Chapter II: Part 2

I have already mentioned the Convention and Gunpowder Acts, and the discontent which these laws had excited. Administration felt, that on these questions there was but one opinion amongst the people of Ireland. They perceived, that though these acts were of the strongest kind, their operation would not be adequate to the suppression of the existing and encreasing discontent; and they therefore resorted to a device, which, having been but too often and too successfully tried in Ireland on former occasions, would, it was hoped, be equally successful at present. A religious feud was excited, and suffered to rage without check or intermission, until it nearly desolated a whole county. Some petty quarrels had, a considerable time back, taken place in the county of Armagh, between a few Catholics and Presbyterians, which, however, produced no serious mischief, and were almost instantly terminated either by the interposition of the magistrates, or by the mutual compromise of the parties. Subsequent to this, the county of Armagh enjoyed the most profound tranquillity, until about this period a party started up on the sudden, without visible motive, without provocation, and, to the surprize of the people in Ireland, commenced a most outrageous and unaccountable persecution of the Catholic inhabitants. It would shock the ears of an Englishman, and, perhaps, exceed his belief, were I to give a minute detail of the ferocious barbarities which were committed by this party. It may suffice to say, that under the name of Orange-men, and under colour of attachment to the constitution and affection for the Protestant establishment, they not only burned the houses and destroyed the persons of numbers of the unfortunate Catholics in the heat of blood and fervour of outrage, but with a cool and settled system proceeded to banish the whole of them. Entire districts were proscribed in a night. Labels were affixed on all the Catholic houses in a village, with the words "To Connaught or to Hell!" Nor was the threat vain;--for in numberless instances where the unfortunate inhabitants refused to obey the mandate, their habitations were pulled down or burned by these bravadoes of the constitution, happy if they thus escaped personal destruction. In many cases these outrages were accompanied by plunder; but plunder did not seem to constitute any part of the system under which the Orange-men acted, unless perhaps the plunder of arms, to deprive the Catholics of which was one of their proposed objects.

With what reason the Irish administration were charged with having clandestinely excited, or culpably connived at the excesses of these men, the people of England may determine when they hear that the magistracy of that country remained for many months inactive spectators of these scenes; nay, indeed, in some cases, are said to have given countenance and support to the offenders, by executing the laws with the most inflexible rigour against the Catholics when they happened to fall into any casual error in repelling the attacks of their persecutors, while these latter were left in the enjoyment of perfect impunity.

But this is not the only circumstance which may assist an Englishman to judge how far the Irish administration participated in the guilt of these disturbances--there is another which seems pretty decisive on this point; and that is, that notwithstanding this palpable and notorious misconduct of the Armagh magistracy, not one man was turned out of the commission for his negligence and connivance on those occasions! What apology did the Irish Chancellor offer for not removing those magistrates?--"That better men could not be found in the country!"

This feud, so malignant in its origin, and so destructive in its progress, was possibly expected to have weakened the efficacy of the popular sentiment against the Irish Ministers, by throwing the different religious descriptions to a consideration of their respective and peculiar interests. It produced a very contrary effect. The persecution commenced against the Catholics in Armagh, alarmed the Catholics in every quarter of the country; and when they saw such enormities committed against them with impunity, if not with the approbation of the Castle, they naturally apprehended that a general persecution was designed. They knew, however, that the great body of the Protestants in Ireland were too enlightened to assist in such a scheme--for they had already experienced that the rigour of old prejudices was abated, and that men now began to consider each other rather as men than as religionists.--But they also knew the character of the administration; and the recent transactions in Armagh and elsewhere, taught them, that though they had no reason to fear persecution from the great body of their Protestant fellow-subjects, they were yet not exempt from danger. These fears suggested the necessity of drawing still more closely the bond of union between them and their countrymen of other persuasions. The Protestants met them half way in their advances toward a conjunction of interests--for they perceived, that though the present blow was struck against the Catholics, yet the warfare of administration was not against them only, but against the constitution, against the people, their privileges, and their interests.

