ary relief. The premier was found highly favourable, but expressed fears as to the pope's presumed power of deposing princes, and other anti-social principles, popularly fastened upon Romanism. In consequence, inquiries were transmitted to the universities of Paris, Louvain, Douay, Alcalà, and Salamanca, to know whether these exceptionable doctrines really were integral portions of the Romish faith. Negative answers were returned, as might have been foreseen; it being impossible to find these obnoxious articles among the main landmarks of papal theology, though easy to find such authority for them as would reconcile most minds to their use in confession, and in private society; the English Romanists, however, solemnly renounced them in a long protestation, prepared about the close of 1788, and which was signed by nearly all their body of any note, both clerical and lay, throughout England. At a general meeting in London, in 1789, every person present signed it. In the very words of this protestation, an oath was framed, when Romish claims for relief again came before parliament; but the ministry made some alterations in it, and these were at first deemed admissible, even by the ecclesiastical members of the Romish committee. Subsequently, objections were made to them, and to meet these, it was eventually altered. All who took it were to be relieved from certain penal statutes. This wise and just relaxation received parliamentary sanction in 1791; numbering amongst its most active supporters the illustrious bishop Horsley.1 It abrogated the statutes of recusancy, tolerated Romish chapels and schools, removed liability to be called upon to take the oath of supremacy, or to make the declaration against transubstantiation, allowed Romanists to practise as barristers or attorneys, and freed them from several vexatious restrictions of less importance. At the same time, they were exempted from another grievance, in the omission of a clause making them pay double land-tax, in the bill annually imposing that tax. They were, in fact, now placed as to religious toleration, and as to fiscal contributions, though not as to political rights, very much upon a level with all other Englishmen. § 26. The Irish Romanists had been reduced, by various confiscations, and by intolerant statutes to protect a new race of The queries and answers may be seen in the first volume of the late Mr. utler's Historical Memoirs, p. 402, et seq. 4 Bisset, iv. 325. proprietors, to a state of abject vassalage and degradation. In the reign of James I. the whole province of Ulster was confiscated. When Cromwell's power was consolidated by victory, the native Irish received orders to remove into Connaught, and were forbidden to repass the Shannon under pain of death. Their estates were divided among the conquerors, as were those of every one who had been engaged in the rebellion, or who had acted as a partisan of the exiled royal family. This immense mass of landed property was partly assigned, in satisfaction of arrears of pay, to Cromwell's officers and soldiers; partly to certain monied men, who had advanced funds for the prosecution of the war. Such assignments received parliamentary sanction, after the Restoration; and thus two millions seven hundred thousand acres were legally conveyed from their late hereditary owners to a new class of proprietors. It was impossible that men, exasperated by a reduction to beggary so recent, to say nothing of religious prejudice, should not eagerly have crowded round the standard of James II. The unfortunate issue of their attempt involved them in final ruin. One million sixty thousand seven hundred and ninety-two acres were now confiscated. This property was sold, under authority of the English Parliament, to defray the expenses incurred in the late rebellion. By these repeated and enormous confiscations, the whole mass of Irish landed inheritances has passed by violence to new proprietors, with the exception of some estates possessed by five or six families of English descent. Even among these there had been attainders under Henry VIII., but their estates were subsequently recovered, and the owners, made wise by the lesson taught in that monarch's reign, steered clear of danger afterwards. In these transactions, however cruel and shameful they may be thought, or may really be, there is nothing worse than England underwent after the Norman conquest, or than has been undergone by other conquered countries: but in Ireland there were circumstances that prevented the gradual amalgamation of the pillaged and the pillagers; the former were, perhaps, universally Romanists, hence divided from those who had been made rich at their expense, by an inveterate religious prejudice, and furnished with a priesthood of their own, directed by a compact hierarchy, which not only kept alive an enthusi 6 6 astic religious party-spirit, but also pertinacious claims to the forfeited estates. The new proprietors were thus never at ease as to the firmness of their possession, and their legislation showed it. William's parliament, accordingly, in addition to the English enactments against Romanists, disarmed them, banished their priests, forbade their marriages with protestants, would not allow them to act as solicitors, or even as game keepers, and allowed any protestant discoverer of a horse in their hands, or power, to seize it under a magisterial warrant, and retain it on the payment of five pounds to its owner. Under Anne, Romanists were disabled from purchasing any of the forfeited lands, and even from taking any leases of them beyond two acres. They were also rendered unable to purchase, inherit, or take by gift, any lands in the hands of protestants; and all their own lands were made descendible in gavelkind; but if the eldest son embraced the established religion, his father was reduced to a tenancy for life, without power to sell or mortgage, or even to provide, except under the control of the chancellor, for his younger children. A similar invasion upon domestic comfort was made by another act, which enabled the chancellor to call upon the Romish parent of a protestant child to declare upon oath the value of his