Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/343

After Limerick but this very persecution had led to an opposition between law and religion. The Penal Code rendered it impossible to raise up in Ireland an instinctive reverence for law, and by thoroughly alienating the people from the Government, made the Catholic Church the centre of their affections. A certain freedom of conscience was the first boon to be slowly given to the Irish Catholics. But their material position did not improve until after 1775, when Grattan began to champion their cause. Continued emigration had swept away the flower of the Catholic youth, and in 1739 we are told that not twenty Papists in Ireland possessed £1,000 a year in land, while those possessed of land of a less yearly value were proportionately few. The only prosperous class among the Irish Catholics was a class of merchants and traders in the towns, which had sprung into existence before the middle of the eighteenth century. The action of the Penal Laws in prohibiting Catholics from taking land on long leases or on profitable tenures, encouraged the more enterprising Catholic farmers to take to trade. Catholic merchants seem to have almost entirely conducted the provision trade, and some grew rich in this way. But, of course, this class was naturally very small. Above them were the impoverished 331