they were scattered over the whole country, barren or fertile, and that country was within a day’s sail of England.  The titles of the colonists to the land rested on sheer violence, sometimes aggravated by the grossest meanness and treachery, and these titles were not recognized by the plundered race.  Even with their gradual recognition it would have been difficult to introduce the English system of tenure, which was radically different and repellent to the Irish mind.  The bare idea of one man absolutely owning land and transmitting it entire to his heirs was incomprehensible to them.

The solution for all these difficulties was unfortunately only too easy and obvious.  England was near, strong, and thoroughly imbued with the policy of governing Ireland on the principle of antagonizing the races within her.  It was possible, therefore, by English help, under laws made in England, to constitute the Irish outlaws from the land, labourers on it, no doubt, that was an economic necessity, precarious occupiers of plots just sufficient to support life; but, in the eyes of the law, serfs.  The planters of the southern American Colonies imported African negroes for the same purpose, with irretrievably mischievous results to their own descendants.  Nor is it an exaggeration to compare the use made of the Irish for a certain period to the use made of these negroes, for great numbers of the Irish were actually exported as slaves to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and even to Carolina.

The outlawed multitude in Ireland were deprived, not only of all rights to the land, but, as a corollary, of all social privileges whatsoever.  “The law,” said an Irish Lord Chancellor, “does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic.”  The instrument of ostracism was the famous Penal Code, begun in William’s reign in direct and immediate defiance of a solemn pledge given in the Treaty of Limerick, guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics, and perfected in the reign of Anne.  This Code, ostensibly framed to extirpate Catholicism, was primarily designed to confirm and perpetuate the gigantic dislocation of property caused by the transference of Irish and Anglo-Irish land into English and Scotch ownership.  Since the rightful owners were Catholic, and the wrongful owners Protestants, the laws against the Catholic religion—­a religion feared everywhere by Englishmen at this period—­were the simplest means of legalizing and buttressing the new regime.  I shall not linger over the details of the Code.  Burke’s description of it remains classic and unquestioned:  “A complete system full of coherence and consistency, well digested and composed in all its parts ... a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”