GEORGE II.

In this reign, the following additional disabilities were imposed upon the Catholics.

By the 1 Geo. II. c. 9. sect. 7. no Papist can vote at an election without taking the oath of supremacy. However great the oppression which the Catholics had experienced during former reigns, this measure altogether completed their entire exclusion from the benefits of the Constitution, and from the opportunity of regaining their former just rights. It was because this privilege had begun to operate amongst Protestants in a manner very favourable to the Catholics, and to bring about a feeling of regret for their sufferings, and a coalition between the two parties to oppose the influence of the English Government as a common cause of grievances, that Primate Boulter advised the Ministers to pass this law. His principle of government for Ireland, was to uphold the English interest by the divisions of the inhabitants; and, on this occasion, it induced him to adopt the desperate resolution of disfranchising, at one stroke, above five-sixths of its population.*

By the first clause of 1 Geo. II. c. 30. barristers, six clerks, &c. are required to take the oath of supremacy.

By the second clause all converts, &c. are bound to educate their children as Protestants.

By 7 Geo. II. c. 5. sect. 12. barristers or soli

* Primate Boulter, in his Letter of this year to the Archbishop of Canterbury (vol. i. p. 210.) says, "There are, probably, in this kingdom, five Papists at least to one Protestant."

See Note B. Appendix, upon the present amount of the population, and the proportion of Catholics to Protestants.

citors, marrying Papists, are deemed Papists, and made subject to all penalties as such.

By 7 Geo. II. c. 6. no convert can act as a justice of the peace, whose wife, or children under 16 years of age, are educated Papists.

The 13 Geo. II. c. 6. is an act to amend former acts for disarming Papists.

By the 6th clause of this act, Protestants educating their children as Papists, are made subject to the same disabilities as Papists are.

By 9 Geo. II. c. 3. no person can serve on a petty jury, unless seized of a freehold of 51. per annum, or, being a Protestant, unless possessed of a profit rent of 151. per annum under a lease for years.

By 9 Geo. II. c. 6. sect. 5. persons robbed by privateers, during war with a Popish prince, shall be reimbursed by grand jury presentment, and the money be levied upon the goods and lands of Popish inhabitants only.

The 19 Geo. II. c. 5. is an act for granting a duty on hawkers and pedlars to the society of Protestant charter schools.*

Foras

*The following is the preamble of the charter for erecting these schools. "George II. by the grace of God, &c. much as we have received information, by the petition of the lord primate, lord chancellor, archbishops, noblemen, bishops, judges, gentry, and clergy, of our kingdom of Ireland, that in many parts of the said kingdom, there are great tracts of land almost entirely inhabited by Papists, who are kept by their clergy in great ignorance of the true religion, and bred up in great dissatisfaction to the government. That the erecting of English Protestant schools in those places, is absolutely necessary for their conversion; that the English parish schools already established, are nor sufficient for that purpose; nor can the residence of the parochial clergy only fully answer that end.". Catholics are excluded by this charter from being subscribers to, or members of this society. Vid. Report of Committee of

The 19 Geo. II. c. 13. is an act to annul all marriages between Protestants and Papists, or celebrated by Popish priests.*

By the 23 Geo. II. c. 10. sect. 3. every Popish priest who shall celebrate any marriage contrary to 12 Geo. I. c. 3. and be thereof convicted, shall be hanged.

Of these last acts, and of Lord Chesterfield's administration, Mr. Burke gives the following account. "This man, while he was duping the "credulity of the Papists with fine words in private, "and commending their good behaviour during a "rebellion in Great Britain, as it well deserved to

Irish H. of Commons, 14 Ap. 1788. Ir. Comm. Journ. 12 App. p. 810.

The children admitted into the schools are orphans, or the children of Catholic and other poor natives of Ireland, who, from their situation in life, are not likely to educate them as Protestants. They are apprenticed at the age of fourteen years, with a fee of seven guineas with each female, and of five guineas with each male, into protestant families. The society give a portion of five pound to every person educated in these schools, upon his or her marrying a protestant.

In Sept. 1806, the number of children in the schools were 2130.

The funds of the society consist in lands, funded property, and an annual grant of parliament. They amount to about 34,000l. per annum. From the year 1754, 31 Geo. II. c. 1. to the 1st January, 1808, there has been granted by parliament to this society 491,3261. besides certain duties on hawkers and pedlars, from 1754 to 1786.

By the 23 Geo. II. c. 11. the society may appoint persons to take up beggar children, and send them to the charter schools, and when old enough bind them apprentices.

By the same act, §8. a child received with the parent's consent, is deemed a child of the public, and may be disposed of though claimed by the parent.

*The first acts on this head, are 6 Anne, c. 16. § 6. and 8 Anne, c. 3. § 26.

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"be commended and rewarded, was capable of urg"ing penal laws against them in a speech from the "throne, and of stimulating with provocatives "the wearied and half-exhausted bigotry of the "parliament of Ireland. They set to work, but they were at a loss what to do; for they had already almost gone through every contrivance "which could waste the vigour of their country: "but, after much struggle, they produced a child "of their old age, the shocking and unnatural act "about marriages, which tended to finish the "scheme for making the people not only two dis"tinct parties for ever, but keeping them as two "distinct species in the same land. Mr. Gardi"ner's humanity was shocked at it, as one of the "worst parts of that truly barbarous system, if "one could well settle the preference, where al"most all the parts were outrages on the rights "of humanity and the laws of nations."+

Of the conduct of the Catholics during the Scotch rebellion of 1745, fortunately for them, but greatly to the shame of those who accuse them of being actuated by religious principles inconsistent with their duty to their sovereign, there is on record an irrefutable document. In the year 1762, upon a debate in the House of Lords, about the

*"The measures that have hitherto been taken to prevent the growth of Popery, have, I hope, had some, and will still have a greater effect; however I leave it to your consideration whether nothing further can be done, either by new laws, or by more effectual execution of those in being, to secure the nation against the greater number of Papists, whose speculative errors would only deserve pity, if their pernicious influence upon civil society did not both require and authorise restraint." Speech to both Houses of Parliament, October 8, 1745.—Com. Jour. 7. 642.

+ Letter to a Peer in Ireland.

expediency of raising five regiments of Catholics for the King of Portugal, the Primate, Dr. Stone, in answer to the usual objections that were urged on all occasions against the good faith and loyalty of that body, declared in his place, "that in the year 1747, after that rebellion was entirely sup"pressed, happening to be in England, he had an "opportunity of perusing all the papers of the "rebels, and their correspondents, which were "seized in the custody of Murray, the Pretender's "secretary; and that, after having spent much "time, and taken great pains in examining them, "not without some share of the then common sus

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picion, that there might be some private under"standing and intercourse between them and the "Irish Catholics, he could not discover the least "trace, hint, or intimation of such intercourse or correspondence in them, or of any of the latter's "favouring or abetting, or having been so much "as made acquainted with the designs or proceedings of these rebels. And what," he said, "he "wondered at most of all was, that in all his re"searches, he had not met with any passage in any "of these papers, from which he could infer, that "either their holy father, the pope, or any of his cardinals, bishops, or other dignitaries of that "church, or any of the Irish clergy, had either directly, or indirectly, encouraged, aided, or approved of the commencing or carrying on of that "rebellion.” *

Those of the clergy of England, who lately took so active a part in exciting and upholding the infamous outcry of "No Popery" will do well to compare this declaration of Primate Stone, with

* Curry, Rev. of the civil wars of Ireland, ii. 261.