the conduct of factious pastors of their own as under a foreign
ecclesiastical court.

* * * * *

In the second year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth were enacted several
limitations in the acquisition or the retaining of property, which had,
so far as regarded any general principles, hitherto remained untouched
under all changes.

These bills met no opposition either in the Irish Parliament or in the
English Council, except from private agents, who were little attended
to; and they passed into laws with the highest and most general
applauses, as all such things are in the beginning, not as a system of
persecution, but as masterpieces of the most subtle and refined
politics. And to say the truth, these laws, at first view, have rather
an appearance of a plan of vexatious litigation and crooked
law-chicanery than of a direct and sanguinary attack upon the rights of
private conscience: because they did not affect life, at least with
regard to the laity; and making the Catholic opinions rather the subject
of civil regulations than of criminal prosecutions, to those who are
not lawyers and read these laws they only appear to be a species of
jargon. For the execution of criminal law has always a certain
appearance of violence. Being exercised directly on the persons of the
supposed offenders, and commonly executed in the face of the public,
such executions are apt to excite sentiments of pity for the sufferers,
and indignation against those who are employed in such cruelties,--being
seen as single acts of cruelty, rather than as ill general principles of
government. But the operation of the laws in question being such as
common feeling brings home to every man's bosom, they operate in a sort
of comparative silence and obscurity; and though their cruelty is
exceedingly great, it is never seen in a single exertion, and always
escapes commiseration, being scarce known, except to those who view them
in a general, which is always a cold and phlegmatic light. The first of
these laws being made with so general a satisfaction, as the chief
governors found that such things were extremely acceptable to the
leading people in that country, they were willing enough to gratify them
with the ruin of their fellow-citizens; they were not sorry to divert
their attention from other inquiries, and to keep them fixed to this, as
if this had been the only real object of their national politics; and
for many years