Had these been the only consequences that followed this dreadful experiment, the partial evil would have been compensated by the union which it produced. But this was not the case. The alarm which the Armagh persecution produced on the minds of the enlightened Catholics, and on the lower orders of that description were very different. In the former it produced a desire to unite more closely with his Protestant brethren, in order to form by their conjunction the stronger barrier against the apprehended assault of the Irish Cabinet upon both. In the latter, it excited a fear of extermination, which resolved itself into the most violent and unjustifiable measures, of what they considered personal defence--The Orange-men had deprived the Catholics of their arms--the lower order of Catholics co-operating in many instances with their Protestant neighbours of the same rank, who detested the conduct of Orange-men, betook themselves to retaliate on those whom they considered suspected characters. The robbery of arms became a general measure of safety, and those who exerted themselves in this way obtained the name of Defenders--a body of men, whom that administration which suffered the Orange-men to violate the laws with impunity, followed with the utmost severity of legal punishment.

No man who values the interests of society, or knows the value of peace and good order in a community, can be supposed for a moment to justify the intemperate and incautious conduct of those deluded men. If such licence as they usurped were permitted, human society must be dissolved, and man be thrown back to a state of savage nature. But on the other hand, no man who has any regard for truth, or who enjoys a capacity of distinguishing between different ideas, can deny, that the crimes of the Defenders were provoked by the preceding crimes of the Orange-men, and that those powers which, contrary to justice, were suffered to lie dormant against the one class, whose guilt was original and unprovoked, were exercised without mercy against the latter; whose errors were the ebullition of untaught nature repelling in an untaught way, the most wanton and unparalleled aggression.

There were some collateral circumstances which contributed to give full effect to the impression which the enormities of the Orange society were calculated to make on the minds of the lower orders. The severity with which administration had followed the United Irishmen by dispersing their meetings, seizing their papers, and prosecuting as libels every publication which emanated from them, had driven them to the necessity of meeting secretly, and admitting members into their society in a private and mysterious manner. Between secret meetings and conspiracy the interval is small--between meeting secretly for constitutional purposes and meeting to alter or overthrow the constitution, the interval is perhaps still less. Whether the objects or the United Irish societies were at this period unconstitutional or not, it is certain the meetings were clandestine, and that of the lower class of people numbers flocked to them who were admitted only on condition of taking an oath to be true to the body--_i. e._ to keep its secrets, and to devote themselves to the pursuit of the two great popular objects--Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. The impression which the minds of the lower order of the people would be apt to receive at the discussion of these meetings cannot be considered as very likely to mitigate their zeal in opposition to the persecutors of the Catholics, or to form their minds to receive with patient forbearance the severities which were now every where exercised indiscriminately against the United Irishmen and Defenders--terms which, in the indiscriminating language of the senate and the Castle, were considered as synonymous.

In considering the effect which the extensive and secret meetings of the United Irishmen produced on the dispositions of the lower people it is not necessary to ascertain whether the designs of that body were or were not treasonable. It is sufficient that were they precisely limited to their professed objects, emancipation and reform, the effect of them on the mass of the public by whom they were constituted must be adverse to the system which administration had adopted, and which they now began to force on the nation by means the most unjustifiable.

If this statement of facts, which I have now submitted to the English nation, as demonstrative that the Irish administration were themselves the authors of those enormities which they have since made a pretext for introducing fire and sword through the country--if this statement, I say, be true, and I defy any part of it to be disproved, their guilt and the emptiness of the pretences by which they have endeavoured to screen it, are incontrovertible:

What was the next measure of administration? The Insurrection Act. The outrages which commenced in Armagh, and had been but too successfully, though faintly, imitated in several parts of the country, administration now affected to consider as incurable by any of the ordinary powers with which the law invested the executive authority. A law was therefore propounded and adopted, by which any district which the magistrates of it might think proper to declare in a state of disturbance, or in immediate danger of becoming so, (phrases so vague that it required but little artifice to make them applicable at that time to any county in the kingdom,) was put into such a state of regimen, that any individual magistrate might on his own authority, without trial or proof, seize the person of any inhabitant and send him to serve on board his Majesty's fleet--_i. e._ transport him for life.

