O' DriscoVs Views of Ireland. 



enemy witli niKiisgiilscd and iiiipreteiul- 

 jng- cruelty. The Inquisition was a 

 piieslly and fanatical institution, bnilt 

 lip by the plausible wickedness of 

 chnrciinien, but it proceeded at once 

 against its victim, and exhibited tlie 

 dungeon, and the torture, an<l the llame, 

 without reserve or pretence. Its object 

 was to prevent the introduelioH of a 

 new doctrine, not to eradicate an old 

 one. Its courts and officials, and all its 

 polished machinery, were greatly infe- 

 rior, in depth of design and extent of 

 operation, to the penal code of Ireland. 

 The Inquisition had not a whole nation 

 for its oliject ; nor did it, while it shunned 

 the odium and the scandal of the nntoda 

 yi?,Tind solitary imprisonment, — while it 

 left its victim at large, yet surround 

 him with a net- work of cruelly, and set 

 H brand upon him, which embarrassed 

 and disgraced him in private and in 

 public, which consumed his property 

 and destroyed his comforts, and, though 

 guiltless of his blood, yet visited him 

 with a more complex, perplexing, and 

 disastrous ruin; meeting him in all his 

 dealings with his neighbours, in the 

 bosom of his family, in the management 

 of his property ; pursuing him with a 

 teasing and relentless persecution, in 

 court, and in parliament, in his own 

 household, and on Ihc high-way, and 

 preserving his life only to make it in- 

 supportable. 



The Inquisition, satiate with blood, 

 slumbered at times. The penal laws 

 executed themselves, but not fully. 

 The Inquisition blazed out occasionally 

 in all its horrors, and was endured. 

 Civil society was not burned up in these 

 conflagrations; but, if the [lenal laws 

 had been always rigidly executed, so- 

 «!iety could not have subsisted. The 

 Protestants of Ireland, satisfied, gene- 

 rally, with a niono()()ly of power and 

 profit, shrank, for the most part, from tlio 

 execution of the more odious provisions 

 of the law. 



It is a mistake to think that the 

 penal laws «crc never executed in their 

 utmost severity and barbarity : they 

 were, frequently. An<l wc could fdl 

 our [taper with details of the most hide- 

 ous enormities, perpetrated under the 

 authority of these laws. We could 

 present such a phantasmagoria of 

 ininted priests, and ruined families — 

 wretches wailing for their lost subsist- 

 ence, or •rrasping in agony at perjury 

 and Kacrilcge to save them i'rom beg- 

 gary, and |)rotect their inheritance. 

 We (oiild exhibit the profaned and 



■ 6'2I 



polluted altar, surrounded by the tor- 

 tured victims of persecution, swearing 

 to a falsehood, and avowing their con- 

 formity to be a lie — invoking the Deity 

 to witness their guilt and their misery, 

 and drinking the cup of the New Testa- 

 ment in the midst of horror, agony, and 

 imprecations. 



Looking info the penal laws as they 

 were first enacted, we find such as it 

 would be an indignity to our nature to 

 suppose capable of defence or excuse, 

 in any possible or imaginable concur- 

 rence of eiicunistances. They cannot 

 be defended or excused ; nor is there 

 now living any one interested in their 

 justification. The Protestants of Ire- 

 land, of our day, arc guiltless of the 

 penal code ; they arc called upon for no 

 defence of it ; no one imputes to thcni 

 its iniquity. All that was most intole- 

 rable and shocking to our nature has 

 passed away long since ; and that which 

 still lingers on the Statute Cook, though 

 deriving its prolonged existence from 

 the spirit of the ancient law, yet pre- 

 sents us with another, though not more 

 sound, defence for its continuance. 



It is time to do away with all disqua- 

 lifications, and all privileges, on account 

 of religious opinions. Religion has 

 been too long the badge of party; a 

 thing by which the aggregation of secu- 

 lar interests could be more completely 

 grouped and arranged ; by means of 

 which, those persons who were ranged 

 against each other in fierce contention 

 for power or property, might more 

 easily recognise a friend, or discern an 

 enemy. Religion was not, in mjst 

 cases, hardly in any case, the cause of 

 the quarrel. It was sometimes the pre- 

 tence ; but more generally it was car- 

 ried merely as the standards of op- 

 posing hosts, which, like the ensigns of 

 armies, are looked upon with some 

 mysterious kind of respect and venera- 

 tion, but are known, after all, to be no 

 more than painted silk or canvass; and, 

 as to the real cause of tho contest, are 

 like the idle uind in which they flutter. 

 Legislation ought to limit itself to the 

 actions of men ; it travels out of its pro- 

 per sphere when it undertakes to deal 

 with their opinions: this is apparent by 

 the miserable failure of all such at- 

 t(Mnpts. Whatever is most beautiful or 

 productive for the ornament or support 

 of life, lies ojien and ex[)osed to the 

 unhappy meddling of ignorant or inter- 

 ested politicians; but opinions, true or 

 false, escape from the grasp of the 

 oppressor, and laugh at the foolishness 



of 



