Ireland just then was quiet. It had sunk into a quietude something like that of the grave. Civil war had swept over the country; a succession of civil wars indeed had plagued it. There was a time just before the outbreak of the parliamentary struggle against Charles the First when, according to Clarendon, Ireland was becoming a highly prosperous country, growing vigorously in trade, manufacture, letters, and arts, and beginning to be, as he puts it, "a jewel of great lustre in the royal diadem." But civil war and religious persecution had blighted this rising prosperity, and for the evils coming from political proscription and religious persecution the statesmen of the time could think of no remedy but new proscription and fresh persecution. Roman Catholics were excluded from the legislature, from municipal corporations, and from the liberal professions; they were not allowed to teach or be taught by Catholics; they were not permitted to keep arms; the trade and navigation of Ireland were put under ruinous restrictions and disabilities. In the reign of Anne new acts had been passed by the Irish Parliament, and sanctioned by the Crown "to prevent the further growth of Popery." Some of these later measures introduced not a few of the very harshest conditions of the penal code against Catholics. The Irish Parliament at that time was merely in fact what has since been called the British garrison; it consisted of the conquerors and the settlers. The Irish people had no more to do with it, except in the way of suffering under it, than the slaves in Georgia thirty years ago had to do with the Congress at Washington. [Sidenote: 1714--Old Dublin] Dublin has perhaps changed less than London since 1714, but it has changed greatly notwithstanding. The Irish Parliament was already established in College Green, but not in the familiar building which it afterwards occupied. It met in Chichester House, which had been built as a hospital by Sir George Carew at the close of the sixteenth century. From him it passed into the possession of Sir Arthur Chichester, an English soldier of {81} fortune, who had distinguished himself in France under Henry the Fourth, and who afterwards came to Ireland and played an active part in the plantation of Ulster. It was not until 1728 that Chichester House was pulled down and the new building erected on its site. Trinity College, of course, stood on College Green, so did two other stately dwellings, Charlemont House and Clancarty House, both of which have long since passed away. There were several book-shops on the Green as well, and a great many taverns and coffee-shops. The statue of King William the Third had been set up in 1701. The collegians professed great indignation at the manner in which the statue turned its back to the college gates, and the effigy was the object of many indignities, for which the students sometimes got into grave trouble with the authorities.