or direct such
order j but, on the contrary, we hold, that it would be sbiful in us
to pay any respect or obedience thereto.
7th. We further declare, that we do not believe that any sin
whatsoever, committed by us, can be forgiven at the mere will of
any pope, or of any priest, or of any person or persons whatsoever i
41] against the Irish Catholics. 445
but, that sincere sorrffuo for past sinsy a firm and sincere resolution,
as far as may be in our power, to restore our neighbour's property
or cliaracter, if we have trespassed on, or unjustly injured either ;
a firm ami sincere resolution to avoid future guilty and to atone to
God, are previous and indispensable requisites to estabHsh a well-
founded expectation of forgiveness ; and that any person who re-
ceives absolution without these previous requisites, so far from ob-
taining thereby any remission of his sins, incurs the additional
guilt of violating a sacrament.
8th. We do hereby solemnly disclaim, and for ever renounce
all interest in, and title to all forfeited lands, resulting from any
rights, or supposed rights, of our ancestors, or any claim, title, or
interest therein ; nor do we admit any title, as a foundation of right,
which is ?iot established and achWidcdgedby the laws of the realm,
as thei) no-ix) stand. We desire further, that whenever the patrio-
tism, liberality, and justice of our countrymen, shall restore to us
a participation in the elective franchise, no Catholic shall be per-
mitted to vote at any election for members to serve in parliament,
until he shall previously take an oath to defend to the utmost of his
poxvery the arrangement of property in this country, as established
Inj the dijfferent acts of attainder and settlement.
9th. It has been objected to us, that we wish to subvert the pre-
sent church establishment, for the purpose of substituting a Catho-
lic establishment in its stead : Now, we do hereby disclaim, disa-
vow, and solemnly abjure any such intention ; and further, if we
shall be admitted into any share of the constitution, by our being
restored to the right of elective franchise, we are ready, in the most
solemn manner, to declare, that we will not exercise that privilege
to disturb and weaken the establishment of the Protestant religion,
or Protestant government in this country.
Though this declaration did not produce any change of conduct
on the part of the English Government at that time, its failure can
only be attributed to the obstinacy with which the principle of go-
verning Ireland upon the system of separate interests between the
Protestants and Catholics, was adhered to. That system is now
happily exposed; and, though of late attempted to be revived by
his Majesty's present Ministers, the intelligence and liberality of
the present race of Irish Protestants has completely counteracted
their designs. This declaration, though at first ineffectual, was
re-published in 1792, and may surely be expected at last to open
the eyes of mankind to the true character of the Irish Catholic,
and to secure to them the reward which it deserves, the unlimited
confidence of their King and fellow subjects, and the entire restora-
tion of their constitutional rights.
446 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [42
In the year 1759, when it was known that a French force, under
the command of Conflans, was collected to invade Ireland, the con-
duct of the Catholics on this, as it had uniformly been on similar
occasions, was loyal in the extreme. Mr. O'Connor, Dr. Curry,
and Mr. Wyse, had some time before, in 1757, succeeded in esta-
blishing a general committee of the Catholic body, formed by
delegates of parishes, and the principal Catholic nobility and gen-
try. As soon as this invasion was announced to Parliament
by a message from the Duke of Bedford, this committee was
summoned to meet ; and Mr. O'Connor having submitted to it
the following address to the Lord liieutenant, it was unanimously
approved of.
May it please you Grace,
We, his Majesty's dutiful and faithful subjects, the Roman Ca-
tholic gentlemen, merchants, and citizens of Dublin, do, with the
greatest respect, approach the illustrious representative of the best
of Kings, with our hearty congratulations on those glorious succes-
ses, by sea and land, which have attended his Majesty's arms, in
the prosecution of this just and necessary war.
We gratefully acknowledge the lenity extended to us by his most
sacred Majesty, and by his royal father, of happy memory. Our
allegiance, may it please your Grace, is confirmed by affection and
gratitude ; our religion commands it ; and it shall be our invaria-
ble rule firmly and inviolably to adhere to it.
We are called to this duty, at the present time in particular, when
a foreign enemy is meditating desperate attempts to interrupt the
happiness and disturb the repose, which these kingdoms have so
long enjoyed, under a Monarch, who places his chief glory in prov-
ing himself the common father of all his people : and we sincerely
assure your Grace, that we are ready and willing, to the utmost
of our abilities, to assist in supporting his Majesty's Government
against all hostile attempts whatsoever.
Whenever, my Lord, it shall please the Almighty, that the legis-
lative power of this realm shall deem the peaceable conduct of his
Majesty's Catholic subjects of Ireland, for many years past, an ob-
ject worthy of its favorable attention, we humbly hope means may
then be devised, to render so numerous a body more useful mem-
bers to the community, and more strengthening friends to the state,
than they could possibly have hitherto been, under the restraint of
the many penal laws against them. We most humbly beseech
your Grace to represent to his Majesty these sentiments and re-
solutions of his Majesty's faithful subjects, the Roman Catholics
of this metropolis, who sincerely wish, that a peace honorable to
his Majesty, and advantageous to his kingdoms, may be the Issue
43] agaiJist the Irish Catholics. 447
of the present war ; and that the people of Ireland may be long
governed by your Grace, a Viceroy, in whom wisdom, moderation,
and justice, are so eminently conspicuous.
On that occasion, also, the wealthy individuals of this persuasion,
offered to accommodate the Government with large sums of money,
in case of necessity, to support the Protestant establishment against
all its enemies ; and the Catholics of the city of Cork, in a body,
presented an address to the Lord Lieutenant, expressing their
loyalty in the warmest terms of assurance. They professed the
warmest indignation at the threatened invasion of the kingdom, by
an enemy vainly flattered with the imaginary hope of assistance in
Ireland, from the former attachments of their deluded predecessort,.
They assured his Grace, that such schemes were altogether incon-
sistent with their principles and intentions ; and that they would,
to the utmost exertion of their abilities, with their lives and for-
tunes, join in the defence and support of his Majesty's royal person
and government, against all invaders whatsoever.'
These circumstances are proofs of no ordinary fidelity in the
Irish Catholics to the House of Brunswick. They were, however,
of no avail in mitigating the rigor of the magistracy in the exe-
cution of the penal laws, or in inducing the British Government
to repeal any part of them ; for the reign of George 11. closed with-
out any grateful acknowledgment beinj made to them for the
steadiness, the moderation, and the loyalty, which they had dis-
played on so many trying occasions.
GEORGE III.
Though the first measure of this reign, the royal recommenda-
tion to Parliament to make the judges independent of the crown,
bespoke the determination of his Majesty to respect the feelings
and confirm the rights and liberties of his subjects ; still the un-
fortunate Catholics of Ireland were doomed to suffer under new
pains and penalties.
In the year 1776, an act of Parliament was passed,^ by which
one or more justices of the peace, and all sherifl^s and chief magis-
trates of cities and towns corporate, within their respective juris-
dictions, may from time to time, as well by night as by day, search
for and seize all arms and ammunition belonging to any Papist
not entitled to keep the same, or in the hands of ai'.y person in trust,
' Smollett's History of England, 4, 69.
" lotli iii.d I6tli Geo. III. c. 21. :» 15.
448 Sir H. Parnell on iJie Penal Laws [44
for a Papist j and for that purpose enter any dwelling-house, out-
house, ofBce, field, or other place belonging to a Papist, or to any
other person where such magistrate has reasonable cause to sus-
pect any such arms or ammunition shall be concealed ; and on sus-
picion, after search, may summon and examine on oath, the per-
son suspected of such concealment.
By the 17th clause of this act. Papists refusing to deliver up or
declare such arms as they, or any with their privity, have, or hin-
dering the delivery, or refusing to discover on oath, or without
cause neglecting to appear on summons to be examined before a
magistrate concerning the same, shall, on conviction, be punished
by fine and imprisonment, or such corporeal punishment of pillory
or whippings as the Court shall in their discretion think proper.
In the year 1782, a clause was introduced into an act,' by which
no person shall be admitted into the Society of the King's Inns as
a student, who shall not, at the time of his admission, be a Pro-
testant.
In the same year, an act^ was passed, by the 3d clause of which,
all statutes made in England or Great Britain, and all such clauses
and provisions contained in any statute there made, as relate to the
taking any oath or oaths, or making or subscribing any declaration
in Ireland, or to any penalty or disability for omitting the same,
shall be accepted, used, and executed in Ireland.
This act referred to: 1st, the English act of 3d William and
Mary, c. 2. sect. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, by which the oath of supremacy
mentioned in 2 Eliz. I.e. 1. is abrogated, and a new oath of su-
premacy is required to be taken by all persons admitted in Ireland
to hold any civil or military office, and by members of both Houses
of Parliament : 2dly, to the English act of 1st Anne, stat. 2. c. 17.
requiring all persons to take the oath of abjuration, prescribed by
the English acts of 13th Wm. III. c. 6. and 1st Anne, st. 1. c.
22d : 3dly, to the English act of 6th Geo. III. c. 53. § 2. declar-
ing that from the 1st August, 1776, the oath of abjuration, by this
act appointed to be taken in Great Britain, shall be the oath of ab-
juration, to be taken in Ireland.
Though this clause of the 2 1st and 22d of Geo. III. c. 48. has
attracted very little public attention, it was of no less import than
that of being the first legal exclusion of Catholics from sitting in
the Irish Parliament. They had been excluded de facto by their
voluntary submission to the English act of 3d William and Mary,
but not dejure till this act of 21st and 22d Geo. III. which made
' 21st and 22d Geo. III. c. 52. § 2.
* 21st and 22d Geo. III. c. 48. \ 3.
45] against the Irish Catholics. 449
the act of 3d William and Mary just mentioned, binding in
Ireland.'
This circumstance, which has always been overlooked, even by
the Catholics themselves, proves how readily they have been
inclined at all times to submit to the authority of Government.
