A commission was appointed
to enquire into the forfeited estates; and the consequence was that
1,060,792 acres were declared escheated to the crown. In 1695 King
William, in his speech, read to the Irish parliament, assured
them that he was intent upon the firm settlement of Ireland upon a
Protestant basis. He kept his word, for when he died there did not
remain in the hands of Catholics one-sixth of the land which their
grandfathers held, even after the passing of the act of settlement.
The acts passed for securing the Protestant interest formed the series
known as the penal code, which was in force for the whole of the
eighteenth century. It answered its purpose effectually; it reduced
the nation to a state of poverty, degradation, and slavishness of
spirit unparalleled in the history of Christendom, while it made the
small dominant class a prodigy of political and religious tyranny.
Never was an aristocracy, as a body, more hardened in selfishness,
more insolent in spirit; never was a church more negligent of duty,
more intensely and ostentatiously secular. Both church and state
reeked with corruption.

The plan adopted for degrading the Catholics, and reducing all to one
plebeian level, was most ingenious. The ingenuity indeed may be said
to be Satanic, for it debased its victims morally as well as socially
and physically. It worked by means of treachery, covetousness,
perfidy, and the perversion of all natural affections. The trail of
the serpent was over the whole system. For example, when the last Duke
of Ormond arrived as lord lieutenant in 1703, the Commons waited on
him with a bill 'for discouraging the further growth of Popery,' which
became law, having met his decided approval. This act provided that
if the son of a Catholic became a Protestant, the father should be
incapable of selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any
portion of it by will. If a child ever so young professed to be a
Protestant, it was to be taken from its parents, and placed under the
guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation.

The sixth clause renders Papists incapable of purchasing any manors,
tenements, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the
same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for
any term exceeding thirty-one years. And with respect even to such
limited leases, it further enacts, that if a Papist should hold a farm
producing a profit greater than _one-third of the amo