comparison to other periods may be
called ease. In his "History of the Eighteenth Century" Mr. Lecky has
done for the Ireland of one century what it is much to be desired some
one would hasten to do for the Ireland of all. He has broken down a
barrier of prejudice so solid and of such long standing that it seemed
to be invulnerable, and has proved that it is actually possible to be
just in two directions at once--a feat no previous historian of Ireland
can be said to have even attempted. This work, the final volume of which
has not yet appeared, so completely covers the whole ground that it
seems to afford an excuse for an even more hasty scamper over the same
area than the exigencies of space have elsewhere made inevitable.

The task to which both the English and the Irish Parliaments now
energetically addressed themselves was--firstly, the undoing of the Acts
passed in the late reign; secondly, the forfeiture of the estates of
those who had taken the losing side in the late campaign; thirdly, the
passing of a series of Acts the aim of which was as far as possible to
stamp out the Roman Catholic religion altogether, and in any case to
deprive it of any shadow or semblance of future political importance.

To describe at length the various Acts which make up what is known as
the Penal code--"a code impossible," as Mr. Lecky observed in an earlier
work, "for any Irish Protestant whose mind is not wholly perverted by
religious bigotry, to look back at without shame and indignation," would
take too long. It will be enough, therefore, if I describe its general
purport, and how it affected the political and social life of that
century upon which we are now entering.

In several respects it not a little resembled what is nowadays known as
"boycotting," only it was boycotting inflicted by the State itself. As
compared with some of the enactments passed against Protestants in
Catholic countries, it was not, it must be said, sanguinary, but its aim
seemed to be to make life itself intolerable; to reduce the whole
Catholic population to the condition of pariahs and outcasts. No Papist
might possess a horse of the value of over L5; no Papist might carry
arms; no Papist might dispose as he chose of his own property; no Papist
might acquire any landed freehold; no Papist might practise in any of
the liberal professions; no Papist might educate his sons at home,
neither might he send them to be educated abroad. Deeper wrong, more
bi