History of the Irish People

n of the Protestant law courts. In the southern and Catholic parts of the country neither Parliamentary nor legal relief was possible. The whole burthen of tithes and Church rates fell on the food of the people, and the opposition that arose became a struggle to live. While their religion was the crime of their race there was a show of consistency in their servitude, but the curse had been effaced from their creed, and yet the servitude remained. They were declared by law to be capable of holding high offices, and the eye of the landlord and Protestant clergyman watched their labours, and left them just enough of the produce to enable them to live and labour on. Men will endure almost any amount and continuance of regular level oppression. It needs some wanton aggravation, or venomed insult, to provoke them to open opposition. In 1831, a member of a New Reformation Society for the Conversion of Ireland, a curate in charge of a parish in the county of Carlow, made himself obnoxious by demanding tithe from the parish priest. This course was perfectly legal, but it brought the naked wrong of a Protestant Established Church in Ireland so closely under view that the ascendancy clergy usually refrained from taking it. The priest refused to pay, and his flock supported him and followed his example. The resistance to tithes became universal. Frequent battles were fought with the police and soldiery, in which the people generally succeeded, though at a heavy cost, in preventi...