a celebrated Irish patriot (Theobald Wolfe Tone) spoken of these laws as
"an execrable and infamous code, framed with the art and malice of demons
to plunder and degrade and brutalize the Catholics of Ireland. There was
no disgrace, no injustice, no disqualification, moral, political, or
religious, civil or military, which it has not heaped upon them."

The following facts relative to the disabilities under which the
Catholics of the United Kingdom labored previous to the emancipation of
1829 will serve to show in some measure the oppressive operation of those
laws which placed the foot of one tenth of the population of Ireland upon
the necks of the remainder.

A Catholic peer could not sit in the House of Peers, nor a Catholic
commoner in the House of Commons. A Catholic could not be Lord
Chancellor, or Keeper, or Commissioner of the Great Seal; Master or
Keeper of the Rolls; Justice of the King's Bench or of the Common Pleas;
Baron of the Exchequer; Attorney or Solicitor General; King's Sergeant at
Law; Member of the King's Council; Master in Chancery, nor Chairman of
Sessions for the County of Dublin. He could not be the Recorder of a
city or town; an advocate in the spiritual courts; Sheriff of a county,
city, or town; Sub-Sheriff; Lord Lieutenant, Lord Deputy, or other
governor of Ireland; Lord High Treasurer; Governor of a county; Privy
Councillor; Postmaster General; Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary
of State; Vice Treasurer, Cashier of the Exchequer; Keeper of the Privy
Seal or Auditor General; Provost or Fellow of Dublin University; nor Lord
Mayor or Alderman of a corporate city or town. He could not be a member
of a parish vestry, nor bequeath any sum of money or any lands for the
maintenance of a clergyman, or for the support of a chapel or a school;
and in corporate towns he was excluded from the grand juries.