They were first made ignorant by one Act of Parliament, and then punished by another for those crimes which ignorance produces.
"And now, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, it remains for me to take another view of the state and condition of this wretched country.
Perhaps there is not in the world so hideously a penal code of laws as that which appertains to the civil and religious rights of our unfortunate Roman Catholic countrymen.

It is not that this code is fierce, inhuman, unchristian, barbarous, and Draconic, and conceived in a spirit of blood--because it might be all this, and yet, through the liberality and benevolence of those into whose hands it ought to be entrusted for administration, much of its dreadful spirit might be mitigated.

And I am bound to say that a large and important class of the Protestant community look upon such a code nearly with as much horror as the Catholics themselves.

Unfortunately, however, in every state of society and of law analogous to ours, a certain class of men, say rather of monsters, is sure to spring up, as it were, from hell, their throats still parched and heated with that insatiable thirst which the guilty glutton felt before them, and which they now are determined to slake with blood.

For some of these men the apology of selfishness, an anxiety to raise themselves out of the struggles of genteel poverty, and a wolfish wish to earn the wages of oppression, might be pleaded; although, heaven knows, it is at best but a desperate and cowardly apology.