Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/245

 were not enforced, witnesses were not wanting to come forward and declare, either from their own personal knowledge or on the solemn testimony of departed friends and relatives, that these abominable penalties were enforced, and in a merciless manner too. Mr. James Bonwick, himself a Protestant, and one of the most industrious investigators into the facts of early colonial history, does not hesitate to say, in speaking of this persecuting era:

"All had to go to church; they were driven as sheep to the fold. Whatever their scruples, they had to go. Fallen as many were, they were not to be regarded as aliens altogether in principle and indifferent to faith. In some the very consciousness of crime had developed an eagerness after faith, and that the faith they had known, the faith of a mother. But expostulations were unheeded. If a man humbly entreated to stay behind because he was a Presbyterian, he incurred the danger of a flogging. It is said that upon a similar appeal from another, who exclaimed, 'I'm a Catholic!' he was silenced by the cry of a clerical magistrate, 'Go to church or be flogged!'"

In several places in his "Memoirs," Joseph Holt, or "General" Holt, as he was most frequently styled, from his being one of the chief leaders in the rebellion of '98, mentions the shocking brutality with which his fellow Irish-Catholic prisoners were treated in those dismal days. Here is one harrowing instance out of several that might hi quoted: "I marched to Toongabbee, where all the government transports were kept, who were called out to witness the punishment of the prisoners. One man, Maurice Fitzgerald, was sentenced to receive 300 lashes, and the method of punishment was such as to make it most effectual. The unfortunate man had his hands extended round a tree, his