We have anticipated the course of events somewhat, in order to pass in review the chief facts connected with the designs of the English Government upon the religious orders. These few words will suffice to give the reader an idea of the new character which such events impressed upon the Irish nation. Every day saw it more compact; every day the resolve to fight to the death for God's cause, grew stronger; the old occasions of division grew less and less, and that unanimity, which suffering for a noble cause naturally gives rise to in the human heart, showed itself more and more. A nation, in truth, was being born in the throes of a wide-spread and long-continued calamity; but long ages were in store in times to come to reward it for the misfortunes of the past. It is a remarkable thing that, when England, through fear of civil war, was compelled to grant Catholic emancipation in 1829, when Irish agitators succeeded in wrenching it from the enemy, and obtaining it, not only for themselves, but likewise for their English Catholic brethren, the British statesmen, who finally consented to such a tardy measure of justice, steadily refused, nevertheless, to extend the boon to the religious orders. These remained under the ban, and so they remain still. The "penal laws" were never repealed for them, and, even to this day, they are, according to law, strictly prohibited from "receiving novices" under all the barbarous penalties formerly enacted and never abrogated. But the nation has constantly considered this exception as not to be taken into account. The religious orders now existing are under the protection of the people, and England has never dared to use even a threat against the open violation of these "laws." Dr. Madden, in his interesting work on "Penal Laws," gives prominence to this fact by warmly taking up the old theme of thorough-going Irish Catholicity, by asserting, with force, that "religious orders are necessary to the Church," and that to deny their right to exist, even though it be only on paper in the statute-book, is none the less an outrage against so thoroughly Catholic a nation as the Irish. The only fact which appears to clash with our reflections is the one well ascertained and mentioned by us, that some native Irish lords occupied certain monasteries and took their share in the sacrilegious plunder. But a few chieftains cannot be said to constitute the nation, and doubtless many of those who yielded to the temptation, listened later to the reproving voice of their conscience, as in the following case, given by Miles O'Reilly, in his "Irish Martyrs:"