The new proprietory and clerical interests thus created at the expense of the confiscated church, were placed in a position to require the constant protection and superintendence of the creative power. And this again required, most unhappily both for church and state in that country, the continuous proscription and suppression of those who represented the important interests so dispossessed and disinherited. From thence arose the deadly feud between law and nature, which has disfigured and degraded humanity in Ireland; which has so effectually separated the very ideas of law and justice in the modern Irishman's mind that his first presumption in all conflicting cases is (to his own loss frequently) against the law, rather than in its favor. The body of legislation of which we speak had long ago swelled to the dimensions of a code, and since the early years of George III. has been known exclusively by the name of _The Penal Code_. {206} The principal collections of this code are by Sir Henry Parnell, (afterward Lord Congleton,) Mr. Bedford, an English barrister, Mr. Mathew O'Conor, of the Irish bar, and the late indefatigable Dr. R. R. Madden. The commentators on the code, from Edmund Burke to Bishop Doyle, or rather the advocates for its amelioration in the first place, and afterward for its total repeal, included almost every name distinguished for liberality in the British annals of the last hundred years. The first of these proscriptive enactments dates from the 2d year of Elizabeth, when a parliament representing ten counties was held at Dublin. By this assembly the acts enforcing uniformity of worship, and the queen's supremacy in spirituals as well as temporals, are said to have been passed; though others say this parliament adjourned without regularly adopting those measures. In the 3d year of the same reign a further act is found on the Irish Statute-Book, obliging, under forfeiture of office and civil disfranchisement for life, "ecclesiastical persons and officers, judges, justices, mayors, temporal officers, and every other person who hath the queen's wages, to take the oath of supremacy." Commissioners of ecclesiastical causes were created by an act of the same session, "to adjudge heresy" according to the canonical scriptures, the first four general councils, and the laws of parliament. By this commission, five years later, (1564,) the English _Book of Articles_ was declared of full force in Ireland. These articles were twelve in number.