And it also proves how unfounded those arguments are, which
maintain that the exclusion of the Catholics of Ireland from
Parliament, is a principle on which the family of his Majesty was
placed upon the throne. It completely overturns the system of
erroneous reasoning concerning the coronation oath> which of late has
been so common ; and, so far as the meaning of this oath is at issue,
it reduces the question to this simple point, whether the king can
conscientiously place the Catholics of Ireland in the same con-
dition, with respect to sitting in Parliament, in which they had
continued till the twenty-second year of his own reign.
In 1785 an act was passed^ for granting 4000/. to be expended
in apprentice fees, to such tradesmen or manufacturers, as should
take children from charter-schools or the Foundling Hospital ;
but it was expressly provided that the children should be bound
tonone but Protestant tradesmen and manufacturers.
The whole code of the penal statutes against the Catholics of
Ireland is now laid before the view of the reader, under which
they so long and so patiently languished ; statutes unexampled
for their inhumanity, their unwarrantableness, and their impolicy,
which were adopted to exterminate a race of men already crushed
and broken by the longest series of calamities which one nation
had ever the opportunity of inflicting upon another. They were
framed against Christians under the pretence of securing religion ;
they were the work of Protestants, than whom no sect has cried
out more loudly against persecution when Protestants were the
martyrs. They were sanctioned by a nation who owed its liberties,
' The first Irish parliament summoned by William, having met on the
5th of October, 1692, immediately after the election of a speaker and his
being seated, " a motion was made for thereadingof a late act of parliament,
made in England in the third year of theirMajesties' reign, intituled' An act
for abrogating the oath of supremacy in Ireland and appointing other oaths,'
upon reading whereof, the house immediately proceeded to the swearing of
their members, and they being sworn the house adjourned." (Irish Com.
Jour. 2. P. 90
It does not appear by the Journals that any objection was made to this mo-
tion or that any Catholic had been elected to serve in tliis parliament, not-
withstanding this English act was not binding in Ireland. Nor is any men-
tion made in the historians of that day, concerning the grounds upon which
the Catholics submitted to it. The submissive forbearance of lliem under a
most severe extension of the penal code, is the only point relating to them,
which has arrested their notice. Plmuden, 1. 198.
* 25th of George III. c. 48 ^ 11. and 12.
VOL. XX. Pam. NO. XL. 2F
450 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal liaws [46
and by monarchs who owed their throne, to a solemn covenant
that such penal disabilities should never exist.' Here may we
not inquire, if the English nation, legislature, and king, have not a
duty to fulfil towards the Irish Catholics evefi greater than that
of Justice — a duty oi compunction y of repentance ^ and atonement ?
The faith of a solemn treaty made with them has been broken:
it is not enough that it has been in part re-established, it ought to
be religiously fulfilled. They have been ruled with tyranny : it is
not enough that the tyranny should be relaxed, it should cease
altogether. They have been driven from the pale of the Con-
stitution : it is not enough that they should be allowed to pass its bar-
riers, they should range free and uncontrolled through all its rights.
That this system of slow political torture, was not warranted by
any alleged delinquency on their part is notorious, for it was devised
and perfected in times of profound tranquillity. That they were not
deserving even of the suspicion of being disloyal subjects, is proved
by their signal forbearance, which has preserved the empire from
the calamitous consequences of such flagitious misgovernment ;
and that, on the contrary, they fully merited the confidence and
protection of the legislature, no fair and candid mind can deny,
when it gives to their conduct, in strictly adhering to the stipula-
tions of the treaty of Limerick, and to their allegiance to the house
of Brunswick, the just value to which it is entitled.
Having now reached the utmost point to which the penal
statutes extended, which seems to be as far as human invention,
quickened by mixed feelings of alarm, of bigotry, and of pride,
could go, we should not be excusable on general grounds, if we
neglected to record its effects.
But there is even a nearer Interest in this examination. At a
period when the state of Ireland so much occupies the attention
of the legislature and of the public ; when it is admitted on all
sides, that the prosperity and security of England herself must
rise or fall with the prosperity and security of Ireland ; and when
the events of each succeeding day prove the absolute necessity of
some measures to ameliorate her condition and show that things
cannot go on, as they are, without the inevitable destruction of
the British Empire ; it will be of great importance to be able to form
an accurate opinion upon the effects which were the result of the
penal statutes.
It appears from unquestionable authority, that, during the in-
terval that elapsed between the surrender of Limerick, and the
total infraction of the treaty in lYO^, by the act to prevent the
further growth of Popery, the toleration which the Catholics ex-
' See the articles of Limerick, supra.
47] agaiJist the Irish Catholics. 451
perienced by virtue of that treaty, produced its natural con-
sequences. The security they enjoyed restored industry and
plenty of all things : useful arts were introduced ; the land
cultivated j and a fine island, reduced to a desert by the late war,
soon assumed a new face. In fact, Ireland was never happier than
during this interval of religious toleration.' Of the effects of
the penal laws in entirely reversing this order of things. Lord
TafFe, in his valuable tract on Irish affairs, gives the following
description. — "Those penalties and interdicts (by the laws of
Anne) had their natural effects in the dispeopling greatly the three
fine provinces, wherein the bulk of Catholics reside. They took
their effect in putting a stop to the cultivation began in King
William's reign. No sooner were the Catholics excluded from
durable and profitable tenures, than they commenced graziers, and
laid aside agriculture : they ceased from draining and enclosing
their farms, and building good houses, as occupations unsuited to
the new part assigned them in our national economy. They fell to
wasting the lands they were virtually forbid to cultivate, the
business of pasturage being compatible with such a conduct and
requiring also little industry and less labor in the management."'
In the year 17'23, the wretchedness of the people of Ireland
was so great, that the Duke of Grafton, in a speech from the
throne, recommended ParUament to take measures for reUeving
them. The distress, however, continued ; and in a petition
presented to the House of Commons, in the same year, by the
woollen manufacturers, they say, " that the woollen manufacture of
this kingdom, which is confined to our own consumption, has of
late been so considerably lessened, that several thousand families
have been forced to beg alms and charity of good christians ; and
that a collection had lately been made throughout he whole city to
relieve them."^
Primate Boulter, in a letter of the 25th of March, 1722, to
the Duke of Newcastle, bears testimony to this wretched state of
Ireland ; he says, " Since I came here in the year 1725, there was
almost a famine amongst the poor ; last year the dearness of corn
was such, that thousands of families quitted their habitations, to
seek bread elsewhere, and many hundreds perished :"* again on
the 25rd of November, 1728, he says, in writing to the Duke,
**I am sorry I am obliged to give your Grace so melancholy
an account of the state of the kingdom, as I shall in this letter."
But one of the most pernicious effects of these penal laws was
• Observations on the Affairs of Ireland, by Lord TafiFe, p. 4.
» Ibid. p. 11.
^ Com. Jour. v. 3. p. 24. * Letters, p. -Z'iQ.
452 Sir H. Parnell 07i the FenalLaxm [48
the emigration of the principal Catholic families to the Continent.
They carried with them what would otherwise have been the
materials of the civilisation, tranquillity, and prosperity of their
own country ; they left the mass of the Catholic population with-
out the influence of men of education and property, to direct and
control their conduct ; and in the place of serving their own native
land, they filled with the highest credit to themselves the situa-
tion of statesmen and generals, in those nations which were hostile
to the interest of Great Britain.
Of the visible effect these lav/s had produced in their avowed
objects of propagating the Protestant religion, and promoting
the national prosperity, it is impossible to give a more able, or a
more accurate description than the following by Mr Arthur Young,
who was in Ireland at the period we now treat of :' " While property
lay exposed to the practices of power, the great body of the people,
who had been stripped of their all, were more enraged than convert-
ed : they adhered to the persuasion of their forefathers, with the
steadiest and most determined zeal ; while the priests, actuated by the
spirit of a thousand inducements, made proselytes among the com-
mon Protestants, In defiance of every danger. And the great glaring
fact yet remains, and is even admitted by the warmest advocates
for the laws of discovery, that the established religion has not
gained upon the Catholic in point of numbers; on the contrary, that
the latter has been rather on the increase. Public lists have been
returned from the several dioceses which confirm this fact ; and
the intelligence I received on my journey spoke the same language.
*• As it Is the great body of the common people that forms the
strength of a country, when willing subjects, and its weakness when
ill-affected, this fact is a decision of the question : After seventy
years undisturbed operation, the system adopted in Queen Anne's
reign has failed in this great aim, and meets at this day with a
more numerous and equally determined body of Catholics, than it
had to oppose when first promulgated. — Has not the experience
of every age and every nation, proved that the effect is invariable
and universal ? Let a religion be what it may, and under whatever
circumstances, no system of persecution ever yet had any other
effect, than to confirm Its professors in their tenets, and spread
their doctrines, instead of restraining them. The great plea of the
Roman Catholic priests, and their merit with their congregations,
are the dangers they hazard, and the persecutions they suffer for
the sake of their faith j arguments that have, and ever will have
weight, while human nature continues formed of its present
materials.
' 1778.
4yj ' against the Irish Catholics. 45,3
"But if these exertions of a succession of ignorant legislatures
have failed continually in propagating the religion of Government,
much more have they failed hi the great object of natural pros-
perity. The only considerable manufacture in Ireland, which
carries in all parts the appearance of industry, is the linen, and it
ought never to be forgotten that this is solely confined to the
Protestant parts of the kingdom. The poor Catholics in the
south of Ireland spin wool generally, but the purchaser of their
labor, and the whole worsted trade, is in the hands of the Quakers
of Clonmel, Carrick, and Bandon, &c. The fact is, the professors
of that religion are under such discouragements, that they cannot
engage in any trade which requires both industry and capital. If
they succeed and make a fortune, what are they to do with it ? They
can neither buy land, nor take a mortgage, nor even fine down
the rent of a lease. Where is there a people in the world to be
found industrious under such circumstances ?
