nters, and the Catholics: the Church party
constituting about one tenth of the population, yet holding in possession
the government and a great proportion of the landed property of Ireland,
controlling church and state and law and revenue, the army, navy,
magistracy, and corporations, the entire patronage of the country,
holding their property and power by the favor of England, and
consequently wholly devoted to her interest; the Dissenters, probably
twice as numerous as the Church party, mostly engaged in trade and
manufactures,--sustained by their own talents and industry, Irish in
feeling, partaking in no small degree of the oppression of their Catholic
brethren, and among the first to resist that oppression in 1782; the
Catholics constituting at least two thirds of the whole population, and
almost the entire peasantry of the country, forming a large proportion
of the mercantile interest, yet nearly excluded from the possession of
landed property by the tyrannous operation of the penal laws. Justly has
a celebrated Irish patriot (Theobald Wolfe Tone) spoken of these laws as
"an execrable and infamous code, framed with the art and malice of demons
to plunder and degrade and brutalize the Catholics of Ireland. There was
no disgrace, no injustice, no disqualification, moral, political, or
religious, civil or military, which it has not heaped upon them."

The following facts relative to the disabilities under which the
Catholics of the United Kingdom labored previous to the emancipation of
1829 will serve to show in some measure the oppressive operation of those
laws which placed the foot of one tenth of the population of Ireland upon
the necks of the remainder.

A Catholic peer could not sit in the House of Peers, nor a Catholic
commoner in the House of Commons. A Catholic could not be Lord
Chancellor, or Keeper, or Commissioner of the Great Seal; Master or
Keeper of the Rolls; Justice of the King's Bench or of the Common Pleas;
Baron of the Exchequer; Attorney or Solicitor General; King's Sergeant at
Law; Member of the King's Council; Master in Chancery, nor Chairman of
Sessions for the County of Dublin. He could not be the Recorder of a
city or town; an advocate in the spiritual courts; Sheriff of a county,
city, or town; Sub-Sheriff; Lord Lieutenant, Lord Deputy, or other
governor of Ireland; Lord High Treasurer; Governor of a county; Privy
Councillor; Postmaster General; Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary