One tyranny begot another. Irish members, having no liberties to defend, and no country to protect, devoted themselves to the security of their property--its security and increase. All was quiet. There was no fear in Ireland of a rising for the Pretender. The Irish, true to their ancient horror of violence for religion, never made a religious war, and never desired that which was ever repugnant to the Irish spirit, temporal ascendency for a spiritual faith. Their only prayer was for freedom in worship--that same prayer which Irish Catholics had presented in the parliament of James I (1613), "indented with sorrow, signed with tears, and delivered in this house of peace and liberty with our disarmed hands." Protestants had never cause for fear in Ireland on religious grounds. In queen Mary's persecution Protestants flying from England had taken shelter in Ireland among Irish Catholics, and not a hand was raised against them there. Bitter as were the poets against the English exterminators, no Irish curse has been found against the Protestant for his religion, even through the black time of the penal laws. The parliament, however, began a series of penal laws against Irish Catholics. They were forbidden the use of their religion, almost every means of livelihood, every right of a citizen, every family affection. Their possessions were scattered, education was denied them, when a father died his children were handed over to a Protestant guardian. "The law," said the leading judges, "does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." They were only recognised "for repression and punishment." Statutes framed to demoralise and debase the people, so as to make them for ever unfit for self-government, pursued the souls of the victims to the second and third generation. In this ferocious violence the law-makers were not moved by fanaticism. Their rapacity was not concerned with the religion of the Irish, but only with their property and industry. The conversion of a Catholic was not greatly desired; so long as there were Papists the planters could secure their lands, and use them as slaves, "worse than negroes." Laws which would have sounded infamous if directed openly to the seizing of property, took on a sacred character as a religious effort to suppress false doctrine. One-fiftieth part of Ireland was all that was left to Irish Catholics, utterly excluded for ever from the inheritance of their fathers. "One single foot of land there is not left us," rose their lament, "no, not what one may make his bed upon." "See all that are without a bed except the furze of the mountains, the bent of the curragh, and the bog-myrtle beneath their bodies. Under frost, under snow, under rain, under blasts of wind, without a morsel to eat but watercress, green grass, sorrel of the mountain, or clover of the hills. Och! my pity to see their nobles forsaken!"