" It is no superficial view I have taken of this matter in Ireland ;
and being at Dublin at the time a very trifling part of these laws
was agitated in ParUament, I attended the debates, with my mind
open to conviction, and an auditor for the mere purposes of infor-
mation. I have conversed on the subject with most distinguished
characters of the kingdom, and I cannot after all but declare that the
scope, purport, and aim of the laws of discovery, as executed,
are not against the Catholic religion, which increases under them,
but against the industry and property of whosoever professes
that religion. In vain has it been said, that consequence and
power follow property, and that the attack is made in order to
wound the doctrine through its property. If such was the inten-
tion, I reply, that seventy years experience prove the folly and
futility of it. Those laws have crushed all the industry, and
wrested most of the property from the Catholics ; but the religion
triumphs ; it is thought to increase. Those who have handed
about calculations to prove a decrease, admit on the face of them,
that it will require 4000 years to make converts of the whole,
supposing the work to go on in future, as it has in the past time.
But the whole pretence is an affront to common sense, for it
implies, that you will lessen a religion, by persecuting it : all
history and experience condemn such a proposition.
"The system pursued in Ireland has had no other tendency but
that of driving out of the kingdom all the personal wealth of the
Catholics, and prohibiting their industry within it. The face of
the country, every object, in short, which presents itself to the eye
of a traveller, tells him how effectually this has been done. I urge
it not as an argument, tlie whole kingdom speaks it as a fact.
We have seen that this conduct has not converted the people to
454 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [50
the religion of Government ; and instead of adding to the internal
security, it has endangered it : if therefore it does not add to the
national prosperity, for what purpose, but that of private tyranny,
could it have been embraced and persisted in ? Mistaken ideas of
private interest account for the actions of individuals ; but what
could have influenced the British Government to permit a system
which must inevitably prevent the island from even becoming of
the importance which nature intended ?"*
Of the state of the agriculture of Ireland at this period, a
tolerable accurate idea may be formed from the words of the same
author. — " I have reason to believe that five pounds sterUng per
English acre, expended all over Ireland, which amounts to 88,341,
136/. would not more than build, fence, plant, drain, and improve
that country, to be upon a par in those respects with England."^
The prices also of the produce of land, afford proof of the general
poverty of the kingdom. In 1778, butter sold for 5^d. per lb. —
mutton, 2^d — beef, 2|d. — pork, S^d. — veal, 3|d. — a fat turkey for
103d. — a goose for 8|d. — and a chicken for 2.^d.^
From these several authorities upon the state of Ireland in 1778,
much information may be collected concerning the causes of many
of those peculiar circumstances which, at this day, belong to that
country. If it is asked, why the people of Ireland are so illiterate ?
The answer that presents itself is, look to the penal laws, that de-
prived them, till a late period, of education. If it is asked, why
they are poor ? The same answer must be given, look to the penal
laws. If it is asked, why the lower orders eat vegetables only,
and live in hovels ? Still the same answer, look to the penal laws.
If it is asked why there is no class of yeomanry in Ireland like
that in England ? The answer is because the penal laws prohibited
industry, and prevented the small landholder from acquiring
either property or consequence in the one country, as he might do
in the other. If it is asked, why the people are discontented and
dislike England ? This answer only can be given, because from
England they received this penal code, under which they have
endured, for above a century, every species of calamity, contrary
to the positive stipulations of a sacred and solemn treaty.
It was in the year 1774, that the Irish legislature passed the
first act towards conciliating the Catholics, " an act to enable his
Majesty's subjects of whatever persuasion, to testify their allegiance
to him."+ Which is as follows :
Whereas many of his Majesty's subjects in this kingdom are
desirous to testify their loyalty and allegiance to his Majesty,
' Young's Tour, vol. 2. 135. Eng. Ed. ' Young's Tour, Apr. ^ Ibid.
+ 13 and Utl» Geo. 111. c. 35.
51] against the Irish Catholics. 455
and their abhorrence of certain doctrines imputed to tliem, and to
remove jealousies which hereby have for a length of time subsisted
between them, and otlicrs his Majesty's loyal subjects ; but upon
account of their religious tenets are, by the laws now in being,
prevented from giving public assurances of such allegiance, and of
their real principles, and good will, and affection towards their fellow
subjects ; in oi-dcr^ therefore, to give such persons an opportunity of
testifying their allegiance to his Majesty, and good "will towards the
present constitution of this kingdom^ and to promote peace and
industry amongst the inhabitants thereof he it enacted by the
King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent
of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present
Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that from and
after the first day of June, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-
four, it shall and may be lawful for any person professing the Popish
religion, to go before the Judges of his Majesty's Court of King's
Bench, any Justice of Peace for the county in which he does or
shall reside, or before any Magistrate of any city or town corpo-
rate, wherein he does or shall reside, and there take and subscribe
the oath of allegiance and declaration, hereinafter mentioned ;
which oath and declaration such Judges of the King's Bench,
Justices of the Peace and Magistrates, are hereby enabled and
required to administer.
"I A. B. do take Almighty God, and his only son Jesus Christ
my Redeemer, to witness, that I will be faithful and bear true
allegiance to our most gracious Sovereign Lord I'^ing George the
Third, and him will defend to the utmost of my power against
all conspiracies and attempts whatever, that shall be made against
his person, crown, and dignity ; and I will do my utmost endeavour
to disclose and make known to his Majesty and his heirs, all treasons
and traitorous conspiracies which may be formed against him
or them j and I do faithfully promise to maintain, support, and
defend, to the utmost of my power, the succession of the crown
in his Majesty's Family, against any person or persons whatsoever ;
hereby utterly renouncing and abjuring any obedience or allegiance
unto the 'person taking upon himself the style a?id title of Priiice of
Wales if I the life-time of his father, and who, since his death, is
said to have assumed the style and title of King of Great Britain
and Ireland, by the name of Charles the Third, and to any other
person claiming or pretending a right to the Crown of these realms ;
and I do swear, that I do reject and detest as unchristian and
impious to believe, that it is laxvful to murder or destroy any
person or persons "ii^h at soever, for or under pretence of their being
heretics ; and also that unchristian and impious principle, that
no faith is to be kept with heretics ; I further declare, that it is
456 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [52
no article of my faith, and that I do renounce, reject, and abjure
the opinion, that Princes excommunicated hy the Pope and Couneilj
or by any authority of the See of Rome, or by any authority
whatsoever, may be deposed and murdered by their subjects, or
by any person whatsoever ; and I do promise, that I will not hold,
maintain, or abet, any such opinion, or any other opinion contrary to
what is expressed in this declaration ; and I do declare that I do not
believe that the Pope of Romey or any other foreign Prince, Prelate,
State, or Potentate, hath or ought to have any temporal or civil
jurisdiction, power, superiority, or pre-eminence, directly, or indi-
rectly, within this realm, and I do solemnly, in the presence of God,
and of his only Son Jesus Christ my Redeemer, profess, testify, and
declare, that I do make this declaration, and every part thereof, in
the plain and ordinary sense of the words of this oath, without any
evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatever, and without
any dispensation already granted by the Pope, or any authority of
the See of Rome, or any person whatever ; and without thinking
that I am or can be acquitted before God or man, or absolved of this
declaration, or any part thereof, although the Pope, or any other per-
son or persons, or authority whatsoever, shall dispense with, or annul
■ the same, or declare that it was null and void from the beginning.*
" So help me God."
And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the officer of
the Court of King's Bench, Justices of the Peace, and Magistrates
of the city and towns corporate, shall yearly, within twenty-one
days after the first of December, return to the clerk of the Privy
Council of this kingdom, or his deputy, a true and perfect list,
under his or their hand, of every such Papist as shall, in the course
of the preceding year, have taken and subscribed such oath, in
which list the quality, condition, title, and place of abode of such
Papist, shall be specified.
About the same time, fearing that their grievances were not
known to his Majesty, the Catholics prepared a Petition ; which
was presented to Lord Buckinghamshire by Lord Fingal, Mr.
Preston, and Mr. Dermot, in order that it might be transmitted by
him to the King.
To the King's most Excellent Majesty^ the humble Address and
Petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland.
Most Gracious Sovereign,
We your Majesty's most dutiful subjects, the Roman Catholics
of your kingdom of Ireland, with hearts full of loyalty, but over-
whelmed with afiliction, and depressed by our calamitous and
ruined circumstances, beg leave to lay at your Majesty's feet, some
63] against the Irish Catholics. 457
small part of those numerous and insupportable grievances under
which we have long groaned, not only without any act of disobe-
dience, but even without murmur or complaint; in hopes that
our inviolable submission and unaltered patience under those severe
pressures, would fully confute the accusation of seditious principles,
with which we have been unfortunately and unjustly charged.
We are deeply sensible of your Majesty's clemency, in moderat-
ing the rigorous execution of some of the laws against us : but we
humbly beg leave to represent, that several, and those the most
severe and distressing of those laws, execute themselves 'with the most
fatal certainty y and that your Majesty's clemency cannot, in the
smallest degree, interpose for their mitigation, otherwise your
Roman Catholic subjects would most cheerfully acquiesce in that
resource, and rest widi an absolute and unbounded assurance on
your Majesty's jprincely generosity ^ and your pious regard to the
rights of private conscience.
We are, may it please your Majesty, a numerous and very
industrious part of your Majesty's subjects, and yet by no industry,
by no honest endeavours on our part, is it in our power to acquire
or to hold, almost any secure or permanent property whatsoever ;
we are not only disqualified to purchase, but are disabled from
occupying any land, even in farm, except on a tenure extremely
scanted both in profit and in time ; and if we should venture to
expend any thing on the melioration of land thus held, by building,
by inclosure, by draining, or by any other species of improvement,
so very necessary in this country ; so far would our services be from
bettering our fortunes, that these are precisely the very circum-
stances, which, as the law now stands, must necessarily disqualify
us from continuing those farms, for any time in our possession.
