The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1901-09-14
The High Handed Proceeding is Described
by Richard Williamson in
Scotch Periodical.
The Late Premier Of England Stigmatized
the Arocious Measure as a
Foul Transaction.

I to commerce, agriculture and manu-
factures Of various descriptions. The
penal laws-a code which, according
to an eminent writer, "would have
caused mutiny in hell if the devil
had tried to enact it there" and which
was intended, as Macaulay says, to
make the Irish Catholics what the
helots We're in Sparta, the Greeks un-
der the Ottoman, the blacks in Amer
ica-were greatly relaxed and many of
them repealed.
To properly understand few OF
the good results of Grattan's parlia-
ment, it is necessary to look into the
condition Of the people previous to
1882 so as to get an idea of the
wretched condition to which British
rule had reduced the people.
A traveller through Ireland in 174O
writes: Having been absent from this
country for years, on my return to it
last summer found it the most miser-
able scene of distress that I ever read
of in history. Want and misery on
every face, the rich unable to relieve
the poor, the roads spread with dead
and dying bodies, mankind the color
of the docks and nettles which they fed
on; two or three, sometimes more, on
car, going to the grave for want of
bearers to carry them, and many bur-
led only in the fields and bitches where
they perished. The universal scarcity
was followed by fluxes and malignant
fevers, which swept off multitudes OF
all sorts, so'that whole villages were
laid waste.''
| Sheridan, an Irish writer, says:
''The poor are sunk to the lowest de-
gree of misery and poverty-their
houses, dunghills; their victuals, the
blood of the cattle or the herds Of
the field"
Swift, another writer of the period,
says: "Lt is manifest that whatever
stranger took journey through Ire
land would be apt to think he was
in Lapland, rather than a country SO
favored by nature as ours in fruitful
ness Of soil and temperature of eli
mate. The miserable dress and diet
and dwellings Of the people, the gen.
eral desolation of the country, the fam
lilies of farmers who pay great rents
living in filth upon buttermilk and po-
tatoes, without shoes or stockings to
their feet, or house so convenient as
a pigsty to receive them"
I cannot do better now than quote
Lecky, the historian, the Unionist
member for Dublin University, whose
"History Of Ireland in the Eighteenth
Century shows very forcibly the odi-
Gus policy Of the government. Lecky,
speaking Of the wrongs of the Catho-
lies, says: ''They were deprived of the
elective suffrage, excluded from the
corporations, from the. magistracy,
from the bar, from the bench, from
the grand juries and from the vestries.
They could not be sheriffs or solicitors
or even gamekeepers or constables.
They were excluded from the army and
navy. They could not possess horse
of the value of more than f5, and any
Protestant, upon rendering that sum,
could appropriate the carriage horse or
hunter of his Catholic neighbor. In his
own country the Catholic was only
recognized by the law for repression
and punishment"
Several of the judges also went the
length of saying that ''the law does
not suppose any such person to exist
as an Irish Roman Catholic"
In these days it was a penal offence
, for Catholic to keep a school or to
educate his children either at home or
abroad. 1t was compulsory that they
should remain in complete ignorance,
unless by the subversion of their faith.
A marriage between a Catholic and q
| Protestant was null and void, and If
Hthey did marry, the priest who officiat-
ed was liable to capital punishment.
No Catholic was permitted to be the
guardian Of a child, neither was he
permitted to buy land or inherit or
receive it from Protestant. Such was
the state of Ireland in the eighteenth
century. Education entirely forbidden;