other men would do it for themselves: why, then, should he be the loser,
when the people would not be gainers by his loss?

When parliaments began to be held, and when laws were enacted, every
possible arrangement was made to keep the two nations at variance, and
to intensify the hostility which already existed. The clergy were set at
variance. Irish priests were forbidden to enter certain monasteries,
which were reserved for the use of their English brethren; Irish
ecclesiastics were refused admission to certain Church properties in
Ireland, that English ecclesiastics might have the benefit of them.
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, when Viceroy of Ireland, issued a
proclamation, forbidding the "Irish by birth" even to come near his
army, until he found that he could not do without soldiers, even should
they have the misfortune to be Irish. The Irish and English were
forbidden to intermarry several centuries before the same bar was placed
against the union of Catholics and Protestants. The last and not the
least of the fearful series of injustices enacted, in the name of
justice, at the Parliament of Kilkenny, was the statute which denied,
which positively refused, the benefit of English law to Irishmen, and
equally forbid them to use the Brehon law, which is even now the
admiration of jurists, and which had been the law of the land for many
centuries.

If law could be said to enact that there should be no law, this was
precisely what was done at the memorable Parliament of Kilkenny. If
Irishmen had done this, it would have been laughed at as a Hibernicism,
or scorned as the basest villany; but it was the work of Englishmen, and
the Irish nation were treated as rebels if they attempted to resist. The
confiscation of Church property in the reign of Henry VIII., added a new
sting to the land grievance, and introduced a new feature in its