Epigraph: ‘a machine of wise and deliberate contrivance as well fitted for the oppression,
impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human
nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.’
—Irish Statesman, Edmund Burke in a letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe in 1792,
describing the Penal Laws introduced by the British government to control
the native Irish population during colonisation.