ed to receive the sacrament according to the forms
of the Established Church. As dissenters from that Church had great
influence in the Irish Parliament, and as it was well known that their
abhorrence of the Church which had been established by law was little
short of their hatred of the Church which had been suppressed by law, it
was hoped that they would reject the bill; but they were assured that
they would not be required to take the test, and with this assurance
they passed the Act. It seems to those who look back on such
proceedings, almost a marvel, how men, whose conscience forbade them to
receive the sacrament according to certain rites, and who, in many
cases, certainly would have resigned property, if not life, sooner than
act contrary to their religious convictions, should have been so blindly
infatuated as to compel other men, as far as they had power to do so, to
violate their conscientious convictions. The whole history of the
persecutions which Catholics have endured at the hands of Protestants of
all and every denomination, is certainly one of the most curious phases
of human perversity which the philosopher can find to study.

Two of the gentlemen, Sir Toby Butler and Colonel Cusack, who had signed
the Treaty of Limerick, petitioned to be heard by counsel against the
Bill. But appeals to honour and to justice were alike in vain, when
addressed to men who were destitute of both. The petitioners were
dismissed with the insulting remark, that if they suffered from the Act
it was their own fault, since, if they complied with its requirements,
honours and wealth were at their command. But these were men who would
not violate the dictates of conscience for all that the world could
bestow on them, and of this one should think they had already given
sufficient proof. The Bill was passed without a dissentient voice; and
men who would themselves have rebelled openly and violently if the
Sacramental Test had been imposed on them, and who would have talked
loudly of liberty of conscience, and the blasphemy of interfering with
any one's religious convictions, now, without a shadow of hesitation,
imposed this burden upon their fellow-men, and were guilty of the very
crime of persecution, with which they so frequently charged their
Catholic fellow-subjects.

One Act followed another, each adding some new restriction to the last,
or some fresh incentive for persecution. In 1709 an attempt was made to
plant some Prote