Whilst the endeavours of our industry are thus discouraged, (no
less, we humbly apprehend, to the detriment of the national
prosperity, and the diminution of your Majesty's revenue, than
to our particular ruin) there are a set of men, who, instead of
exercising any honest occupation in the commonwealth, make
it their employment to pry into our miserable property, to drag us
into the courts, and to compel us to confess on our oaths, and
under the penalties of perjury, whether we have in any instance
acquired a property, in the smallest degree exceeding what the
rigor of the law has admitted ; and in such cases the informers,
without any other merit than that of their discovery, are invested
(to the daily ruin of several innocent industrious families) not
only with the surplus in which the law is exceeded, but in the
whole body of the estate and interest so discovered, and it is our
grief that this evil is likely to continue and increase, as informers
have, in this country, almost worn off the infamy, which in all ages,
458 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [54
and in all other countries, has attended their character, and have
grown into some repute by the frequency and success of their
practices.
And this most gracious Sovereign, though extremely grievous,
is far from being the only or most oppressive particular, in which
our distress is connected with the breach of the rules of honor
and morality. By the laws now in force in this kingdom, a son,
however undutiful or profligate, shall, merely by the merit of con-
forming to the established religion, not only deprive the Roman
Catholic father of that free and full possession of his estate, that
power to mortgage or otherwise dispose of it, which the exigencies
of his affairs may require ; but shall himself have full liberty
immediately to mortgage or otherwise alienate the reversion of that
estate, from his family for ever ; a regulation by which a father,
contrary to the order of nature, is put under the power of his son,
and through which an early dissoluteness is not only suffered, but
encouraged, by giving a pernicious privilege, the frequent use of
which has broken the hearts of many deserving parents, and entailed
poverty and despair on some of the most ancient and opulent
families in this kingdom.
Even when the parent has the good fortune to escape this
calamity in his life-time, yet he has at his death, the melancholy
and almost certain prospect of leaving neither peace nor fortune to
his children ; for by that law, which bestows the whole fortune
on the first conformist, or, on non-conformity, disperses it among
the children, incurable jealousies and animosities have arisen ; a
total extinction of principle and of natural benevolence has ensued ;
whilst we are obliged to consider our own offspring and the brothers
of our own blood, as our most dangerous enemies ; the blessing
of Providence on our families, in a numerous issue, is converted
into the most certain means of their ruin and depravation : we are,
most gracious Sovereign, neither permitted to enjoy the few
broken remains of our patrimonial inheritance, nor by our industry
to acquire any secure establishment to our families.
In this deplorable situation, let it not be considered, we earnestly
beseech your Majesty, as an instance of presumption or discontent,
that we thus adventure to lay open to your Majesty's mercy, a
very small part of our uncommon sufferings ; what we have
concealed under a respectful silence, would form a far longer, and
full as melancholy a recital ; we speak with reluctance, though we
feel with anguish ; we respect from the bottom of our hearts that
legislation under which we suffer ; but we humbly conceive it is
impossible to procure redress without complaint, or to make a
complaint, that by some construction may not appear to convey
blame : and nothing we assure your Majesty, should have extorted
55] against thd Irish Catholics. 459
from us even these complaints, but the strong necessity we find
ourselves under of employing every lavv^ful, humble endeavour, lest
the whole purpose of our lives and labors should prove only the
means of confirming to ourselves, and entailing on our posterity,
inevitable beggary, and the most abject servitude -, a servitude the
more intolerable, as it is suffered amidst that liberty, that peace,
and that security, which, under your Majesty's benign influence, is
spread all around us, and which we alone, of all your Majesty's
subjects, are rendered incapable of partaking.
In all humility we implore, that our principles may not be
estimated by the inflamed charge of controversial writers, nor our
practices measured by the events of those troubled periods, when
parties have run high (though these have been often misrepre-
sented, and always cruelly exaggerated to our prejudice) ; but that
we may be judged by our own actions, and in our own times;
and we humbly offer it to your most equitable and princely con-
sideration, that we do not rest the proof of our sincerity on words,
but on things •, on our dutiful, peaceable, submissive behaviour
for more than fourscore years : and though it will be considered
as too severe to form any opinion of great bodies, by the practice
of individuals, t/et if in all that timey amongst all our people y in the
daily increase of severe laxsos against its, one treasonable insurrection
or one treasonable conspiracy can be proved ; if amongst our
clergy y one seditious sermon can be sho'dcn to have been preached ;
we will readily admit that there is good reason for continuing the
present laws in all their force against us ; but if, on the contrary,
(we speak in full confidence,) it can be shown that our clergy have
ever exerted their utmost endeavours to enforce submission to your
Majesty's Government, and obedience to your laws ; if it can be
shown that these endeavours have always been most strenuous in
times of public danger, or when any accident tended to create a
ferment amongst the people ; if our laity have frequently offered
what we are always ready to fulfil) to hazard their lives and for-
(tunesfor your Majesty's service j if we have willingly bound up the
fruits of our discouraged industry with the fortune of your Majesty's
Government in the public loans ; then, we humbly hope, we may
be admitted to a small portion of mercy, and that that behaviour,
which your Majesty's benignity and condescension will esteem a
merit in our circumstances, may entitle us, not to reward, but to
such toleration as may enable us to become useful citizens to our
country, and subjects as profitable as we are loyal to your Majesty.
Permit us, most gracious Sovereign, on this occasion, to reiterate
the assurances of our unshaken loyalty, which all our sufferings
have not been able to abate ; of our sincere zeal for your Majesty's
service, of our attachment to the constitution of our country, and
400 Sir H. Pamell on the Penal Laws [5(j
of our warmest gratitude for your Majesty's continual indulgence,
and for the late instance of favor we have experienced from Parlia-
ment, in enabling us, consistent with our religious tenets, to give
a legal proof of our sentiments upon these points. And we
humbly hope, that the alacrity and eagerness with which we have
seized this first, though long wished opportunity, of testifying, in
the most solemn and public manner, our inviolable fidelity to your
Majesty, our real principles, and our good-will and affection
towards our fellow-subjects, will extinguish all jealousies, and
remove those imputations, which alone have hitherto held us
forth in the light of enemies to your Majesty, and to the State.
And if any thing farther can be suggested or devised, whereby
we can, by our actions, more fully evince our sincerity, we shall
consider such an opportunity of demonstrating our real loyalty, as
an high favor, and shall be deficient in no act whatever, which does
not amount to a renunciation of that religious profession which
we value more than our lives, and which it cannot be suspected
we hold from obstinacy or a contempt of the laws, since it has
not been taken up by ourselves, but has, from time immemorial,
been handed down to us from our ancestors.
We derive no small consolation, most gracious Sovereign, from
considering, that the most severe and rigorous of the laws against
us had been enacted before the accession of your Majesty's most
illustrious House to the Throne of these kingdoms : we therefore
indulge the more sanguine hopes, that the mitigation of them,
and the establishment of peace, industry, and universal happiness,
amongst all your loyal subjects, may be one of the blessings of
your Majesty's reign. Jnd though we might plead in fwoor of
such relaxation^ the express words of a solemn treaty ^ entered into
with us J by your Majesty's royal predecessor y King William j f which
has been forfeited by no disobedience on our part,) yet we neither
wish, nor desire, to receive any thing, but as a mere act of your
Majesty's clemency, and of the indulgence and equity of your
Parliament.
That this act of truly loyal beneficence and justice may be added
to the other instances of your Majesty's august virtues, and that
the deliverance of a faithful and distressed people may be one of
those distinguishing acts of your reign, which shall transmit its
memory to the love, gratitude, and veneration, of our latest pos-
terity, is the humble prayer of, &c. &c.'
In the year 1778,^ an act passed " for the relief of his Majesty's
subjects of this kingdom, professing the Popish religion." The
' This petition is from the pen of Mr. Burke.
^ 17th and 18lh of Geo. III. c. 49.
57] against the Irish Catholics. 461
preamble of which contains a confirmation of every thing that has
been already advanced, concerning the loyalty of the Catholics,
and a declaration on the partof the King and Parliament, respecting
the policy of admitting the Catholics into a full participation of
the blessings of the Constitution, which is a complete recognition
of their right to enjoy them. It states *<And Whereas, from
their uniform peaceable behaviour for a long series of years, it
appears reasonable and expedient to relax the same, (the laws of
Anne) ; and it must tend not only to the cultivation and improve-
ment of this kingdom, but to the prosperity and strength of all his
Majesty's dominions, that Ms subjects of all denominations, should
enjoy the blessings of a Jree constitution and should be bound to
each other by mutual interest and mutual affection^ ^-c."
By this act Papists, provided they take the oath and declaration
of 13th and 14th of Geo. III. c. 35. are admitted to the following
privileges. — They may take land on leases not exceeding 999 years,
or determinable upon any number of lives not exceeding five.
The lands of Papists are to be descendable, deviseable, and trans-
ferable, as fully as if the same were in the seizure of any other of
his Majesty's subjects.
Papists are rendered capable to hold and enjoy all estates which
may descend, be devised, or transferred to them.
No maintenance is to be hereafter granted to a conforming child
of a Papist, out of the personal property of such Papist, except
out of such leases as may be taken under this act.
And the conformity of the eldest son is not to alter hereafter
the Popish parent's estate.
In the year 1782, another act passed « for the further relief of
his Majesty's subjects of this kingdom, professing the Popish
religion."'
