_Laws against Roman catholics._--The tories, in their malignant hatred of our illustrious monarch, turned his connivance at popery into a theme of reproach.[266] It was believed, and probably with truth, that he had made to his catholic allies promises of relaxing the penal laws; and the jacobite intriguers had the mortification to find that William had his party at Rome, as well as her exiled confessor of St. Germains. After the peace of Ryswick many priests came over, and showed themselves with such incautious publicity as alarmed the bigotry of the House of Commons, and produced the disgraceful act of 1700 against the growth of popery.[267] The admitted aim of this statute was to expel the catholic proprietors of land, comprising many very ancient and wealthy families, by rendering it necessary for them to sell their estates. It first offers a reward of £100 to any informer against a priest exercising his functions, and adjudges the penalty of perpetual imprisonment. It requires every person educated in the popish religion, or professing the same, within six months after he shall attain the age of eighteen years, to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribe the declaration set down in the act of Charles II. against transubstantiation and the worship of saints; in default of which he is incapacitated, not only to purchase, but to inherit or take lands under any devise or limitation. The next of kin being a protestant shall enjoy such lands during his life.[268] So unjust, so unprovoked a persecution is the disgrace of that parliament. But the spirit of liberty and tolerance was too strong for the tyranny of the law; and this statute was not executed according to its purpose. The catholic land-holders neither renounced their religion, nor abandoned their inheritances. The judges put such constructions upon the clause of forfeiture as eluded its efficacy; and, I believe, there were scarce any instances of a loss of property under this law. It has been said, and I doubt not with justice, that the catholic gentry, during the greater part of the eighteenth century, were as a separated and half proscribed class among their equals, their civil exclusion hanging over them in the intercourse of general society;[269] but their notorious, though not unnatural, disaffection to the reigning family will account for much of this, and their religion was undoubtedly exercised with little disguise or apprehension. The laws were perhaps not much less severe and sanguinary than those which oppressed the protestants of France; but, in their actual administration, what a contrast between the government of George II. and Louis XV., between the gentleness of an English court of king's bench, and the ferocity of the parliaments of Aix and Thoulouse!