In such districts the privileges of the constitution with respect to liberty, and I may add, life, were completely suspended; for whether under pretended authority derived from this act, or from the superabundant zeal of the military protectors of the public peace, who were employed to assist in the execution of it, numbers fell, either by being shot at their own doors, or by the newly-invented process of strangulation, adopted to procure confession of crimes which perhaps had never been committed, or the accusation of others, whose innocence might have made it impossible to convict them by other evidence.

Without entering into a more minute detail of the disgusting enormities or the sufferings to which this measure gave birth, I may safely refer it to the judgement of men accustomed to enjoy the uninterrupted blessings of British law and liberty, whether the infliction of this measure on the people of Ireland was not of itself enough to aggravate feelings already irritated into discontent the most alarming. I do not mean surely to justify assassination or treason, but I appeal to men who have the feelings of freemen, whether to see a father, a brother, or a son, fall, perhaps innocently, under the bayonet of a military executioner, or transported for life from his helpless family and nearest connections--it may be without guilt, because the punishment was inflicted without trial--may not in some degree account for, though it cannot justify, the shocking crimes which have, since the introduction of that measure, been committed by individuals in Ireland? A magistrate who exerts himself in carrying this law into effect, and who, in obedience to the will of the legislature, sends numbers of his countrymen from the soil in which they drew breath, and the connections which make life dear to them, merely because he suspects their loyalty, does that which, being legal, ought not to induce on him either odium or punishment; but while human nature shall continue to be composed of its present materials, there will be found men among the people over whom he exerts such authority, whose vindictive passions will be apt to mark him as their victim. In many deplorable instances has this been verified in Ireland. The Insurrection Act was adopted to prevent such enormities; unhappily it but encreased, greatly encreased, the black catalogue.

I ask unprejudiced men, whether these measures, carried into execution against a people who from the recent acquisition of independence felt much of the pride and sensibility of freedom, were not most likely to be attended with the consequences which have followed? What then, I ask, must have been the effect of that measure, at which freedom and justice feels still more abhorrence--a legal indemnity for all crimes committed against the people, under colour of preserving the peace? Good heavens! was it not enough that a law was passed which left the subjects' liberty and person at the mercy of the magistrates--but must the military or civil tyrant be protected _by_ law _against_ law, in the perpetration of acts which even by the spirit of that act would be illegal and oppressive? The first Bill of Indemnity Was designed to protect my Lord Carhampton, who had played the part of a self-created Dictator in Ireland. What the particular measures pursued by his Lordship were, I shall not enumerate. They are known, and I believe will be remembered by both countries. He is indemnified for his zeal; and his measures, instead of quieting, have been unfortunately found to have produced a contrary effect. From that time to the present, Bills of Indemnity have become an established part of the system of government in Ireland; so that he who can contrive means to cover the most malicious and oppressive crimes by the easy pretext of securing the public peace, may rest as firmly on an act to indemnify him in the succeeding session, as the public creditor may depend on the passing of the money bills.

In enumerating these successive steps which have been taken in Ireland, professedly to tranquillize the country, but which have operated only to render it outrageous, I might have mentioned the appointment and the recall of my Lord Fitzwilliam. But in speaking to the people of England it were superfluous to dwell on that event; for with the circumstances of _that_, _they_, as well as the people of Ireland, are acquainted. I shall therefore content myself with saying, that of the many irritating measures which have goaded Ireland, the recall of my Lord Fitzwilliam was the most mischievously efficacious. With that nobleman, Hope fled from the country. What has since followed has been the counsel of Despair. By that event it was placed beyond doubt, that the Cabinets of the two countries formed a junction against reform--against the restoration of the constitution to Ireland--and against a mitigation of the coercive system. If treason have spread widely through the country--if the friends of the French system have become numerous, it must be since that insulting act of the British Cabinet told the people, that if they felt the pressure of present evils, or looked for a further extension of constitutional rights, their hope must be turned to another quarter than to the influence of the British connection.

By the operation of the measures which I have now described, the Irish people and the Irish administration were put at issue. The system to which the Castle had resorted to silence murmur, had produced outrage--the measures which they took to punish outrage had created conspiracy, assassination, and, in many instances, treason. Throughout the whole process of discontent, I have shewed that administration were aggressors, and that the irregularities which have followed were but the reaction of an high and irritable spirit in the people, compressed by coercion, which left no vent to its feelings but in acts of private or public violence.

At this point the administration found it necessary to pause. The measures which they had already tried to smother the discontents of the people, and to repress those violent and illegal consequences of it, had not only proved ineffectual, but had aggravated, to a most alarming height, the mischiefs which they were sottishly expected to remedy. In almost every part of the country the most extreme disorder prevailed. It was not now a Volunteer Convention, consisting of men of known loyalty and great stake in the country, meeting to petition for reform--it was not now a Catholic Convention sitting in Dublin, pursuing open and constitutional measures to obtain elective franchise, or a full admission to the privileges of the constitution--it was not, I say, such bodies as these that administration had to cope with. They had put down those. Other more numerous and more dangerous difficulties were now to be encountered. The populace of the country was now organized, and an _imperium in imperio_ formed, which, from its privacy and the numbers of which it consisted, was truly alarming. The professed objects of this society, the most singular which perhaps had ever been formed in any country, still continued what they originally were--Reform and Emancipation. But papers were found which were supposed to prove, that their designs were more dangerous and more extensive; and a letter from a Mr. Tone, which clearly expressed a treasonable opinion respecting a separation of the two countries was taken as full evidence that this was the sentiment of the society at large, consisting, as was believed, of not less than 600,000 men. Whatever might be _their_ real designs, it was certain, that the conduct of the Orange-men of Armagh had been successfully imitated by the peasantry in many parts of Ireland. The plunder of arms was carried on systematically; the quantity taken was known to be considerable; and in the proclaimed districts several magistrates who had been active in transporting suspected persons, &c. &c. had been assassinated.

In this critical moment, the best and wisest men in Ireland, gentlemen possessed of the most extensive property in the country, and at the same time of character above the slightest imputation of disaffection or loyalty, urged on administration the necessity of changing that system which had been found to produce such horrible effects. They urged, that the great body of the nation was loyal--that even of the United Irishmen the greater part wished only for the admission of the Catholics and reform--and that to concede these would throw such a weight into the scale of government as would effectually tranquillize the country. Administration, however, took up the contrary opinion, and decided on a continuation of coercive measures. They pretended, that the people of Ireland were rebels, and that with rebels conciliation should not be tried. They assumed, in the first place, that all the United Irishmen were traitors--in the second, that that society comprehended the great body of the people, or that those who were not of that body approved heartily of all the measures which had been carried on for some years back by the Irish Cabinet. No account was made of that great and respectable class of men who, while they looked with detestation on those acts of insubordination, of assassination, and treason, which had followed the adoption of the present system, contemplated with the most unqualified reprobation that system itself. Determined, therefore, to scourge the nation out of that ill temper into which the scourge had driven it, what step did administration fix on? They send a military force under General Lake to the province of Ulster, and enjoin him to act at his discretion for disarming the freemen of the North, and enforcing content and tranquillity at the point of the bayonet!

It is not necessary to waste much reasoning on this measure. The constitution prescribes the interposition of the sword only in cases of open insurrection or rebellion. If the province of Ulster was in that state, what indignation must not the two countries feel at the wicked pertinacity of the Irish Cabinet in a system which led to that issue? If it were not in rebellion, what punishment could be too great for those who resorted without necessity to that last and dreadful remedy--a military force vested with discretionary powers, for disorders properly within the cognizance of the civil magistrate? But the administration justify themselves by the plea, that the proceedings of these United Irishmen were too subtle and cautious to be met by the ordinary exertions of the civil power, though they were not yet in open rebellion. They must take the praise, therefore, of having created a new species of opposition to established government, hitherto unknown, by directing, without intermission, the force of the state not against open violence, but against political principle; by warring, not with men whose aim was anarchy and plunder, but men skilled in, and zealous for, the perfection of the representative system.

But I deny that Ulster was in such a state as to justify the measure that was then taken--for it was not in open and avowed rebellion, nor was the system of the disorderly people in that province either too subtle or too strong for an active magistracy, constitutionally aided by the military. The disturbances amounted to nothing more than the assemblage now and then of parties of people on the original principle of the Orange-men (who to the disgrace of legislature, have, in a certain place, more than once, been called the friends of the constitution,) breaking houses and plundering arms; and I contend, that with a proper force left always at the disposal and under the direction of active magistrates, those individual acts of outrage might have been prevented. The pretext, that the magistrates were terrified from acting by frequent assassination, is empty--courage is not exclusively the boast of the military in Ireland; and every country in which the Insurrection Act has been carried into operation has produced numbers of magistrates who dared to meet all the odium and all the danger which the execution of that unpopular act imposed on them.

Under this Proclamation, Gen. Lake deprived of arms not only the traiterous and the disaffected, but the loyal and most zealous friends of the constitution. Where arms were expected and not found, a very new mode of trial was instituted. The suspected or accused person was suspended by the neck until the process of strangulation was nearly completed. He was then let down, and if he was still pertinacious, the touchstone was again tried, until he either confessed or accused others. In other cases, it was ascertained what quantity of arms should be brought in by a certain village or district--if the full quantity could not be produced by the inhabitants, their habitations were reduced to ashes to detect the concealment. These seem to have been ordinary modes of proceeding under the military system; there were others more irregular and eccentric which the zeal of the soldiers frequently prompted them to indulge in.

Of the system thus steadily pursued by the Irish administration, the Irish legislature expressed their most hearty and zealous approbation.--Throughout the whole train of violent measures to which the Irish administration resorted, the Irish Parliament went with them _pari passu_. Without stopping to enquire whether this co-operation of the legislature tended rather to reconcile the people to the system than to encrease the discontents which it was naturally calculated to produce, it is certain that some very celebrated characters, whose opinions in this case deserve to be respected, had declared the most decided disapprobation of at least that part of it which related to the military. The conduct of my Lord Moira, in the Parliament of both countries, himself a soldier, an Irish nobleman, and one possessed of such a stake in the country as must make him anxious for its welfare and its peace, has already perhaps inclined the British public to doubt whether the enormities practised under that system were tolerable in any country. The manly and candid opinion of the brave old Abercrombie, "That the conduct of the army in Ireland was calculated to make them formidable only to their friends," must have also had its weight in ascertaining the merits of that system. That the feelings and the honour of that venerable officer did not suffer him longer to remain in the command of the Irish army, Ireland will long have reason to lament. The influence of even _one_ such mind on Irish politics would have produced the most important benefits.

