The task to which both the English and the Irish Parliaments now energetically addressed themselves was—­firstly, the undoing of the Acts passed in the late reign; secondly, the forfeiture of the estates of those who had taken the losing side in the late campaign; thirdly, the passing of a series of Acts the aim of which was as far as possible to stamp out the Roman Catholic religion altogether, and in any case to deprive it of any shadow or semblance of future political importance.

To describe at length the various Acts which make up what is known as the Penal code—­“a code impossible,” as Mr. Lecky observed in an earlier work, “for any Irish Protestant whose mind is not wholly perverted by religious bigotry, to look back at without shame and indignation,” would take too long.  It will be enough, therefore, if I describe its general purport, and how it affected the political and social life of that century upon which we are now entering.

In several respects it not a little resembled what is nowadays known as “boycotting,” only it was boycotting inflicted by the State itself.  As compared with some of the enactments passed against Protestants in Catholic countries, it was not, it must be said, sanguinary, but its aim seemed to be to make life itself intolerable; to reduce the whole Catholic population to the condition of pariahs and outcasts.  No Papist might possess a horse of the value of over L5; no Papist might carry arms; no Papist might dispose as he chose of his own property; no Papist might acquire any landed freehold; no Papist might practise in any of the liberal professions; no Papist might educate his sons at home, neither might he send them to be educated abroad.  Deeper wrong, more biting and terrible injury even than these, it sowed bitter strife between father and son, and brother and brother.  Any member of a family, by simply turning Protestant, could dispossess the rest of that family of the bulk of the estate to his own advantage.  Socially, too, a Papist, no matter what his rank, stood below, and at the mercy of, his Protestant neighbours.  He was treated by the executive as a being devoid, not merely of all political, but of all social rights, and only the numerical superiority of the members of the persecuted creed can have enabled them to carry on existence under such circumstances at all.

For it must be remembered (and this is one of its worst features) that those placed under this monstrous ban constituted the vast majority of the whole country.  In Burke’s memorable words, “This system of penalty and incapacity has for its object no small sect or obscure party, but a very numerous body of men, a body which comprehends at least two-thirds of the whole nation; it amounts to two million eight hundred thousand souls—­a number sufficient for the constituents of a great people[13].”  “The happiness or misery of multitudes,” he adds in another place, “can never be a thing indifferent.  A law against the majority of the people is in substance a law against the people itself; its extent determines its invalidity; it even changes its character as it enlarges its operation; it is not particular injustice, but general oppression, and can no longer be considered as a private hardship which might be borne, but spreads and grows up into the unfortunate importance of a national calamity.”