The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1905-04-01
The Penal pays in Ireland.

The penal days in Ireland lasted from
the time of William III, till the pas
sage of the emancipation act, in lS2S
or 1876 wears The Irish race were SerfS
in their own land, and suffered all the
tyranny and torture which wicked men,
instigated by the devil and untram-
meled by law, could invent and intiict
No Irish Catholic could educate ms
child at home, or send him abroad for
that purpose, under the heaviest pains
and penalties. A price was set upon
the head of the priest and the school
master. They were hunted like wolves
from mountain to glen and through
woods and bogs, by hilarious squires,
and in many cases shot or hung and
quartered and their hearts and bowels
torn out and burned before their ewes
If a family desired to worship God they
had to steal out in the dead of night,
creep along old bypaths in the shadows
of hedges. wade through rivers and
hide in some deep mountain glen where
the poor. holy, naked priest under a
on a floor soaked with water, celebrated
the holy sacrament of mass.
No Irish Catholic could hold any real
estate in his own right or even lease
any land from the Protestant landlord,
and if his son turned against his father.
and became a. Protestant, he was by
law invested with title to any lands his
father might secretly own. The Irish
man was thus reduced to a mere squat
ter on the lands of his fOrefatherS
Neither could he have any arms in his
possession, nor even d knife and fork
unless chained to the table He could
not possess a horse of greater value
then G5, and If he raised one of greater
value any Protestant might take il
away ON paying 60 for it. He could
get no redress at law for an injury
however great done to him, and the law
assumed that there We're no Catholics
in Ireland and in addition to that, their
courts We're presided over By Orange
judges, and none but Orangemen could
be impaneled upon the jury and all
were bound by oaths to assist each 9TH
er against the 'papists. He might be
waylaid and beaten, or even killed and
there was no redress. His wife and
daughters might be assaulted and
abused by a drunken villain, but he
was powerless to get justice. Associa-
tions of Protestants were formed in
various parts of the country to rob.
burn, kill and murder Catholics and
the latter had to combine in self-de
fense.
In Armagh ''the peep o. day boys"
the forerunnerS of the Orangenen, used
to go about the countries in bodies
about the break of day, hence their
name. and armed to the teeth, attack
and destroy the property of Catholics,
burning houses and barns, driving off
cattle and sheep or killing and destroy
ing them on the farms, and if the people
made any resistance the ruffians shot
them down.
In Louth the Protestant squires
formed themselves into what they were
pleased to call Hell Fire clubs and
when the members of these noble asso-
Citations drank themselves into frenzy,
it was their custom to sally forth we'll
armed. break into Catholic houses,
abuse the women and even murder the
men if they offered resistance. Then
the Hell Fire clubbists' would set fire
to the buildings and shout and laugh
and jeer at the unfortunate owners
whose property was being destroyed.
The things we here relate might be
thought incredible if the perpetrators
themselves had not left records, by way
of bravado, of their nocturnal exploits
for the edification of their successors.
s.
And with a knowledge of all these
villainies pereptrated upon their ances-
tors, supercilious scoundrels of the pres
ent day raise their eyebrows and ask
why Irishnen exhibit such antipathy
to their English rulers" Their answer
is plain. The robberies, murders. spolia-
tions and tyranny inflicted by English
men upon the native Irish during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
were enSraven on the hearts of those
who suffered, and they transmitted the
marks to the hearts OF their descend
ants. The burning hatred of John Dill
Ion and William O'Brien are but the
of the sufferings of their
in the penal days. Individual
men may forget and forgive wrongs in
hicted upon themselves, but nations
cannot. When the iron heel of oppres-
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