But, if such was the spirit in which an English historian could write of Ireland in the latter half of this present century, it may, perhaps, diminish our wonder at the conduct of our legislators in an earlier generation.
The penal laws on the subject of religion were also conceived and carried out in a spirit of extraordinary rigor and injustice.

By far the larger portion of the Irish population still adhered to the Roman Catholic faith; but, as far as the negative punishment of restrictions and disabilities could go, its profession was visited as one of the most unpardonable of offences.

No Roman Catholic could hold a commission in the army, nor be called to the Bar, nor practise as an attorney; and when it was found that a desire to devote themselves to the study of the law had led many gentlemen to acknowledge a conversion to Protestantism, a statute was actually passed to require them to prove their sincerity by five years' adherence to their new form of religion before they could be regarded as having washed off the defilement of their old heresy sufficiently to be thought worthy to wear a gown in the Four Courts.

No Roman Catholic might keep a school; while a strange refinement of intolerance had added a statute prohibiting parents from sending their children to Roman Catholic Schools in a foreign country.
And the manner in which the government was carried on was, if possible, worse even than the principle.

The almost continual absence of the Lord-lieutenant inevitably left the chief management of the details in the hands of underlings, and the favor of the Castle was only to be acquired by the lowest time-serving, of which those who could influence elections, wealthy and high-born as they for the most part were, were not more innocent than the representatives.