macy--an oath
which no Catholic could take. Primate Boulter thought he saw a
disposition on the part of the English colony to make common cause with
the natives in favour of Irish, interests, and taking alarm at the
prospect of such a dreadful calamity, he got the Ministers to pass this
law. It is said it was carried through Parliament under a false title,
being called a Bill for Regulating, etc.; but it would have passed under
any title.

[55] The feelings of the Irish Catholics for these concessions are
curiously illustrated, by an inscription on the Carmelite Church in
Clarendon Street, Dublin, in which the year 1793 is called, "the first
year of restored liberty," and George the Third is proclaimed as the
"best of kings." Here is the full inscription:--

D. O. M. Sub invocatione B.V. Mariae. C. Primum hujus Ecclesiae lapidem
posuit Johannes Sweetman, Armiger. Memoriale hoc grati animi restitutae
Catholicae Libertatis Georgio tertio Regum optimo, annuente Parliamento
ac toto populo acclamante, Dedicat Patriae Pietas. Anno supradictae
Libertatis primo. Regni vigesimo tertio, ab Incarnatione 1793, die
Octobris tertio.

T. BEAHAN, Arch.

[56] Forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland and forty-shilling
freeholders in England were quite different classes. The latter, by the
statute, 8 Henry VI, cap. 7, passed in 1429, must be "people dwelling
and resident in the counties, who should have _free land_ or _tenement_
to the value of forty shillings by the year at least, above all
charges;" whilst in Ireland, every tenant having a lease for a life was
entitled to a Parliamentary vote, provided he swore that his farm was
worth forty shillings annual rent, more than the rent reserved in his
lease.

Mr. Pim writes:--"A numerous tenantry having the right to vote, and
practically obliged to exercise that right at the dictation of their
landlord, was highly prized.... When the Emancipation Act was passed in
1829, the forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised, and, being no
longer of use to their landlords, every means has since been employed to
get rid of them."--_The Condition and Prospects of Ireland, by Jonathan
Pim_, late M.P. for Dublin City.

"It is in vain to deny or to conceal the truth in respect to that
franchise [the forty-shilling franchise]. It was, until a late period,
the instrument through which the landed aristocracy--the resident and
the absentee proprietor, maintained their local influence--through which