For they are not only excluded from all offices in Church and State, which, though a just and necessary provision, is yet no small restraint in the acquisition, but they are interdicted from the army, and the law, in all its branches.
Burke emphasizes the extensive exclusions faced by Catholics from various professions and roles in society.
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More from Edmund Burke
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.
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