King, once more
to be called to account and to receive punishment for her crimes.

By the famous Articles of Limerick the terms of the surrender, wrung by
Saarsfield's {224} valor from the English commander, were more
favorable than could have been expected. These were a full pardon, and
a restoration of the rights enjoyed by the Catholics under Charles II.
The army, with its officers, was to go into exile, and they might
choose either the service of William in England, or enroll themselves
in the service of France, Spain, or other European countries. The
latter was the choice of all except a very few; and when the
heart-rending separation was over, wives and mothers clinging in
despair to the retreating vessels, the last act in the Great Rebellion
of 1690 was finished.

Of course the Poynings law was restored, the recent Acts repealed, and
a new period had commenced for Ireland; a period of quiet, but a quiet
not unlike that of the graveyard, the sort of quiet which makes the
wounded and exhausted animal cease to struggle with his captors. For a
whole century we are to hear of no more revolts, risings, or
rebellions. There was nothing left to revolt. Nothing left to rise!
The bone and sinew of the nation had gone to fight under strange
banners upon foreign battle-fields, so there was left a nation of
non-combatants, {225} with spirit broken and hope extinguished, and
grown so pathetically patient, that we hear not a single remonstrance
as William's cold-blooded decrees, known as the "Penal Code," are
placed in operation. These enactments were not blood-thirsty, not
sanguinary, like those of former reigns, but just a deliberate process
apparently designed to convert the Irish into a nation of outcasts, by
destroying every germ of ambition and drying up every spring which is
the source of self-respecting manhood.

Here are a few of the provisions of the famous, or infamous, code: No
Papist could acquire or dispose of property; nor could he own a horse
of the value of more than L5; and any Protestant offering that sum for
a horse he must accept it. He might not practise any learned
profession, nor teach a school, nor send his children to school at home
or abroad. Every barrister, clerk, and attorney must take a solemn
oath not for any purpose to employ persons belonging to that religious
faith. The discovery of any weapon rendered its Catholic owner liable
to fines, whipping, the pillory, and imprisonment. He