even private conveyancing, the most voluntary agency, are prohibited to them under the severest penalties and the most rigid modes of inquisition.  They have gone beyond even this:  for every barrister, six clerk, attorney, or solicitor, 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.  No tradesman of that persuasion is capable by any service or settlement to obtain his freedom in any town corporate; so that they trade and work in their own native towns as aliens, paying, as such, quarterage, and other charges and impositions.  They are expressly forbidden, in whatever employment, to take more than two apprentices, except in the linen manufacture only.

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In every state, next to the care of the life and properties of the subject, the education of their youth has been a subject of attention.  In the Irish laws this point has not been neglected.  Those who are acquainted with the constitution of our universities need not be informed that none but those who conform to the Established Church can be at all admitted to study there, and that none can obtain degrees in them who do not previously take all the tests, oaths, and declarations.  Lest they should be enabled to supply this defect by private academies and schools of their own, the law has armed itself with all its terrors against such a practice.  Popish schoolmasters of every species are proscribed by those acts, and it is made felony to teach even in a private family.  So that Papists are entirely excluded from an education in any of our authorized establishments for learning at home.  In order to shut up every avenue to instruction, the act of King William in Ireland has added to this restraint by precluding them from all foreign education.

This act is worthy of attention on account of the singularity of some of its provisions.  Being sent for education to any Popish school or college abroad, upon conviction, incurs (if the party sent has any estate of inheritance) a kind of unalterable and perpetual outlawry.  The tender and incapable age of such a person, his natural subjection to the will of others, his necessary, unavoidable ignorance of the laws, stands for nothing in his favor.  He is disabled to sue in law or equity; to be guardian, executor, or administrator; he is rendered incapable of any legacy or deed of gift; he forfeits all his goods and chattels forever; and he forfeits for his life all his lands, hereditaments, offices, and estate of freehold, and all trusts, powers, or interests therein.  All persons concerned in sending them or maintaining them abroad, by the least assistance of money or otherwise, are involved in the same disabilities, and subjected to the same penalties.