The public exercise of the Catholic religion was
forbidden, and to be a Catholic was to be predisposed to the various
Jacobite intrigues which still had many chances in their favour. When
the pretender was expected in 1744, a proclamation, to which Pope
thought it decent to pay obedience, forbade the appearance of Catholics
within ten miles of London; and in 1730 we find him making interest on
behalf of a nephew, who had been prevented from becoming an attorney
because the judges were rigidly enforcing the oaths of supremacy and
allegiance.
Catholics had to pay double taxes and were prohibited from acquiring
real property. The elder Pope, according to a certainly inaccurate
story, had a conscientious objection to investing his money in the funds
of a Protestant government, and, therefore, having converted his capital
into coin, put it in a strong-box, and took it out as he wanted it. The
old merchant was not quite so helpless, for we know that he had
investments in the French _rentes_, besides other sources of income; but
the story probably reflects the fact that his religious
disqualifications hampered even his financial position.
Pope's character was affected in many ways by the fact of his belonging
to a sect thus harassed and restrained. Persecution, like bodily
infirmity, has an ambiguous influence. If it sometimes generates in its
victims a heroic hatred of oppression, it sometimes predisposes them to
the use of the weapons of intrigue and falsehood, by which the weak
evade the tyranny of the strong.
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