The preamble of this act states : " Whereas all such of his
Majesty's subjects in this kingdom, of whatever persuasion, as
have heretofore taken and subscribed, or shall hereafter take and sub-
scribe, the oath of allegiance and declaration prescribed by an act
passed in the 13th and 14th year of his present Majesty's reign,
entitled an act to enable his Majesty's subjects, of whatever persua-
sion, to testify their allegiance to him, ought to be considered as good
and loyal subjects to his Majesty ^ his cronsm and government : and
whereas a continuance of several of the laws formerly enacted, and
still in force in this kingdom, against persons professing tlie
Popish religion, is therefore unnecessary, in respect to those
who have taken, or shall take the said oath, and is injurious to
the real wealth and prosperity of Ireland, therefore, &c."
'21st and 22(1 Geo. III. c. 24.
462 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [58
By this act Catholics, provided they take this oath, may pur-
chase or take lands, or any interest therein, except advowsons
or boroughs returning members of Parliament, and dispose of the
same by will or otherwise ; and Popish ecclesiastics, on the same
condition, and registering their name and abode with the register
of the diocese, are discharged from all penalties.
This act repeals so much of 8th Anne as subjects a Papist to
fine and imprisonment, on his refusal to testify on oath before
two Justices of the Peace, when and where he heard the Popish
mass celebrated, and the names of the persons celebrating it ; and
so much of 7th Wm. III. c, 5. as subjectsany Papist, who shall have
in his possession any horse of the value of 51. or more, to the
penalties therein mentioned ; and so much of 8th Anne, as enables
the Lord Lieutenant to seize any horse belonging to a Papist, upon
a prospect of invasion or rebellion. It also repeals so much of
9th Geo. n. c. 6. as enables grand juries to reimburse such
persons as have been robbed by privateers in time of war, for their
losses, and to levy the same on the goods of Papists only ; and
so much of 6th Geo. L c. 10. as subjects Papists, who shall not
provide a Protestant watchman to watch in their turn, to certain
penalties ; and so much of 2d Anne, c. 6, as subjects Papists, who
took any house or came to dwell in Limerick, after the year 1703,
or within the town of Galway, to certain penalties.
In the same year was likewise passed an act to allow persons
professing the Popish religion, to teach school in this kingdom,
and for regulating the education of Papists, and also to repeal parts
of certain laws relative to the guardianship of their children.'
The preamble states : " Whereas several of the laws made in
this kingdom, relative to t^e education of Papists, or persons
professing the Popish religion, are considered as too severe, and
have not answered the desired effect.'*
This act repeals so much of 7th Wm. III. c. 4. and 8th of
Anne, c. 3. as subjects Catholics, who shall publicly teach school,
or privately instruct youth, to the like penalties as any Popish
regular convict, provided they take the oaths of 13th and 14th of
George III. c. 35 ; and it enables Catholics, except ecclesiastics,
to be guardians.
Of the numerous individuals, who at this time distinguished
themselves for their exertions in favor of the Catholics, there was
no one to whom they were under greater obligations than to the
late Mr Burke. He wrote for them the Petition which was pre-
sented to the King in 1774. In the English House of Commons in
' 2lRt and 22d Geo. III. c. 62.
59] against the Irish Catholics. 403
1778 he was the first to declare the necessity of concessions being
made to them ; he said that ** Ireland was now the chief depen-
dence of the British crown, and that it particularly behoved that
country to admit the Irish nation to the privileges of British ci-
tizens'" and in the year 1782, he wrote his celebrated letter to Lord
Kenmare, in which he so ably exposes the folly, injustice, and
tyranny of the penal laws.
It certainly is a fact of no small importance in favor of the
wisdom of unlimited concession to the Catholics, that this great
statesman, the advocate for existing establishments, and who was
the first and most formidable opponent to the progress of the
Jacobinical principles of France, should have advised it, and inces-
santly fowarded it by his powerful talents and extensive influence.
But the Catholics were indebted, not only to the labors of their
friends, but also to the great revolution which was going on at
this period in America, for the success of the first concessions
that were made to them. This soon appeared very evident ; an
attempt was made by Mr. James Fitzgerald, a few months
before the introduction of the act of 17. 18. Geo. III. to obtain
for them a power to take leases of lands for 61 years, and this
attempt failed. But soon afterwards, when the intelligence arrived
of the defeat of the British forces in America, the same Parlia-
ment, on the recommendation of the Government, passed an act for
enabling them to take land on leases for 999 years.
It was not, however, till the British Governm.ent were obliged
to transport the whole of the British army from Ireland to Ame-
rica, and thus leave it exposed to the invasion of France, that the
Catholics became of sufficient importance in the eyes either of
their own Protestant countrymen, or of the British Government,
to be attended to and caressed by them. The only alternative
then left for the Protestants to adopt, was either to promote a union
of sects in the common defence of the kingdom, or to make
up their minds to fall an easy prey to the arms of France. Upon
this principle of preservation, by an oblivion of all past animo-
sities, the volunteers were embodied, and composed indiscrimi-
natelv of Catholics and Protestants. But, in proportion as the
danger of invasion diminished, they naturally turned their atten-
tion to the grievances, that both sects experienced at the hands of
the British Government, and soon became an armed association
for the attainment of political rights.^
' 3th Eng. Deb. p. 135, 1st Apiil 1778.
^ "In 1782, when the treasury had i)<j supply, hut was in fact bankrupt;
vilien a French Heet appeared off Cork : when the army was only 4000
men and unprovided ; it was entirely ovvin^ to the wealth of the Roman
Catholics that thai country was put into a posture of defence, and saved
464 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [60
In this appeal to arms, in open resistance to the power of Great
Britain, for the purpose of compelling her to grant to Ireland the
independence of her legislature, and a reform of her Parliament,
the Protestants took the lead. But the contention between
them and the British Government was not one of arms, because
Great Britain had no troops with which to dispute with the volun-
teers, but one of political manoeuvring. It was plain, that to
whichever party the Catholics attached themselves, victory would
belong. The Government, therefore, in order to secure them, passed
the acts of 1778 and 1782; while the Protestants, on the other
hand, endeavoured to conciliate them by public resolutions and
declarations in favor of their complete emancipation. The
Dungannon convention, which met in February 1782, and was
composed of the representatives of 143 Protestant volunteer corps,
resolved, with two dissenting voices only, "that they held the right
of private judgment, in matters of religion, to be equally sacred in
others as themselves ; therefore, that, as Christians and Protestants,
they rejoiced in the relaxation of the penal laws against their
Roman Catholic fellow- subjects, and that they conceived the mea-
sure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and
prosperity of Ireland."
These liberal declarations on the part of this meeting, and the
general tenor of the conduct of the Protestants throughout Ireland
towards the CathoUcs, secured their cordial concurrence, and the
British Government were, at length, reluctantly obliged to concede
the favorite object of an independent Irish legislature.
The Protestants now proceeded to attempt to carry their other
great object, a parliamentary reform ; and, after the sense of the
kingdom had been expressed, at various public meetings, to be
decidedly in favor of it, they determined to hold a convention
in Dublin, for the purpose of impressing upon Government
and Parliament the necessity of acceding to their demand. In
the mean time, a division of opinion had manifested itself among
some of the northern corps of volunteers, on the Catholic question,
and Lord Charlemont and other persons had declared them-
selves hostile to further concessions. This circumstance afforded
the Government an easy opportunity of defeating the object of
the convention j they contrived to have a motion made for con-
necting the emancipation of the Catholics with the question of
from the invasion of the enemy — whereas, had they been disposed to be dis-
loyal upon that occasion, and to have made use of that power which they actu-
ally possessed, they might have completely separated Ireland from the Go-
vernment of this country." Speech of Lord Buckingham, June 23, 1808. Lord
Buckingham was at this time Lord Lieutenant : Mr. George Gould, of Cork,
was the Catholic who lent his money to Government.
61] against the Irish Catholics. 4GS
parliamentary reform ; and upon its being rejected by the conven-
tion, knowing that its power was not to be dreaded, if unsup-
ported by the Catholic population, they despised its threats, and, by
a manly opposition to their demands, they secured their dispersion
without tumult, and certainly without the regret of the advocates
of such a reform in Parliament as the general circumstances of
the country absolutely required.
From this period, to the year 1790, the Catholic question wa^
not once agitated, either by the Catholics or by Parliament. In
this year the Attorney-general brought in a bill to explain and amend
the act of 22d Geo. III. c. 62.
The intention of this act was to give to Catholics the power
of appointing guardians to their children, but it was so care-
lessly drawn, that, upon consulting it, in the case of the will of the
* late Lord Gormanstown, by which he had appointed guardians to
his son, it was discovered that they were not competent to act.
The present bill was therefore introduced to remedy this defect.
A circumstance, which took place this summer, shows that this
act of common justice was not, in any degree, the result of an
inclination, on the part of Government, to treat the Catholics with
more than customary liberality. Lord Westmoreland, then Lord
Lieutenant, had visited the South of Ireland •, and, on his arrival
at Cork, it was intimated to the Catholics there, that an expression
of their loyalty would be acceptable. Accordingly an address of
that nature was prepared, which, however, concluded with a hope^
that their loyalty would entitle them to some relaxation of tlie
penal code. Before its being formally presented, it was submitted
to his Excellency, and was returned to them, to strike out the clause
which expressed hope. With a feeling rather natural to men not
perfectly broken down by oppression, they refused to strike it out|
and declined presenting the address.
