s treason. Henceforth, to the
bitterness of race hatred and the pride of the conqueror were to be
added the blackest of religious feuds, the most cruel of religious
persecutions in the history of the world. Again let Goldwin Smith,
the English Unionist, describe the result: "Of all the wars waged by
a civilized on a barbarous _(sic)_ and despised race these wars waged
by the English on the Irish seem to have been the most hideous. No
quarter was given by the invader to man, woman, or child. The
butchering of women and children is repeatedly and brutally avowed.
Nothing can be more horrible than the cool satisfaction with which
English commanders report their massacres." Famine was deliberately
added to the other horrors. What was called law was more cruel than
war: it was death without the opportunity for defense and with the
hypocrisy of the forms of justice added.

Out of this situation came the infamous Penal Code, which, by the
period of William the Third, about 1692, became a finished system.
This is the "Irish Code" of which Lord Brougham said: "It was so
ingeniously contrived that an Irish Catholic could not lift his hand
without breaking it." And Edmund Burke said: "The wit of man never
devised a machine to disgrace a realm or destroy a kingdom so perfect
as this." Montesquieu, the great French jurist-philosopher, the
author of the epoch-making _Spirit of the Laws_, commented: "It must
have been contrived by devils; it ought to have been written in
blood; and the only place to register it is in hell." Yet for two
hundred years this code of death, national and individual, was the
supreme law of Ireland.

Wendell Phillips, the great American orator, in his lecture on
"Daniel O'Connell," summed up this Penal Code in words that will not
soon be forgotten by the world. His reference to Mr. Froude is to
James Anthony Froude, the English historian. He says:

"You know that, under it, an Irish Catholic could not sit in the
House of Commons; he could not hold any commission from the Crown,
either civil or military; he could be a common soldier--nothing more.
He could neither vote, nor sit on a jury, nor stand on a witness
stand, nor bring a suit, nor be a doctor, nor be a lawyer, nor travel
five miles from his own home without a permit from a justice of the
peace. The nearest approach that ever was made to him was a South
Carolina negro before the war. He had no rights that a Protestant
needed to respect. If he was a