Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/41



proceed, therefore, to the political and moral condition of Ireland for a century past, and shall then endeavour to deduce from the narrative of the past, and the aspect of the present, some lessons for the future.

Going back for more than a century, we find that, about the year 1760, the Duke of Bedford, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, proposed to his Council a bill, laid before him by Lord Clanbrassil, for the Registration of Roman Catholic Priests; a measure which, in respect to the Roman Catholics, would have been nearly equivalent in effect to the Act of Toleration in England. But the theory of the law then was, that no Roman Catholics existed in Ireland, and the principle avowed was that they should not be tolerated. The Primate and the Lord Chancellor, the Chief Justice and the Chief Baron, alike opposed the measure; Chief Baron Willes especially denounced the bill, 'because it would prove a toleration of that religion which it had been the general policy of England and of Ireland to persecute and to depress.'

The Duke of Bedford maintained, That if it would be at all consistent with the peace of society, Christianity and good policy alike required that they