enabled to sue for it as his own right.  The courts of law are not alone open to him; he may (and this is the usual method) enter into either of the courts of equity, and call upon the parties, and those whom he suspects to be their trustees, upon oath, and under the penalties of perjury, to discover against themselves the exact nature and value of their estates in every particular, in order to induce their forfeiture on the discovery.  In such suits the informer is not liable to those delays which the ordinary procedure of those courts throws into the way of the justest claimant; nor has the Papist the indulgence which he [it?] allows to the most fraudulent defendant, that of plea and demurrer; but the defendant is obliged to answer the whole directly upon oath.  The rule of favores ampliandi, &c., is reversed by this act, lest any favor should be shown, or the force and operation of the law in any part of its progress be enervated.  All issues to be tried on this act are to be tried by none but known Protestants.

It is here necessary to state as a part of this law what has been for some time generally understood as a certain consequence of it.  The act had expressly provided that a Papist could possess no sort of estate which might affect land (except as before excepted).  On this a difficulty did, not unnaturally, arise.  It is generally known, a judgment being obtained or acknowledged for any debt, since the statute of Westm. 2, 13 Ed. I. c. 18, one half of the debtor’s land is to be delivered unto the creditor until the obligation is satisfied, under a writ called Elegit, and this writ has been ever since the ordinary assurance of the land, and the great foundation of general credit in the nation.  Although the species of holding under this writ is not specified in the statute, the received opinion, though not juridically delivered, has been, that, if they attempt to avail themselves of that security, because it may create an estate, however precarious, in land, their whole debt or charge is forfeited, and becomes the property of the Protestant informer.  Thus you observe, first, that by the express words of the law all possibility of acquiring any species of valuable property, in any sort connected with land, is taken away; and, secondly, by the construction all security for money is also cut off.  No security is left, except what is merely personal, and which, therefore, most people who lend money would, I believe, consider as none at all.

Under this head of the acquisition of property, the law meets them in every road of industry, and in its direct and consequential provisions throws almost all sorts of obstacles in their way.  For they are not only excluded from all offices in Church and State, which, though a just and necessary provision, is yet no small restraint in the acquisition, but they are interdicted from the army, and the law, in all its branches.  This point is carried to so scrupulous a severity, that chamber practice, and