Still, however, the
scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink
was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the
Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generalized into attributes
of his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in
the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas! his immediate adherents had
afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the
mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing
of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance.
At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been enforced
with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with so little
outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time, when it
was so capable of being indirectly useful as a _sedative_ in order to the
application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power
reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered
with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive laws,
and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions,--but,
above all, as _bona fide_ accompaniments, of a process of _emancipation_,
properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have been
remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of our
boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-horn, and
congratulate ourselves that our doctors now-a-days know how to manage these
things less coarsely.
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