[13] “Tracts on the Popery Laws.”

As was natural under the circumstances, many feigned conversions took place, that being the only way to avoid been utterly cut adrift from public life.  For by a succession of enactments, not only were the higher offices and the professions debarred to Roman Catholics, but they were even prohibited—­to so absurd a length can panic go—­from being sheriffs, jurymen, constables, or even gamekeepers.  “Every barrister, clerk, attorney, or solicitor,” to quote again Burke, “is obliged to take a solemn oath not to employ persons of that persuasion; no, not as hackney clerks, at the miserable salary of seven shillings a week.”  It was loudly complained of many years later, that men used to qualify for taking the oaths required upon being admitted as barristers or attorneys by attending church and receiving a sacramental certificate on their road to Dublin.  Others, to save their property from confiscation, sacrificed their inclinations, often what they held to be their hopes of salvation, to the exigencies of the situation, and nominally embraced Protestantism.  Old Lady Thomond, for instance, upon being reproached by some stricter co-religionist for thus imperilling her soul, asked with quick scorn whether it was not better that one old woman should burn than that the Thomonds should lose their own.  The head of the house would thus often present himself or herself at the parish church, while the other members of the family kept to the old faith, and the chaplain, under the name of the tutor or secretary, celebrated mass in the harness-room or the servants’ hall.

To the credit of Irish Protestants it may be said that, once the first violence of fanaticism had died out, there was little attempt to enforce the legal enactments in all their hideous atrocity.  According to the strict letter of the law, no Roman Catholic bishop, archbishop, or other dignitary; no monk, nun, or member of any religious fraternity, could set foot in Ireland; and any one who harboured them was liable at the third offence to confiscation of all his goods.  A list of parish priests was also drawn up and certified, and their names entered, and when these had died no others were by law allowed to come, any so doing being liable to the penalties of high treason.  As a matter of fact, however, they came with very little hindrance, and the succession was steadily kept up from the Continent.  The attempt to stamp out a religion by force proved to be the most absolute of failures, although, as no rule is without its exception, it must be added that in England, where exactly the same penal laws were in force, and where the number of Roman Catholics was at the beginning of the century considerable, they dwindled by the end of it almost to the point of extinction.  In Ireland the reverse was the case.  The number of Roman Catholics, according to the most trustworthy statistics, increased rather than diminished under the Penal code, and there were many more conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism than there were the other way.