But while the
Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their ambition in the
service of France, those who remained at home had sunk into a condition
of utter degradation. All Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to
foreign lands, and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the
Catholics who remained."[30]

Mr. Lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, I think,
the best that has been written.

"The last great Protestant ruler of England was William III., who is
identified in Ireland with the humiliation of the Boyne, with the
destruction of Irish trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The
ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party have made him more
odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was
personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his
contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his
successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a
system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to
impoverish the people of Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were
absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the
corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at
Parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as
constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or
become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman.
Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and
if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately
assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and
debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as
ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to
obtain the instruction they were refused at home. They could not marry
Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by
law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy
land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold
life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease
on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the
rent. If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased his
profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make
a corresponding increase in his payments, any Protestant who gave the
information could enter into p