In the _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_ Mr. Lecky traces the current of events which have led to the present situation. He shows how the Treaty of Limerick was shamelessly violated, and how the native population was oppressed and degraded. "The position of Ireland was at this time [1727] one of the most deplorable that can be conceived.... The Roman Catholics had been completely prostrated by the battle of the Boyne and by the surrender of Limerick. They had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the Treaty of Limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it found no avengers. Sarsfield and his brave companions had abandoned a country where defeat left no opening for their talents, and had joined the Irish Brigade which had been formed in the service of France.... But while the Irish Roman Catholics abroad found free scope for their ambition in the service of France, those who remained at home had sunk into a condition of utter degradation. All Catholic energy and talent had emigrated to foreign lands, and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the Catholics who remained."[30] Mr. Lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, I think, the best that has been written. "The last great Protestant ruler of England was William III., who is identified in Ireland with the humiliation of the Boyne, with the destruction of Irish trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick. The ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party have made him more odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at Parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman. Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to obtain the instruction they were refused at home. They could not marry Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease