Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/312

After Limerick means of laying heavy duties on English goods imported into the country. The Irish legislature was now, as has been said, entirely dependent on England, and its strength had been greatly weakened by the exclusion of the Catholics. It was, therefore, an alien rule in the midst of an alien population, for it consisted only of representatives of the ruling caste. And in addition, the English Parliament did not scruple to pass laws affecting Ireland, although the legality of such laws was very doubtful.

Such were the general and special causes which made Ireland feel so keenly the practical results of the commercial ideas of the age. But the consequent poverty and backwardness of the country were intensified by glaring financial abuses and political corruption, while the Penal Laws crushed the life out of the people and drove their natural leaders into exile. The whole policy of England, whether commercial, political, or religious, aimed at keeping Ireland poor, divided, and humiliated. The financial policy pursued towards Ireland by England was even more short-sighted than her commercial policy, and it had not the same important reasons to justify it. As for the religious policy of persecuting the Irish Catholics, it seems to have been prompted in the first instance by political rather 300