arliament such as prevailed on this side of the Channel; since a
Parliament whose sessions were thus intermittent could not possibly
exercise that degree of supervision over the revenue, either in its
collection or its expenditure, which is among its most important duties.
And the continued maintenance of this practice must be regarded farther
as a proof that the English legislators had not yet learned to consider
Ireland as an integral part of the kingdom, entitled in every particular
to equal rights with England and Scotland. Indeed, it is impossible for
any Englishman to contemplate the history of the treatment of Ireland by
the English legislators, whether Kings, ministers, or Parliaments, for
more than a century and a half, without equal feelings of shame at the
injustice and wonder at the folly of their conduct. Not only was Ireland
denied freedom of trade with England (a denial as inconsistent not only
with equity but also with common-sense as if Windsor had been refused
free trade with London),[126] but Irish manufactures were deliberately
checked and suppressed to gratify the jealous selfishness of the English
manufacturers. Macaulay, in his zeal for the memory of William III., has
not scrupled to apologize for, if not to justify, the measures
deliberately sanctioned by that sovereign for the extinction of the
Irish woollen manufactures, on the ground that Ireland was not a sister
kingdom, but a colony; that "the general rule is, that the English
Parliament is competent to legislate for all colonies planted by English
subjects, and that no reason existed for considering the case of the
colony in Ireland as an exception."[127] There is, perhaps, no passage
in his whole work less to his credit. But, if such was the spirit in
which an English historian could write of Ireland in the latter half of
this present century, it may, perhaps, diminish our wonder at the
conduct of our legislators in an earlier generation.

The penal laws on the subject of religion were also conceived and
carried out in a spirit of extraordinary rigor and injustice. By far the
larger portion of the Irish population still adhered to the Roman
Catholic faith; but, as far as the negative punishment of restrictions
and disabilities could go, its profession was visited as one of the most
unpardonable of offences. No Roman Catholic could hold a commission in
the army, nor be called to the Bar, nor practise as an attorney; and
when it was found tha