whole property, and to make such an assignment out of it to the protestant child, as he should think proper. The conforming wife of a Romanist might also obtain from the chancellor, as a jointure, the full extent of any settlement that her husband could make upon her. These, with other such measures, designed for extermination, reduced the Romanists to such a pitiable situation, that common feelings of humanity came to their relief, and a general spirit of connivance was excited among the protestant population, which made much of the penal code little else than a dead letter. It tended, however, so thoroughly to degrade and impoverish the Irish papists, that neither in 1715, nor in 1745, did the exiled Romish family find any encouragement among them; an abstinence that has been represented as a proof of their blameless political bearing, but which seems rather to show a stagnant feeling of utter helplessness. As years, however, rolled on, their prospects brightened. The people had never stood high 7 Butler, ii. 141; iv. 492. 8 8"We look upon the Catholics to be altogether as inconsiderable as the wo men and the children."-Swift, apud Butler, Ibid. iv. 505. in the scale of civilization, and, therefore, could easily rest contented with gratifications merely animal. Hence, as the country was quiet, population advanced with extraordinary rapidity. Some of the inferior classes naturally acquired property by the ordinary exercise of industry. These, with a miserable fraction of the old Romish proprietory body, being backed by a large and increasing populace, gradually formed an important section in the insular society. The just claims of this, not only to greater practical indulgence, but also to the abrogation of those odious penalties by which it was menaced in the statute book, were necessarily much aided in their operation upon society by the more enlightened views of religious liberty which daily gained ground in every quarter. The first movement, however, in its favour, appears to have come from a Romish committee; one of those combinations that may serve a cause, but may also injure it, by suggesting an adverse association, and give an edge to party rancour, that it must have wanted without the stimulus, boldness, and publicity of numbers. The Irish committee's earnest of ultimate success, was an act passed in 1774, prescribing an oath of allegiance, to be taken by Romanists, if they chose, but offering no specific advantage from it. Most of them of any account took it, and thus gave a solemn approval to the existing government. Such persons, in 1778, were enabled to hold leases for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, or for lives not exceeding five. They were also placed upon a level with other people as to the devising, transfer, inheritance, and holding of lands. In 1782 this measure of substantial relief was followed by others, which enabled Romanists to purchase lands, though not advowsons; freed from penalties those of their clergy who should register their names, and allowed them to teach schools. By the more intelligent protestants, these indulgences were viewed with great satisfaction. Fears of a French invasion had caused an immense armament of volunteers in Ireland, blending members of the two religions together, as defenders of their common country. It was this formidable array of an independent military power, that stripped the island pretty completely of its colonial character. The English government could no longer treat the country as a mere distant province of no great importance, after its resources were thus completely and formidably developed. Of the great armed association which so raised its country in the estimation of British statesmen, the representatives of one hundred and forty-three protestant corps met at Dungannon, in February, 1782. These delegates resolved, with only two dissentients, that private judgment in matters of religion was a natural right; hence, that late relaxations of the penal code against Romanists were subjects of national congratulation, and were likely to prove highly beneficial. By the prevalence of such liberal views, Romish hopes were necessarily raised, and various negociations for further indulgences were set on foot; but nothing was effected until 1793, when an act was passed, which placed Irish Romanists in the position that they occupied until 1829, denying them seats in Parliament, but otherwise leaving them under no substantial hardships. From their remaining disqualifications, earl Fitzwilliam would have relieved them, while he was lord lieutenant in 1795, but his measures were deemed injudicious, and he was hastily recalled before the object was effected. In 1798 the Irish rebellion broke out, which discovered a rancorous hatred of the protestant name highly injurious to the confidence of those who bear it, in their Romish countrymen. The disorders of that year, however, made the English government meditate upon the expediency of attaching the Roman Catholic priesthood to the state, by means of a parliamentary provision, and a secret negociation was accordingly entered upon, in 1799, with the prelacy for that purpose; the proffered bounty was to be made contingent upon a privilege secured for the crown of annulling the appointment of any prelate deemed objectionable. This privilege, termed the veto, was conceded by the four Romish archbishops, and the six senior bishops, after the deliberation of three successive days, on the ninth day immediately following. The transaction, however, failed, and did not become publicly known until 1805, when it was absurdly said, that the veto had been conceded by the Irish prelates from intimidation: an assertion positively denied by lord Castlereagh, who had negociated with them.3 § 27. In Scotland, popular abhorrence of Romanism had been pushed to greater lengths than in any other portion of the British isles, and in consequence, that religion had been very widely exterminated there. Nevertheless, there were families that con 9 Butler, ii. 516. 1 Collins, 241. The resolutions of the Roman Ca tholic Irish prelates may be seen in Mr. Butler's Historical Memoirs, ii. 150. 3 Ibid. 154. |