judice or favor. We shall do this, therefore,
in describing the condition of Ireland during the eighteenth century. We
find the Lord Chancellor of England declaring, during the first half of
that period, that "in the eye of the law no Catholic existed in
Ireland." The Lord Chief Justice affirms the same doctrine: "It appears
plain that the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish
Roman Catholic." The law, therefore, as created by England for Ireland,
deprived of all civil, religious, intellectual and moral rights
four-fifths of the whole population, and gave them over as a lawful prey
to the remaining fifth: a band of colonists and adventurers, who favored
the policy of the party then dominant in England. This was the condition
of the law. We shall see, presently, what was its result on the life of
the nation. It should be a warning, for all time, of the dangers which
arise when one nation undertakes to govern another. For it must be
clearly understood that the Sovreign and Parliament of England believed
that in this they stood for honor and righteousness, and had a true
insight into the spirit and will of the Most High. It was, indeed, on
this superior knowledge of the divine will that they based their whole
policy; for what else is the meaning of legal discrimination against the
holders of a certain form of faith?

[Illustration: Salmon Fishery, Galway.]

In the second half of the eighteenth century, in 1775, the Congress of
the United States sent its sympathy in these words to the people of
Ireland: "We know that you are not without your grievances; we
sympathize with you in your distress, and we are pleased to find that
the design of subjugating us has persuaded the administration to
dispense to Ireland some vagrant rays of ministerial sunshine. Even the
tender mercies of the government have long been cruel to you. In the
rich pastures of Ireland many hungry parasites are fed, and grow strong
to labor for her destruction."

Three years later, in 1778, Benjamin Franklin wrote thus to the Irish
people: "The misery and distress which your ill-fated country has been
so frequently exposed to, and has so often experienced, by such a
combination of rapine, treachery and violence as would have disgraced
the name of government in the most arbitrary country in the world, has
most sincerely affected your friends in America, and has engaged the
most serious attention of Congress."

It must be assumed that t