verywhere by
Englishmen at this period--were the simplest means of legalizing and
buttressing the new regime. I shall not linger over the details of the
Code. Burke's description of it remains classic and unquestioned: "A
complete system full of coherence and consistency, well digested and
composed in all its parts ... a machine of wise and elaborate
contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and
degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature
itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."

The aim was to reduce the Catholics to poverty, ignorance, and
impotence, and the aim was successful. Of the laws against priests,
worship, education, and of the bars to commerce and the professions, I
need not speak. In the matter of property, the fundamental enactments
concerned the land, namely, that no Catholic could own land, or lease it
for more than thirty years, and even then on conditions which made
profitable tenure practically impossible. This law created and sustained
the serfdom I have described, and is the direct cause of the modern land
problem. It remained unaltered in the smallest respect for seventy
years, that is, until 1761, when a Catholic was permitted to lease for
sixty-one years as much as fifty acres of bog not less than four feet
deep. Long before this the distribution of landed property and the
system of land tenure had become stereotyped.

This system of tenure was one of the worst that ever existed on the face
of the globe. It has been matched in portions of India, but nowhere
else in this Empire save in little Prince Edward Island, where we shall
meet with it again. In Ireland, where it assumed its worst form, violent
conquest by a neighbouring power not only made it politic to outlaw the
old owners, but precluded the introduction of the traditional English
tenures, even into the relations between the British superior landlord
and the British occupying colonist. The bulk of the confiscated Irish
land, as I have mentioned, had been granted in fee to English noblemen,
gentlemen, or speculators, who planted it with middle or lower-class
tenants. A number of Cromwell's private soldiers settled in Leinster and
Munster, and, holding small farms in fee, formed an exception to this
rule. But the greater part of Ireland, in ownership, as distinguished
from occupation, consisted of big estates, and a large number of the
English owners, being only a day'