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The Penal Laws
The fertile mind of the conqueror invented the Penal Laws. The object of the Penal Laws was threefold ;
To deprive the Catholics of all civil life
To reduce them to a condition of most extreme and brutal ignorance
To dissociate them from the soil
The Penal Laws enacted or re-enacted in the new era succeeding the siege of Limerick, when under the pledged faith and honour of the English crown, the Irish Catholics were to be "protected in the free and unfettered exercise of their religion", provided amongst other things that :
The Irish Catholic was forbidden the exercise of his religion
He was forbidden to receive education.
He was forbidden to enter a profession.
He was forbidden to hold public office.
He was forbidden to engage in trade or commerce.
He was forbidden to live in a corporate town or within five miles thereof.
He was forbidden to own a horse of greater value than five pounds.
He was forbidden to purchase land.
He was forbidden to lease land.
He was forbidden to vote.
He was forbidden to keep any arms for his protection.
He was forbidden to hold a life annuity.
He could not be guardian to a child.
He could not attend catholic worship.
He could not himself educate his child.
The law soon
came to recognise an Irishman in Ireland only for
the purpose of repressing him.
The Volunteer movement in the 1780’s first
began to take the edge off Protestant prejudice.
In the year 1793, an Act was passed relieving the
Catholics of many of their disabilities - in
theory at least. Another thirty-six years were to
elapse before the next step was taken, under
compulsion from the O’Connell agitation, and
the Act known as Catholic Emancipation made law but Ireland was no economic condition to deal with the coming famine.
The Suppression of Irish Trade:
In the early
centuries of the Christian Era the highly
civilised Celt was inclined to trade and
commerce. The early Irish, were famous for their
excellence in the arts and crafts - particularly
for their wonderful work in metals, bronze,
silver and gold. By the beginning of the 14th
Century, the trade of Ireland with the Continent
of Europe was important. This condition of things
naturally did not suit commercial England. So at
an early period she began to stifle Irish
industry and trade.
The Irish woollen manufacturers began to rival
Englands. So in 1571 Elizabeth imposed
restriction upon the Irish woollen trade that
crippled the large Irish trade with the
Netherlands and other parts of the Continent.
Ireland tried its hand at manufacturing cotton.
England met this move with a twenty-five per cent
duty upon Irish cotton imported into England. And
next forbade the inhabitants of England to wear
any cotton other than of British manufacture.
Ireland attempted to develop her tobacco
industry. But a law against its growth was passed
in the first year of Charles the Second.
Four and five centuries ago and upward the Irish
fisheries were the second in importance in
Europe. Under careful English nursing they were,
a century and a half ago, brought to the
vanishing point. Then the independent Irish
Parliament at the end of the eighteenth century
saved them. Here we have set down only examples
of the principal Acts and devices for the
suppression of Irish manufacturers and Irish
industries, but yet sufficient to show how
England protected her beloved Irish subjects in
the enjoyment of all they have - how Ireland
prospered under English Rule in a material way -
and how England in her step-motherly way, took
each toddling Irish industry by the hand, led its
childish footsteps to the brink of the bottomless
pit, and gave it a push - thus ending its
troubles forever.
And thus is explained in part why Ireland, one of
the most favoured by nature and one of the most
fertile countries in Europe, is yet one of the
poorest. And why it is that, as recent statistics
show, ninety-eight per cent of the export trade
of the three kingdoms is in the hands of Britain
and in Ireland’s hands only two per cent.
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