"[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 that a desire to devote themselves to the study of the
law had led many gentlemen to acknowledge a conversion to Protestantism,
a statute was actually passed to require them to prove their sincerity
by five years' adherence to their new form of religion before they could
be regarded as having washed off the defilement of their old heresy
sufficiently to be thought worthy to wear a gown in the Four Courts. No
Roman Catholic might keep a school; while a strange refinement of
intolerance had added a statute prohibiting parents from sending their
children to Roman Catholic Schools in a foreign country.
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