A century of pains and penalties had now elapsed, in which
period the most severe and minute investigation had not been able
to ascribe to the Catholics one instance of disloyalty, when they at
length determined to make a vigorous exertion to obtain a restoration
of their constitutional rights. In the course of the year 1790, violent
resolutions had been entered into by the magistrates of the county
of Armagh against them. Those of Dublin, and of the other
principal cities and towns of Ireland, were in consequence roused
to adopt resolutions on their part, expressive of the necessity of
petitioning Parliament. These had been transmitted to the general
committee of Catholics, who thereupon held a meeting to consider
them, on the 11th of February, 1791. The general committee
referred these resolutions to a sub-committee, who made upon
them the following report :
VOL. XX. Pam. NO. XL. 2 G
460 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [0^
**Your committee having, in obedience to your directions.
Carefully perused the resolutions of the Catholics of Ireland, report,
that said resolutions contain the most unequivocal sentiments of
loyalty to our most gracious Sovereign, George the Third, of love
for our country, and obedience to its laws, and the most humble
hope of being restored to some participation of its excellent con-
stitution.
"That your Catholic brethren refer, with confidence, to the
numberless proofs they have given of fidelity in times the most
perilous, when rebellion raged in the bosom of Britain, and when
foreign invasion threatened our coast, and to that alacrity with
which all descriptions of our people took the oath of allegiance j
and they rely that their scrupulous observance of such sacred
obligation will no where be doubted, when it is considered, that
if they took those oaths required by law, they would thereby be*
Come entitled to all the rights of citizens.
** That, with all humility, they confide in the justice, liberality,
and wisdom of Parliament, and the benignity of our most gracious
Sovereign, to relieve them from their degraded situation, and no
longer to suffer them to continue like strangers in their native land j
but thus have the glory of showing all Europe, that in the plenitude
of power, strength, and riches of the British empire, when no-
thing they grant can be imputed to any motives but those of
justice and toleration; that, at such a period, they deign to hear
and relieve their oppressed and faithful subjects, and to unite them
for ever to their country, by every tie of gratitude and interest j
and that they will show to all Europe, that humble and peaceful con-
duct, and dutiful application, are the only true and effectual methods
for good subjects to obtain relief from a wise and good govern-
ment.
"That our Catholic brethren therefore desire that application may
be made for such relief as the wisdom and justice of Parliament
may grant j and they hope to be restored, at least, to some of the
rights and privileges which have been wisely granted to others
who dissent from the established church j that they may be
thus enabled to promote, in conjunction with the rest of their
fellow-subjects, the present and future happiness and strength of
their country.
*' That our said Catholic brethren direct, that such application be
immediately made, and continued, in the most submissive and
constitutional manner, for a mitigation of the restrictions and
disqualifications under which they labor.'*
The general committee having agreed with and adopted this
report, a petition was prepared in order to be laid before Parlia-
ment in the ensuing session.
63] against the Irish Catholics. 467
With this petition a deputation of the general committee waited
upon the chief secretary, Lord Hobart, to soUcit the countenance
and protection of Government, but in vain. This was not only
refused them, but the Catholics of Ireland, constituting, at the
lowest calculation, three- fourths of the inhabitants of the kingdom,
had not even sufficient influence to induce any one member of
Parliament to present it.
A second deputation having failed to obtain even an answer
from Government to a renewed application for its support, it was
determined to send Mr. Keogh to London, to lay before his
Majesty's Ministers the state of his Catholic subjects.
Mr. Keogh, on his arrival in London, instituted a negociation
with Mr. Pitt and the Cabinet : at the close of which, the Catholics
were given to understand that they might hope for four objects — ■
grand juries, county magistrates, high sheriffs, and the bar. Ad-
mission to the right of suffrage was also mentioned, and taken
under consideration.
The spirit of religious liberty having at this time made great
progress among the Protestant dissenters in Ulster, the 1st Belfast
volunteer company, in July, 1791, passed a resolution in favor
of admitting the Catholics to a full enjoyment of the constitution;
and, in October, the great Northern Association of United Irish-
men' pledged themselves " to endeavour, by all due means, to
procure a complete and radical reform of the people in Parliament,
including Irishmen of every religious persuasion."
In the mean time, whilst Mr. Keogh was in London, the Irish
Administration had been endeavouring to counteract the views of
the Catholic body, by a negociation with the principal nobility
and gentry belonging to it ; and, in some degree, their exertions
were successful. For, at a meeting of the general committee,
held in December, 1791, for the purpose of considering of the
policy of petitioning Parliament in the ensuing session, some of
the meeting wished to adopt a resolution of seeking no removal
of the existing disabilities, but in such a manner and to such an
extent as the wisdom of the legislature deemed expedient. This
was resisted by others, and on a division upon the question of
petitioning, the nobility were left in a minority of 90 to 17.
Pursuant to this decision, the following petition was drawn up,
and introduced into the House of Commons, by Mr. O'Hara, on
the 23d January, 1792.
We your petitioners, being appointed by sundry of his Majesty's
subjects professing the Roman Catholic religion, to be agents for
' It was not till 1794, that a new society, under this name, embarked in
an attempt to separate Great Britain and Ireland.
468 Sir H. Parnell on the Pe7ial Laws [64
conducting applications to the legislature for their relief, in our
own and their names, beg leave to approach this High Court of
Parliament with an unfeigned respect for its wisdom and authority ;
and at the same time, with a deep and heartfelt sensation of our
singular and deplorable situation. And, first of all, we implore
(and for this we throw ourselves on the indulgence of Parliament)
that no irregularity or defect in form or language, should obstruct
the success of these our most ardent supplications. The circum-
stances in which we stand deserve consideration. For near a
hundred years, we and our fathers, and our grandfathers, have
groaned under a code of laws, (in some parts already purged from
thi statutes), the like of which, no age, no nation, no climate ever
saw. Yet, sore as it were from the scourge of active persecution,
scarce yet confirmed in our minds, and but lately secure in our
persons and in our houses, from the daily alarms of search-
warrants and informers, we come before Parliament for the first
time ; and we come to ask an alleviation of burdens, under which
we can only find consolation in the melancholy comparison of
former times. In this state of recent apprehension and troubled
anxious hope, with minds unadapted to the precise observances of
decorum, we rest upon the simple merits of our case. It is a
part of our calamities, that we do not know how to tell them with
propriety ; and if our complaints should deviate into remonstrance,
and we should seem to upbraid, when we mean to supplicate, we
trust a due allowance will be made for expressions extorted by our
anguish, or proceeding from an inevitable ignorance of form.
Excluded from the Constitution in all its parts, and in many re-
spects aliens to the law, how should Ave have learned the forms
of Parliament ?
The hardships we suffer proceed from the law. It is, therefore,
only to the fountain of the law that we can look for relief. You
are the great Council of our Sovereign Lord the King ; but you
are also subjects like ourselves. The ear of Majesty, by the law
of the land, and by the benignity of that Sovereign whom it is
your glory to imitate, is ever open to the petitions of his people. As
far as we are able to discern the great outlines of a constitution,
which we know only in speculation, we conceive that it is the
boast of the Constitution of these kingdoms, to have associated a
portion of the people into the Sovereign power ; in order that, not
dazzled by the awe of supreme Majesty, the subject may find a
happy mediatorial institution, an asylum wherein to deposit the
burden of his griefs, to expose the nakedness of his oppressions,
and indulge complaint even to exaggeration. There were, indeed,
those who would have made us believe, that Parliament was only
to be approached with circumspect and timid steps ; at most, in
65] against (he Irish Catholics. 46.9
general terms ; and that, wrapped in proud and Inexorable state,
jrou would consider a specification of the wants of the people as an
insult, and a reason for not supplying them. But we knew it
could not be. We knew that no senate, no king, no tyrant, had
ever professed to turn his ear from detailed supplication. The Ma-
jesty of God himself is willing to receive, and demands the incense
of particular prayer. And shall we, who speak from man to man,
from subject to subject, not dare to specify the measure and extent
of our crying necessities. Despising that base and hypocritical
affectation, we are sure it is far more congenial to the nature and
to the temper of Parliament, with a firm and generous confidence,
to say, as we say — here is the evil — there is the remedy : To you
we look for relief.
Behold us then before you, three millions of the people of Ire-
land, subjects of the same king, inhabitants of the same land,
bound together by the same social contract, contributing to the
same revenues, defended by the same armies, declared, by the
authentic words of an act of Parliament, to be good and loyal
subjects to his Majesty, his Crown, and Government, and yet
doomed to one general unqualified incapacity, and universal ex-
clusion, an universal civil proscription. We are excluded from the
state. We are excluded from the revenues. We are excluded from
every distinction, every privilege, every office, every emolument,
every civil trust, every corporate right. We are excluded from the
navy, from the army, from the magistrature, from the professions.
We are excluded from the palladium of life, liberty, and property,
the juries and inquests of our couritry. — From what are we not ex-
cluded? We are excluded from the constitution. We stand a strange
anomaly in the law ; not acknowledged, not disavowed ; not slaves,
not freemen : an exception to the principles of jurisprudence ; a
prodigy in the system of civil institution. We incur no small part of
the penalties of a general outlawry, and a general excommunication.
Disability meets us at every hour, and in every walk of life. It
cramps our industry, it shackles our property, it depresses our
genius, it debilitates our minds. — Why are we disfranchised, and
why are we degraded ? Or rather, why do theseevils afflict our
country, of which we are no inconsiderable part ?
We most humbly and earnestly supplicate and implore Parlia-
ment to call this law of universal exclusion to a severe account,
and now at last to demand of it, upon what principle it stands,
of equity, of morality, of justice, or of policy. And, while we
request this scrutiny into the law, we demand, also, the severest
scrutiny into our principles, our actions, our words, and our
thoughts. Wherein have we failed as loyal and affectionate sub-
jects to the best of Sovereigns, or as sober, peaceable, and useful
470 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [66
members of society. Where is that people who can offer the
testimony of a hundred years patient submission to a code of
laws, of which no man living is now an advocate — without sedi-
tion, without murmur, without complaint. Our loyalty has
undergone a century of severe persecution for the sake of our
religion, and we have come out of the ordeal with our religion,
and with our loyalty.
