Another test of tolerance came with the restored power of Irish Catholics half a century later. How did they use their opportunity? Lecky knew it as well as anyone of his time; he was moreover out of sympathy with the religious and national ideals of the Irish Catholics. Now Lecky, referring to deeds of violence which took place in Ireland, writes (“History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century,” Vol. I., pp. 408, 409): “Whoever will examine these episodes with impartiality may easily convince himself that their connection with religion has, in most cases, been superficial. Religious cries have been sometimes raised, religious enthusiasm has been often appealed to in the agony of the struggle; but the real causes have been conflicts of races and classes, the struggle of a nationality against annihilation, the invasion of property in land, or the pressure of extreme poverty. Amongst the Catholics, at least, religious intolerance has not been a prevailing vice, and those who have studied closely the history and character of the Irish people can hardly fail to be struck with the deep respect for sincere religion in every form which they have commonly evinced.... In spite of the fearful calamities that followed the Reformation, it is a memorable fact that not a single Protestant suffered for his religion in Ireland during all the period of the Marian persecution in England. The treatment of Bedell during the outbreak of 1641, and the Act establishing liberty of conscience passed by the Irish Parliament of 1689 in the full flush of the brief Catholic ascendency under James II., exhibit very remarkably this aspect of the Irish character.” Referring to that Catholic Parliament of Ireland, he says (Vol. I., p. 117): “The members of the House of Commons were almost all new men, completely inexperienced in public business, and animated by the resentment of bitter wrongs. Many of them were sons of some of the 3,000 proprietors who, without trial and without compensation, had been deprived by the Act of Settlement of the estates of their ancestors. To all of them the confiscations of Ulster, the fraud of Strafford, the long train of calamities were recent and vivid events. Old men were still living who might have remembered them all, and there was probably scarcely a man in the Irish Parliament of 1689 who had not been deeply injured by them in his fortunes or his family. It will hardly appear surprising to candid men that a Parliament so constituted, and called together amidst the excitement of a civil war, should have displayed much violence, much disregard for vested interests. Its measures, indeed, were not all criminal. By one Act, which was far in advance of the age, it established perfect religious liberty in Ireland, &c.”