’They soon began to rely upon his justice as a magistrate.  This is a point where, their interest being nearly concerned, they are wonderfully quick and clearsighted; they soon discovered that Mr. Edgeworth leaned neither to Protestant nor Catholic, to Presbyterian nor Methodist; that he was not the favourer nor partial protector of his own or any other man’s followers.  They found that the law of the land was not in his hands an instrument of oppression, or pretence for partiality.  They discerned that he did even justice; neither inclining to the people, for the sake of popularity; nor to the aristocracy, for the sake of power.  This was a thing so unusual, that they could at first hardly believe that it was really what they saw.

’Soon after his return to Ireland he set about improving a considerable tract of land, reletting it at an advanced rent, which gave the actual monied measure of his skill and success.’  He also wrote a paper on the draining and planting of bogs, in which he gives minute directions for carrying out the work, for he was no mere theorist, but experimented on his own property; and he was not ashamed to own when he had made a mistake, but was constantly learning from experience.

He had for a while to turn from peaceful occupations and take his share in patriotic efforts for parliamentary refortn; this reform was pressed on the parliament sitting in Dublin by a delegation from a convention of the Irish volunteers.  They were raised in 1778 during the American War, when England had not enough troops for the defence of Ireland.  The principal Irish nobility and gentry enrolled themselves, and the force at length increased, till it numbered 50,000 men, under the command of officers of their own choosing.  The Irish patriots now felt their power, and used it with prudence and energy.  They obtained the repeal of many noxious laws—­one in particular was a penal statute passed in the reign of William III. against the Catholics ordaining forfeiture of inheritance against those Catholics who had been educated abroad.’  At the pleasure of any informer, it confiscated their estates to the next Protestant heir; that statute further deprived Papists of the power of obtaining any legal property by purchase; and, simply for officiating in the service of his religion, any Catholic priest was liable to be imprisoned for life.  Some of these penalties had fallen into disuse; but, as Mr. Dunning stated to the English House of Commons, “many respectable Catholics still lived in fear of them, and some actually paid contributions to persons who, on the strength of this act, threatened them with prosecutions.”  Lord Shelburne stated in the House of Lords “that even the most odious part of this statute had been recently acted upon in the case of one Moloury, an Irish priest, who had been informed against, apprehended, convicted, and committed to prison, by means of the lowest and most despicable of mankind, a common informing constable.  The Privy Council used efforts in behalf of the prisoner; but, in consequence of the written law, the King himself could not give a pardon, and the prisoner must have died in jail if Lord Shelburne and his colleagues had not released him at their own risk."’