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13
ties were enacted against those who could not, or would
not, swear that oath. The great overwhelming majority
of the Irish people refused the test; and the penal law
came quickly to punish them, even in their family rela-
tions and domestic circle. It invested any child, who
might conform to the ¢est prescribed, with the rights of
property enjoyed by his father. It invested the wife with
rights of property over the husband. If any of those who
had refused to swear, purchased an estate for any amount
of money, any of the others, who had taken the oath,
could dispossess him without paying one shilling for such
estate. If any of the former class owned a horse worth
fifty or one hundred pounds, any of the latter class had a
right, by Jaw, to tender five pounds and tell him to dis-
mount. If any of the former class, by his skill and in-
dustry in agriculture, raised the value of his land, so as
to yield a profit equal to one-third of the rent, any of the
latter could enter on the profits of his labour, and take
possession of his land. ‘These laws continued for be-
tween eighty and ninety years, down to the period of
American Independence. And in this enactment we see
what a penalty was inflicted on the agricultural industry
of the Irish—what a premium was held out to encourage
that indolence which British statesmen now impudent-
ly complain of.
The same system has been continued to the present
day : as if some cruel law of destiny had determined that
the Irish people should be kept at the starving point
through all times ; since the landlord, even now, claims
the right, and often uses it, of punishing the industry of
his tenant, by increasing the rent, in proportion to the
improvement the tenant makes on his holding. If then
it be true, that the Irish are indolent, which I deny, the
cause could be sufficiently explained by the penalties
which a bad government has inflicted upon them, in their
own country, for the crime of being industrious. Then,
if it be said, as a reproach, that the Irish are ignorant,
let it be remembered that this same code of penal laws
closed up the schools of popular education; that the
schoolmaster was banished for the crime of teaching,