ed towards the Irish, and of the almost
judicial blindness which appears to have prevented the framers of it,
and the rulers of that unfortunate nation, from perceiving the folly or
the wickedness of such enactments.

It was a continuance of the old policy. The natives of the country were
to be trampled down, if they could not be trampled out; the English and
Irish were to be kept for ever separate, and for ever at variance. How,
then, could the Irish heart ever beat loyally towards the English
sovereign? How could the Irish people ever become an integral portion of
the British Empire? Pardon me for directing your attention specially to
this statute. It will explain to you that the Irish were not allowed to
be loyal; it will excuse them if they have sometimes resented such cruel
oppressions by equally cruel massacres and burnings--if they still
remembered these wrongs with that statute before them, and the
unfortunate fact that its enactments were virtually continued for
centuries.

This statute enacts (1) that any alliance with the Irish by marriage,
nurture of infants, or gossipred [standing sponsors], should be
punishable as high treason; (2) that any man of English race taking an
Irish name, or using the Irish language, apparel, or customs, should
forfeit all his lands; (3) that to adopt or submit to the Brehon law was
treason; (4) that the English should not make war upon the natives
without the permission of Government; (5) that the English should not
permit the Irish to pasture or graze upon their lands, nor admit them to
any ecclesiastical benefices or religious houses, nor entertain their
minstrels or rhymers. (6) It was also forbidden to impose or cess any
soldiers upon the _English_ subjects against their will, under pain of
felony; and some regulations were made to restrain the abuse of
sanctuary, and to prevent the great lords from laying heavy burdens upon
gentlemen and freeholders.

I shall ask you to consider these statutes carefully; to remember that
they were compiled under the direction of a crown prince, and confirmed
by the men who had the entire government of Ireland in their hands. The
first was an open and gross insult to the natives, who were treated as
too utterly beneath their English rulers to admit of their entering into
social relations with them. The settlers who had lived some time in the
country, were ascertaining every day that its inhabitants were not
savages, and that they consider