There was a law of discovery, by which a man who betrayed the confidence of his friend, if he were catholic, possessed himself of that friend’s estate. There was a law which disabled the catholic father to be guardian to his own child, or to educate him. There was a law which made the disobedience or apostacy of the catholic child the means whereby to disinherit his father. There was a law for robbing a catholic of his horse on the highway, if, when interrogated, he confessed his faith. There was a law to prevent the education of catholic children, and to punish catholic teachers as convicts; to banish the catholic clergy, and to hang them if they returned: to prevent catholics from purchasing or inheriting landed estates: from having arms for their defence: to debar them from the profession of the law: to prevent them from holding any office of trust, honour or emolument, voting at elections, or sitting in parliament. The United Irishmen found their country under government of those laws, and of perhaps a hundred more, all conceived in the same spirit, and all elaborated with consummate skill to rob, harass, and insult a defenceless people. Those statutes, without parallel for their inhumanity, were framed against christians, under pretence of securing the protestant religion. They were enacted by the Irish protestants, political protestants, than whom no sect has cried more loudly against persecution, when protestants were the martyrs. For all this the protestant religion is not persecuting in its nature. The crimes of the dominant party are not justly chargeable upon the protestant religion, though committed in its name. They were bitterly deplored by the United Irishmen of all religions, and by none more than the subject of this memoir, himself a member of the established church, but no abettor of its injustice. Through all this long persecution, the conduct of England wore a vizor of hypocrisy. It was not the conversion of the Irish it desired, but their spoliation, division and subjection. If united in religion, they might unite for their worldly interest, and a means of weakening them by dissension would be lost. The English mission never had the merit of even being honestly fanatical; it was cold-blooded and crafty. Its conduct was not feebly palliated by the mistaken sincerity of blind zeal, which time might soften and philosophy assuage. It had the more terrestrial motives of insatiable rapacity, the appetite for plunder, and the desire of battening on the green pastures of Ireland. This is the eating canker which neither time nor reason ever cures, and which is now as devouring, where it has the power, as at the first hour.