Sketches of the Irish Bar

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: single individual betraying the cause. The severest threats and the most splendid promises of reward had no other effect than to draw closer the bonds which cemented a multitude to all appearance so desultory. It was then evident that the iron hand of oppression had been far enough from securing the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: single individual betraying the cause. The severest threats and the most splendid promises of reward had no other effect than to draw closer the bonds which cemented a multitude to all appearance so desultory. It was then evident that the iron hand of oppression had been far enough from securing the obedience or crushing the spirit of the people; and all reflecting men, who consider the value of religious liberty, will wish it may never have that effect?will trust in the wisdom of Almighty God, for teaching man to respect even those prejudices of his brethren that are imbibed as sacred rights, even from earliest infancy; that, by dear-bought experience of the futility and ruin of the attempt, the persecuting spirit may cease, sjnd toleration establish that harmony and security which, fivescore years' experience has told us, is not to be purchased at the expense of humanity. This is strong language, and was used by a man who had no connecting sympathy of interest, of religion, or of nationality, with Ireland. So unequivocal an opinion, expressed by a person of such authority, and whose credit is not affected by any imaginable circumstance, must be admitted to have great weight, even if there was a difficulty in perceiving the grounds on which that opinion rested. But there is little or none. The law divides the Protestant proprietor from the Catholic tiller of the soil, and generates a feeling of tyrannical domination, in the one, and of hatred and distrust in the other. The Irish peasant is not divided from his landlord by the ordinary de- markations of society. Another barrier is erected, and, as if the poor and the rich were not already sufficiently separated, religion is raised as an additional boundary between them. The operation of the feelings, which are the consequen...