[The Land-War In Ireland (1870) by James Godkin]@TWC D-Link bookThe Land-War In Ireland (1870) CHAPTER XIII 11/29
The eighteenth gives a salary of 30 l.
per annum to Popish priests who shall conform.
The twentieth provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale:--For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 50 l.; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman, not registered, 20 l.; and for discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher, 10 l. In judging the Irish peasantry, we should try to estimate the effects of such a system on any people for more than a century.
It will account for the farmer's habit of concealing his prosperity, and keeping up the appearance of poverty, even if he had not reason for it in the felonious spirit of appropriation still subsisting under legal sanction.
We are too apt to place to the account of race or religion the results of malignant or blundering legislation.
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