ge, Judge in the Admiralty, Master of the Rolls, Secretary
of State, Keeper of the Privy Seal, Vice-Treasurer or his Deputy,
Teller or Cashier of Exchequer, Auditor or General, Governor or Gustos
Rotulorum of Counties, Chief Governor's Secretary, Privy Councillor,
King's Counsel, Serjeant, Attorney, Solicitor-General, Master in
Chancery, Provost or Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin,
Postmaster-General, Master and Lieutenant-General of Ordnance,
Commander-in-Chief, General on the Staff, Sheriff, Sub-Sheriff, Mayor,
Bailiff, Recorder, Burgess, or any other officer in a City, or a
Corporation. No Catholic can be guardian to a Protestant, and no
priest guardian at all; no Catholic can be a gamekeeper, or have for
sale, or otherwise, any arms or warlike stores; no Catholic can
present to a living, unless he choose to turn Jew in order to obtain
that privilege; the pecuniary qualification of Catholic jurors is made
higher than that of Protestants, and no relaxation of the ancient
rigorous code is permitted, unless to those who shall take an oath
prescribed by 13 and 14 George III. Now if this is not picking the
plums out of the pudding and leaving the mere batter to the Catholics,
I know not what is. If it were merely the Privy Council, it would be
(I allow) nothing but a point of honour for which the mass of
Catholics were contending, the honour of being chief-mourners or
pall-bearers to the country; but surely no man will contend that every
barrister may not speculate upon the possibility of being a Puisne
Judge; and that every shopkeeper must not feel himself injured by his
exclusion from borough offices.
One of the greatest practical evils which the Catholics suffer in
Ireland is their exclusion from the offices of Sheriff and Deputy
Sheriff. Nobody who is unacquainted with Ireland can conceive the
obstacles which this opposes to the fair administration of justice.
The formation of juries is now entirely in the hands of the
Protestants; the lives, liberties, and properties of the Catholics in
the hands of the juries; and this is the arrangement for the
administration of justice in a country where religious prejudices are
inflamed to the greatest degree of animosity! In this country, if a
man be a foreigner, if he sell slippers, and sealing wax, and
artificial flowers, we are so tender of human life that we take care
half the number of persons who are to decide upon his fate should be
men of similar prejudices and feelin
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