the letter P on the cheek of all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot iron.  The Privy Council “disliked” this punishment, and substituted for it the loathsome measure by which safe guardians are secured for Eastern harems.  The English Government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and, says Mr. Lecky,[93] unanimously restored the punishment of branding.  The Bill was finally lost in Ireland, but only owing to a clause concerning leases.  It had gone to England winged with a prayer from the Commons that it might be recommended “in the most effectual manner to his Majesty,” and by the assurance of the Viceroy in reply that they might depend on his due regard to what was desired.[94] In the same year passed the Act which declared the title of the British Parliament to make laws for the government of Ireland.  On the accession of George II., a considerable body of Roman Catholics offered an address of congratulation.  It was received by the Lords Justices with silent contempt, and no one knows whether it ever reached its destination.  Finally, the acute state-craft of Primate Boulter resisted habitually the creation of an “Irish interest,” and above all any capacity of the Roman Catholics to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of George II. a clause was introduced in committee into a harmless Bill[95] for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised at a single stroke all the Roman Catholic voters in Ireland who up to that period had always enjoyed the franchise.

It is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress gradually achieved was in no way due to British influence.  For nearly forty years from the arrival of Archbishop Boulter in Ireland, the government of Ireland was in the hands of the Primates.  The harshness of administration was gradually tempered, especially in the brief viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield; but the British policy was steadily opposed to the enlargement of Parliamentary privilege, or the creation of any Irish interest, however narrow its basis, while the political extinction of the mass of the people was complete.  The pecuniary wants, however, of the Government, extending beyond the hereditary revenue, required a resort to the national purse.  The demands which were accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the Parliament with a vantage-ground, and a principle of life.  The action of this principle brought with it civilizing and humanizing influences, which had become clearly visible in the early years of George III., and which were cherished by the war of American Independence, as by a strong current of fresh air in a close and murky dungeon.