THE PENAL LAWS

New Zealand Tablet, 21 January 1915, Page 51

THE PENAL LAWS

WHAT THEY WERE AND WHAT THEY DID.

In these days when Irish Catholics are obliged to bear so frequently the imputation that they would if they could oppress their Protestant fellow-countrymen in Ireland, it may be of some interest, and perhaps utility, to recall how completely the boot is on the other leg. Irish Catholics have never been persecutors in any age or in any circumstances, but they have been persecuted, as probably no other race has ever been, with a refinement of cruelty and persistence of purpose fortunately without many parallels, if indeed with any parallel, in the history of the racial relations of mankind. A recent writer in the Irish Monthly quotes a passage from the -words of Justin McCarthy summarising the main provisions of the Penal Laws in Ireland, which in one form or other practically ran current during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and well into the nineteenth. The Emancipation Act was passed in 1829. Until 1870 the lingering traces of persecution remained.

‘ Under the Penal Laws,’ writes McCarthy, ‘ the Catholic population of a Catholic country were deprived of almost every right that makes life precious. Popping, Bishop of Meath, had proclaimed from the pulpit that Protestants were not bound to keep faith with Papists. Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief Justice Robinson had proclaimed from the Bench that the law did not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Catholic. The Penal Laws certainly did their best to ensure that no such person did exist. In their own country Irish Catholics were shut out from every civil or military profession ; from every Government office, from the highest to the lowest ; from almost every duly and every privilege that can be obeyed or enjoyed by citizens. A Catholic could not sit upon the benches of the Lords or Commons of the Irish Parliament, lie could not record his vote for the election of a member of Parliament; he could not serve in the Army or Navy; lie could not plead at the Bar or give judgment from the Bench ; he could not become a magistrate or a

member of a corporation-, . or serve on grand juries of in vestries he could not give education, he could not receive education ; he could not send his children abroad to be educated. If, in defiance of the law, he, a Catholic, did send his child to receive, in Continental colleges, that knowledge which was refused at home, he was subjected to a fine of 100, and the child so educated was excluded from inheriting any property in Ireland or England. Not only was the Catholic denied the practice of his own religion, but conformity to the Protestant faith was enforced by Statute. Every Catholic was liable to a fine of £6O a month for not attending a Protestant place of worship, and, at any time, two Justices of the Peace could call a Catholic over 16 years of age before them, and bestow what property he possessed upon his next-of-kin, if he refused to turn from his faith. Any four Justices of the Peace could, without the formalities of a trial, send any Catholic refusing to attend Protestant service into banishment for life. Every Catholic priest in the country pursued his sacred calling under a penalty of death. Deprived alike of civil and religious rights, the Catholic was further plundered of his property. No Catholic might buy land or inherit it, 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 as that the profits of the land exceeded one-third the value of the land. Any Protestant discovering that a farm held by a Papist produced a profit greater than one-third of the rent could, immediately upon announcing this discovery, dispossess the Catholic owner and seize the farm for himself.’