Why then are we still left under the ban of our country ? We
differ, it is true, from the national church, in some points of
doctrinal faith. Whether it is our blessing or our misfortune,
He only knows to whom all things are known. For this our
religion we offer no apology. After ages of learned and critical
discussion, we cannot expect to throw farther light upon it. We
have only to say, that it is founded on revelation, as well as the
religion established by law. Both you and we are regenerated in
the same baptism, and profess our belief in the same Christ ; you
according to the church of England, we according to the church
of Rome. We do not exercise an abject or obscure superstition.
If we err, our errors have been, and still are, sanctioned by the
exam»ple of many florishing, learned, and civilised nations. We
do not enter, we disdain to enter into the cavils of antiquated
sophistry, and to insult the understanding of Parliament by sup-
posing it necessary to prove that a religion is not incompatible
with civil government, which has subsisted for so many hundred
years under every possible form of government, in some tolerated,
in some established, even to this day.
With regard to our civil principles, we are unalterably, deeply,
and zealously attached to his Majesty's person and Government.
Good and loyal subjects we are, and we are declared by law to be.
With regard to the Constitution of the state, we are as much
attached to it as it is possible for men to be attached to a consti-
tution by which they are not avowed. With regard to the con-
stftution of the church, we are, indeed, inviolably attached to our
own : First, because we believe it to be true ; and next, because,
beyond belief, we know that its principles are calculated to make
us, and have made us, good men and good citizens. But as we
find it answers to us, individually, all the useful ends of reli-
gion, isoe solemnly and conscientiously declare^ that we are satisfied
isoith the present condition of our ecclesiastical policy. With
satisfaction^ fee acquiesce in the establishment of the national
church ; toe neither repine at its possessions, nor envy its dignities ;
Isoe are ready, upon this pointy to give every assurance that is bind-
ing upon man.
With regard to every other subject, and to every other calumny,
we have no disavowals, we have no declarations to make. Con-
(i7J againsl the Irish Catholics. AH
gclous of the innocence of our lives, and the purity of our inten-
tions, we are justified in asking, what reason of st.ite exists, and
we deny that any docs exist, for leaving us still in the bondage of
the law, and under the protracted restriction of penal statutes.
Penalties suppose, if not crimes, at least a cause of reasonable
suspicion. Criminal imputations like those (for to be adequate to
the effect, they must be great indeed) are, to a generous mind,
more grievous than the penalties themselves. They incontrovertibly
imply, that we are considered by the legislature as standing in 3
doubtful light of fidelity or loyalty to the King, or to the Consti--
tution of our country, and perhaps to both. While on these unjust
suppositions we are deprived of the common rights and privileges
of British and of Irish subjects, it is impossible for us to say we
are contented while we endure a relentless civil proscription for
which no cause is alleged, and for which no reason can be as-
signed.
Because we now come with a clear, open, and manly voice, to
insist upon the grievances under which we still labor, it is not to
be inferred that we have forgot the benignant justice of Parliament,
which lias relieved us from the more oppressive, but not the most
extensive part of the penal system. In those days of affliction,
when we lay prostrate under the iron rod, and, as it were, entranced
in a gulph of persecution, it was necessary for Parliament to go
the whole way, and to stretch out a saving hand to relieve us. We
had not the courage to look up with hope, to know our condition,
or even to conceive a remedy. It is because the former relaxations
were not thrown away upon us j it is because we begin to feel the
influence of somewhat more equal laws, and to revive from our
former inanition, that we now presume to stand erect before
you. Conceiving that Parliament has a right to expect, as a test
of our gratitude, that we should no longer lie a dead weight
upon our country, but come forward in our turn to assist with our
voice, our exertions, and our councils, in a work, to which ihe
wisdom and power of Parliament is incompetent without our co«
operation — the application of a policy, wholly new, to the pressing
wants, and to the intimate necessities of a people long forgotten,
out of the sight and out of the knowledge of a superintending
legislature. — Accordingly we are come, and we claim no small
merit that we have found our way to the door of Parliament, It
has not been made easy for us. — Every art and industry has been
exerted to obstruct us : attempts have been made to divide us
into factions, to throw us into confusion. We have stood firm
and united. We have received hints and cautions ; obscure in-
timations and public warnings to guard our supplications against
intimidation. Wc- have resisted that species of disguised and
472 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [68
Artful threat. We have been traduced, calumniated, and libelled.
We have witnessed sinister endeavours again to blow the flame of
religious animosity, and awake the slumbering spirit of popular
terrors and popular fury.— But we have remained unmoved. We
are, indeed, accustomed to this tumid agitation and ferment in the
public mind. In former times it was the constant precursor of
more mtense persecution, but it has also attended every later and
happier return of legislative mercy. But whether it betokens us
evil or good, to Parliament we come, to seek, at that shrine, a
safeguard from impending danger, or a communication of new
benefits.
What then do we ask of Parliament ? To be thoroughly united
and made one with the rest of our fellow-subjects. That, alas I
would be our first, our dearest wish. But if that is denied us, if
sacrifices are to be made, if by an example of rare moderation,
we do not aspire to the condition of a fair equality, we are not at a
loss to find, in the range of social benefits (which is nearly that of
our present exclusions) an object which is, and ought to be, the
scope and resting-place of our wishes and our hopes. That which, if
we do not ask, we are not worthy to obtain. We knock that it
may be opened unto us. We have learned by tradition from our
ancestors, we have heard by fame in foreign lands, where we
have been driven to seek education in youth, and bread in man-
hood ; and, by the contemplation of our own minds, we are filled
with a deep and unalterable opinion that the Irish, formed upon
the model of the British Constitution, is a blessing of inestimable
value ; that it contributes, and is even essentially necessary for
national and individual happiness. Of this Constitution we feel
ourselves worthy ; and though not practically, we know the
•benefits of its franchises. Nor can we, without a criminal dissi-
mulation, conceal from Parliament the painful inquietude which
IS felt by our whole persuasion, and the dangers to which we do
•not cease to be exposed, by this our total and unmerited exclusion
4rom the common rights, privileges, and franchises, conceded by
•our Kings for the protection of the subject. This exclusion is in-
deed the root of every evil. It is that which makes property insecure,
and mdustry precarious. It pollutes the stream of justice. It is
the cause of daily humiliation. It is the insurmountable barrier,
the impassable line of separation which divides the nation, and
which, keeping animosity alive, prevents the entire and cordial
intermixture of the people. And therefore inevitably it is, that
some share, some portion, some participation in the liberties and
franchises of our country, becomes the primary and essential object
of our ardent and common solicitation. It is a blessing for which
there is no price, and can be no compensation. With it, every
69] against the Irish Catholics. 473
evil is tolerable ; without It, no advantage is desirable. In this, as
in all things, we submit ourselves to the paramount authority of
Parliament ; and we shall acquiesce in what is given, as we do in
what is taken away. But this is the boon we ask. We hunger
and we thirst for the Constitution of our country. If it shall be
deemed otherwise, and shall be determined that we are qualified
perhaps for the base and lucrative tenures of professional occupa-
tion, but unworthy to perform the free and noble services of the
Constitution, we submit, indeed, but we solemnly protest against
that distinction for ourselves and for our children. It is no act
of ours. Whatever judgment may await our merits or our failings,
we cannot conclude ourselves, by recognising, for a consideration,
the principle of servility and perpetual degradation.
These are the sentiments which we feel to the bottom of our
hearts, and we disclose them to the free Parliament of a Monarch
whose glory it is to reign over a free people. — To you we commit
our supplications and our cause. We have, indeed, little to appre-
hend, in this benigner age, from the malignant aspersions of former
times, and not more from the obsolete calumnies of former strife ;
although we see them endeavouring again to collect the remnant of
their exhausted venom, before they die for ever, in a last and
feeble effort to traduce our religion and our principles. But as
oppression is ever fertile in pretexts, we find the objections started
against us more dangerous because they are new, or new at least
in the novelty of a shameless avowal. They are principally three —
First, it Is contended that we are a people originally and funda-
mentally different from yourselves, and that our interests are for
ever irreconcileable, because some hundred years ago our ancestors
were conquered by yours. We deny the conclusion: we deny
the fact. It Is false. — In addressing ourselves to you, we speak to
the children of our ancestors, as we also are the children of your
forefathers. Nature has triumphed over law ; we are intermixed
in blood ; we are blended in connexion ; we are one race ; we all
are Irishmen ; subjects of the Imperial Crown of Ireland. The
honor of Parliament is concerned, to repress the audacity of those
who tell us that you are a foreign colony j and, consequently,
ought to govern according to the principles of invaders, and the
policy of recent usurpation. At least we confide that you will not
suffer the walls of Parliament to be contaminated with that libel
upon the Government of Ireland. The shaft which was aimed at
us has struck yourselves -, a memorable, but, at the same time, we
trust, a most auspicious example, to teach both you and us, and our
common posterity, that our interests are one ; and that whatever
affects the well-being and honor of the Roman Catholics, is also
injurious to the Protestant interest. Of the same complexion
474 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [70
and tendency are the two objections, one that our advancement in
property and privilege would lead to a repeal of the act of settle-
ment j the other, that our participation in the liberties and fran^
chises of our country, would endanger the existence of the Consti-
tution into which we are admitted.
A resumption of the lands forfeited by our and your ancestors,
(for they are the same) after the lapse of so many years, (near three
returns of the longest period of legal limitation) after the dispersion
and extinction of so many families ; after so many transitions
and divisions, repartitions and reconsolidations of property j so
many sales, judgments, mortgages, and settlements ; and after all
the various process of voluntary and legal operation, to conceive
the revival of titles dormant for 150 years, is an idea so perfectly
chimerical, so contrary to the experience of all ages and all coun-
tries, so repugnant to the principles of jurisprudence, and so utterly
impossible in point of fact ; that the Roman Catholics of Ireland,
once for all, make it their earnest request to have that question
thoroughly investigated, in the assured hope, that so idle, vain, and
absurd an object of public apprehension, being exposed and laid
open to the eye of reason, may sleep in oblivion for ever.
