ost all sorts of obstacles in their way. For they are not only
excluded from all offices in Church and State, which, though a just and
necessary provision, is yet no small restraint in the acquisition, but
they are interdicted from the army, and the law, in all its branches.
This point is carried to so scrupulous a severity, that chamber
practice, and even private conveyancing, the most voluntary agency, are
prohibited to them under the severest penalties and the most rigid modes
of inquisition. They have gone beyond even this: for every barrister,
six clerk, attorney, or solicitor, is obliged to take a solemn oath not
to employ persons of that persuasion,--no, not as hackney clerks, at the
miserable salary of seven shillings a week. No tradesman of that
persuasion is capable by any service or settlement to obtain his freedom
in any town corporate; so that they trade and work in their own native
towns as aliens, paying, as such, quarterage, and other charges and
impositions. They are expressly forbidden, in whatever employment, to
take more than two apprentices, except in the linen manufacture only.

* * * * *

In every state, next to the care of the life and properties of the
subject, the education of their youth has been a subject of attention.
In the Irish laws this point has not been neglected. Those who are
acquainted with the constitution of our universities need not be
informed that none but those who conform to the Established Church can
be at all admitted to study there, and that none can obtain degrees in
them who do not previously take all the tests, oaths, and declarations.
Lest they should be enabled to supply this defect by private academies
and schools of their own, the law has armed itself with all its terrors
against such a practice. Popish schoolmasters of every species are
proscribed by those acts, and it is made felony to teach even in a
private family. So that Papists are entirely excluded from an education
in any of our authorized establishments for learning at home. In order
to shut up every avenue to instruction, the act of King William in
Ireland has added to this restraint by precluding them from all foreign
education.

This act is worthy of attention on account of the singularity of some of
its provisions. Being sent for education to any Popish school or college
abroad, upon conviction, incurs (if the party sent has any estate of
inheritance) a kind of unaltera