It is indeed frequently urged as a matter of aggravation that whereas other persecutions were those of a minority by a majority, this was of a majority by a minority. To me, so far as this makes any difference at all, it tells the other way. As a matter of morality, I fail to see any difference; putting all the inhabitants of an Alpine valley to death as heretics does not seem to me one whit the less horrible because the sovereign also ruled a large Catholic population on the plains. On the other hand, the fact that the Roman Catholics in Ireland formed the majority of the population prevented the persecution from being strictly carried out. It was comparatively easy for Louis XIV to surround a heretic district with a cordon of soldiers, and then draw them closer together searching every house as they went, seizing the clergy and taking them off to the galleys; but it was impossible to track unregistered priests through the mountains and valleys of Munster. Hence the law as to the registration of priests soon became a dead letter. There was indeed one great difference, between Irish and continental persecution. On the continent it was the holiest and best men who were the keenest persecutors. (This may seem strange to modern readers; but anyone who has studied the lives of Bossuet and San Carlo Borromeo will admit that it is true.) Hence the persecution was carried out with that vigour which was necessary to make it a success. In Spain, if a heretic under torture or the fear of it consented to recant, the Holy Office was not satisfied with a mere formal recantation; for the rest of his life the convert was watched day and night to see that there was no sign of back-sliding; and even the possession of a fragment of the New Testament was considered as sufficient evidence of a relapse to send the wretched man to the stake. Consequently, in a generation or two heresy became as extinct as Christianity did amongst the Kabyles of North Africa after the Mohammedan persecution. In Ireland, however, persecution was always against the grain with religiously-minded Protestants. Seven bishops protested against the first enactment of the Penal Laws; and during the period when they were in force, the bishops repeatedly spoke and voted in favour of each proposed mitigation of them. (With this one may contrast the action of the French bishops who on the accession of Louis XVI in 1774 presented an address to the new king urging him to increase the persecution of the Huguenots which had become somewhat slack during the later years of his predecessor. By the irony of fate the same men were a few years later pleading vainly for the mercy which they had never shown in the days of their power.) Nor was this tolerant feeling confined to the bishops. By the aid of the Protestant gentry, the laws were continually being evaded. Protestants appointed by the Court as guardians of Roman Catholic children, used to carry out the wishes of