Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/18

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THOUGHTS ON AMERICA
6


was an unalterable and perpetual outlawry." "The child sent abroad for education, no matter of how tender an age, or himself how innocent, could never after sue in law or equity, or be guardian, executor, or administrator, or receive any legacy or deed of gift ; he forfeited all his goods and chattels, and forfeited for his life all his lands;" whoever sent him incurred the same penalties.

The Catholic clergy could not be taught at home or abroad: they "were registered and kept, like prisoners at large, within prescribed limits." "All Papists exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction; all monks, friars, and regular priests, and all priests not actually in parishes, and to be registered, were banished from Ireland under pain of transportation; and, on a return, of being hanged and quartered." " The Catholic priest abjuring his religion, received a pension of thirty, and afterwards of forty pounds." "No non-conforming Catholic could buy land, or receive it by descent, devise, or settlement; or lend money on it as security; or hold an interest in it through a Protestant trustee; or take a lease of ground for more than thirty-one years. If under such a lease he brought his farm to produce more than one-third beyond the rent, the first Protestant discoverer might sue for the lease before known Protestants, making the defendant answer all interrogations on oath; so that the Catholic farmer dared not drain his fields, nor inclose them, nor build solid houses on them." "Even if a Catholic owned a horse worth more than five pounds, any Protestant might take it away," on payment of that sum. "To the native Irish, the English oligarchy appeared as men of a different race and creed, who had acquired the island by force of arms, rapine, and chicane, and derived revenues from it by the employment of extortionate underlings or overseers."[1]

The same disposition to invade and exterminate showed itself on this side of the ocean.

In America, the Frenchman and the Spaniard came in contact with the red man ; they converted him to what they called Christianity, and then associated with him on equal terms. The pale-face and the red-skin hunted in company; they fished from the same canoe in the Bay of

  1. Bancroft, ubi sup. p. 67, et seq.