IV.  ED. Cap. 3.

    “An act, whereby letters patent of pardon from the king to
    those that sue to Rome for certain benefices is void.  Rot. 
    Parl.

“Item, At the request of the commons, it is ordeyned and established, by authority of the said Parliament, that all maner letters patents of the king, of pardons or pardon granted by the king, or hereafter to be granted, to any provisor that claim any title by the bulls of the Pope to any maner benefices, where, at the time of the impetrating of the said bulls of provision, the benefice is full of an incumbent, that then the said letters patents of pardon or pardons be void in law and of none effect.”

When, by every expedient of force and policy, by a war of some centuries, by extirpating a number of the old, and by bringing in a number of new people full of those opinions and intending to propagate them, they had fully compassed their object, they suddenly took another turn,—­commenced an opposite persecution, made heavy laws, carried on mighty wars, inflicted and suffered the worst evils, extirpated the mass of the old, brought in new inhabitants; and they continue at this day an oppressive system, and may for four hundred years to come, to eradicate opinions which by the same violent means they had been four hundred years endeavoring by every means to establish.  They compelled the people to submit, by the forfeiture of all their civil rights, to the Pope’s authority, in its most extravagant and unbounded sense, as a giver of kingdoms; and now they refuse even to tolerate them in the most moderate and chastised sentiments concerning it.  No country, I believe, since the world began, has suffered so much on account of religion, or has been so variously harassed both for Popery and for Protestantism.

It will now be seen, that, even if these laws could be supposed agreeable to those of Nature in these particulars, on another and almost as strong a principle they are yet unjust, as being contrary to positive compact, and the public faith most solemnly plighted.  On the surrender of Limerick, and some other Irish garrisons, in the war of the Revolution, the Lords Justices of Ireland and the commander-in-chief of the king’s forces signed a capitulation with the Irish, which was afterwards ratified by the king himself by inspeximus under the great seal of England.  It contains some public articles relative to the whole body of the Roman Catholics in that kingdom, and some with regard to the security of the greater part of the inhabitants of five counties.  What the latter were, or in what manner they were observed, is at this day of much less public concern.  The former are two,—­the first and the ninth.  The first is of this tenor:—­“The Roman Catholics of this kingdom [Ireland] shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles the Second.