As to the other subject of apprehension, we have but one
answer to make. We desire to partake in the Constitution ; and
therefore we do not desire to destroy it. Parliament is now in pos-
session of our case ; our grievances, our sorrows, our obstructions,
Dur solicitudes, our hopes. We have told you the desire of our
hearts. We do not ask to be relieved from this or that incapacity }
not the abolition of this or that odious distinction -, not even perhaps
to be in the fulness of time, and in the accomplishment of the
great comprehensive scheme of legislation, finally incorporated
with you in the enjoyment of the same constitution. Even beyond
that mark, we have an ultimate and if possible an object of more
interior desire. We look for an union of affections ; a gradual,
and therefore a total obliteration of all the animosities, (on our part
they are long extinct) and all the prejudices which have kept us
disjoined. We come to you a great accession to the Protestant
interest, with hearts and minds suitable to such an end. We do
not come as jealous and suspicious rivals, to gavel the Constitu-
tion, but, with fraternal minds, to participate in the great in»
corporeal inheritance of freedom, to be held according to the
laws and customs of the realm, and by our immediate fealty and
allegiance to the King. And so may you receive us.
And we shall ever pray.
Objections having been made to this petition, upon Mr. 0'Hara*s
presenting it, as being informal, he withdrew it j and the general
committee finding that so bold and explicit a statement of their
7 1 ] against the Irish Catholics. 475
case had given offence, prepared another petition, merely praying
that the House would take into consideration, whether the removal
of some of the grievances of the petitioners might not be com-
patible with Protestant security. This petition was presented by
Mr. Egan, on the ] 8th of February ; and on the 20th, was after-
wards rejected, on a division of 200 to 23.
On the same day was also rejected a petition from the Pro-
testant inhabitants of Belfast, which went much farther than the
petition of the Catholics, as it required that they should be placed
on the same footing with their Protestant fellow-subjects.
It was on the 3d January of this year, that Mr. Burke jjublished
his letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in which he gave that learned
and liberal opinion upon the subject of the elective franchise,
which, it is said, obtained the royal assent to the measure that
afterwards was adopted for conceding it. This letter was ad-
mirably well adapted to meet every species of objection, moral,
local, and constitutional. It was calculated to remove the pre-
judices of the Church of England and every sect of Protestant
dissenters ; and, above all, it was quite conclusive, as a demonstra-
tion of the compatibility of Catholic emancipation with the
coronation oath.
At a meeting of the general committee, on the ^th February,
the following resolutions were agreed to, and afterwards published,
with an address to the Protestants, written by Mr. R. Burke,
and corrected by his father. To this address were added the
answers of the foreign Catholic universities to questions that had
been put to them in 1789, at the desire of Mr. Pitt, concerning
the existence and extent of the Popish dispensing power.
Resolved, That this committee has been informed that reports
have been circulated, that the application of the Cathohcs for
relief, extends to unUmited and total emancipation ; and that
attempts have been made, wickedly and falsely, to instil into the
minds of the Protestants of this kingdom an opinion, that our
applications were preferred in a tone of menace.
Resolved, That several Protestant gentlemen have expressed
great satisfaction on being individually informed of the real
extent and respectful manner of the applications for relief, have
assured us, that nothing could have excited jealousy, or apparent
opposition to us, from our Protestant countrymen, but the above-
mentioned misapprehensions.
Resolved, That we therefore deem it necessary to declare, that
the whole of our late applications, whether to his Majesty's Mi-
nisters, to men in power, or to private members of the legislature,
as well as our intended petition, neither did, nor does contain any
476 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Laws [72
thing, or extend further, either in substance or in principle, than
the four following objects.
1st. Admission to the profession and practice of the law.
2d. Capacity to serve as county magistracies.
3d. A right to be summoned, and to serve on grand and petty
juries.
4th. The right of voting in counties only for Protestant mem-
bers of Parliament ; in such a manner, however, as that a Roman
Catholic freeholder should not vote, unless he either rented, and
cultivated a farm of twenty pounds per annum, in addition to his
forty shillings freehold ; or else possessed a freehold to the amount
of twenty pounds a-year.
Resolved, That, in our opinion, these applications, not extend-
ing to any other objects than the above, are moderate, and abso-
lutely necessary for our general alleviation, and more particularly
for the protection of the Catholic farmers and the peasantry of
Ireland ; and that they do not, in any degree, endanger either
church or state, or endanger the security of the Protestant in-
terest.
Resolved, That we never had an idea or thought so extravagant,
as that of menacing or intimidating our Protestant brethren, much
less the legislature ; and that we disclaim the violent and turbu-
lent intentions imputed to us in some of the public prints, and
circulated in private conversation.
Resolved, That we refer to the known disposition of the Roman
Catholics of this kingdom, to our dutiful behaviour, during a long
series of years, and particularly to the whole tenor of our late
proceedings, for the full refutation of every charge of sedition and
disloyalty.
Resolved, That for the more ample and detailed exposure of all
the evil reports and calumnies circulated against us, an address to
our Protestant fellow-subjects, and to the public In general, be
printed by the order and In the name of the general committee.
The queries and answers concerning the Popish dispensing
power, are as follow :
1st. Has the Pope or Cardinals, or any body of men, or any
individual of the Church of Rome, any civil authority, power,
jurisdiction, or pre-eminence whatsoever, within the realm of
England ?
2d. Can the Pope or Cardinals, or any body of men, or any
individual of the Church of Rome, absolve or dispense with his
Majesty's subjects from their oath of allegiance, upon any pretext
whatsoever ?
3d. Is there any principle in the tenets of the Catholic faith,
731 against the Irish Catholics. 477
by which Cathohcs are justified in not keeping faith with heretics,
or other persons differing from them in religious opinions, in any
transaction, either of a public or a private nature ?
Abstract from the Answer of the Sacred Faculty of Divinity of
Paris to the above Qjieries.
After an introduction according to the usual forms of the uni-
versity, they answer the first query by declaring :
Neither the Popey nor the Cardinalsy nor any body qfrneuy nor
any other person of the Church of Rome hath any civil authorityy
civil power, civil jurisdictiony or civil pre-eminence whatsoever, in
any kingdom ; and consequently, none in the kingdom of England,
by reason or virtue of any authority, power, jurisdiction, or
pre-eminence by divine institution inherent in, or granted, or by
any other means belonging to the Pope, or the Church of Rome.
This doctrine the Sacred Faculty of Divinity of Paris has always
held, and upon every occasion maintained, and upon every
occasion has rigidly proscribed the contrary doctrines from her
schools.
Answer to the second query. — Neither the PopCy nor the
Cardinalsy nor any body ofmeuy nor any person of the Churcli of
Rome, can, by virtue of the keys, absolve or release the subjects
of the King of England from their oath of allegiance.
This and the first query are so intimately connected that the
answer of the first immediately and naturally applies to the
second, &c.
Answer to the third query. — There is no tenet in the Catholic
church, by which Catholics are justified in not keeping faith
with heretics, or those who differ from them in matters of religion.
The tenet, that it is lawful to break faith with heretics, is so
repugnant to common honesty and the opinions of Catholics, that
there is nothing of which those "who have defended the Catholic
faith against Protestants have complained more heavily than the
malice and calumny of their adversaries in imputing this tenet to
themy Sfc. ^-c. Sfc.
Given at Paris, in the General Assembly of theSorbonne, held on
Thursday the 1 1th day before the calends of March, 1789.
Signed in due form.
University of Louvain.
The Faculty of Divinity at Louvain having been requested
to give her opinion upon the questions above stated, does it with
readiness— 6m^ struck with astonishment that such questions should.
478 Sir H. Parnell on the Penal Lam, (Jc [:
ff'^^^^ of this eighteenth century, be proposed to any learw
body, by inhabitants of a kingdom that glories in the talents m
discernment of its natives. The Faculty being assembled for tl
above purpose, it is agreed, with the unanimous assent of -.
voices, to answer the first and second queries absolutely in ti
The Faculty does not think it incumbent upon her, in this plac
to enter upon the proofs of her opinion, or to show how it
supported by passages in the Holy Scriptures, or the writings i
antiquity. That has already been done by Bossuet, De Marca tl
two Barclays, Goldastus, the Pithxuses, Argentre Widrington/ar
his Majesty King James the First, in his DissertatioS again
Benarmine and Du Perron, and by many others. Sec. &c. &c
The Faculty then proceeds to declare, that the sovereign power «
the state is in nowise (not even indirectly, as it is termed) subject t(
or dependent upon any other power : though it be a spiritui
power, or even though it be instituted for eternal salvation, &c &(
Ihat no many nor any assembly of men, however eminent i
dignity and power, nor even the 'whole body of the Catholic church
though assembled in general council, can, upon any ground c
pretence whatsoever, weaken the bond of union between th
bovereign and the people ; still less can they absolve or free th.
subjects from their oath of allegiance.
Proceeding to the third question, the said Faculty of Divinity
(in perfect 'wonder that such a question should be proposed to her'
most positively and unequivocally answers, that there is not, anc
there never has been, among the Catholics, or in the doctrines ol
the (Lhurch of Rome, any law or principle whch makes it lawful foi
Catholics to break their faith with heretics, or others of a differenj
persuasion from themselves, in matters of religion, either in publid
or private concerns. ~
The Faculty declares the doctrine of the Catholics to be, that
the divine and natural law, which makes it a duty to keep faith
and promises, is the same j and is neither shaken nor diminished,
If those, with whom the engagement is made, hold errcaficus
opmions m matters of religion, &c. &c.
Signed in due form on the 18th of November, 1788.
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