For some time the administration boasted that they had at length found the way to quiet the country. In fact, the operations of the military in Ulster did reduce that province to a state of peace, and no disturbance existed but what the army itself created. Less violent and unconstitutional measures would have prevented acts of outrage--but neither this, nor any measure of coercion, could have eradicated discontent. As the infliction of the military system produced a gloomy quiet in one part of the island, the disturbances broke out with much encreased enormity in other parts of the country.--The South, hitherto tranquil, and which at the moment of danger, when the enemy appeared on the coast a few months before, exhibited the most enthusiastic spirit of zeal and loyalty, now became convulsed by partial risings to an alarming degree. The interior of the country, the King's and Queen's County, the County of Kildare, and even the vicinity of the metropolis, the Counties of Wicklow and of Dublin, were now in as bad a state as the pacified North had ever been. Every reasonable man, who believes that nothing can be produced without a producing cause, must attribute this change of temper in the South and other parts of the country to some circumstance which did not exist at the time of the invasion; and that circumstance could only be the introduction of the military system--of the efficacy of which administration had so much vaunted. But powerful as they supposed that system to be, they were not inclined to depend on its efficacy, such as they had tried it. They therefore now resorted to a measure which has hitherto been used only by irritated victors over perfidious and vanquish'd enemies--they sent them troops, not to disarm the inhabitants of a district, or to act with discretionary powers for, what was now a general pretext for violence of every species, the preservation of the public peace; but permanently to live at free quarters on all the inhabitants of those counties which were in what was called a disturbed state. Under this measure, excesses were committed which Ireland, much as she had suffered, had not yet witnessed. It was not the burning of a peasant's house, or the strangulation of one or two individuals in a village, which struck the eye of a spectator--but the houses of the most respectable farmers in the country, nay, houses of gentlemen of large fortune, and, in many instances, of the most approved loyalty, converted into barracks by the soldiery--the females of the family flying from the insults of these new guests, who rioted on the provision, emptied the cellars of their unwilling hosts, and when they had exhausted the house which they occupied sent their mandate to the neighbourhood to bring in a fresh stock!

At this point I stop--for here the fate of Ireland comes to its crisis. This measure was in operation not three weeks, when the rebels, the traitors, or the people of Ireland, to the sorrow of every friend to peace, to the Irish name, and to the British connection, stood forth in opposition to the King's troops. The scene of blood is now opened. Ireland is wasting her vital strength in convulsion; and whether victory or defeat await them, humanity, loyalty, and patriotism must weep over the event!

When I solicit the people of England attentively to consider that long train of harsh and hideous measures which I have now enumerated, and which have brought Ireland into this lamentable condition--when I call on them to examine with anxious care the motives in which they originated, and the end to which they lead--I call on them to attend to that in which they are deeply interested. In my mind they have been adopted but for one purpose--to raise on the broad basis of CORRUPT INFLUENCE a system of government, which, under the form of the British constitution, should stand independent of, and in opposition to, the sense of the nation. I rest this opinion on two grounds--The one is, because each successive measure taken up by administration to counteract the wishes of the people, carried in it features of despotism, which in a free country the necessity of the case could not call for. Every bill of pains and penalties to which they resorted involved and asserted a general and permanent principle, or gave the Executive a general and extraordinary power, inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, though the occasions which gave rise to those measures were but partial or transient. I refer for instances to the Convention Act, the Insurrection Act, the Gunpowder Act, and the Press Bill, a measure which, in my enumeration of the violent steps taken by the Irish government, escaped me, though perhaps it is, of all the dreadful groupe, the most prominent and most fatal to liberty and the constitution.--The other reason on which my opinion rests is, because administration have persevered in that system without making any one effort to allay discontent or satisfy the moderate and loyal part of the community by the concession of any of those measures on which the heart of the nation was fixed--because they have gone on in opposition to the sense of the best men in the empire to force the people of Ireland, or the discontented part of it, into open and avowed rebellion, rather than try any means to prevent that catastrophe by conciliating measures--because this intention was avowed and gloried in[2]--and, finally, because from the outset of their career they have resorted to military coercion in every case where they could find, or create, the slightest pretence for the use of that dreadful engine.

The flame which by these means has been kindled in Ireland can be extinguished but in one of two ways--either the rebels aided by the power of France will succeed in wresting Ireland from the British connection, or the military force with which the Irish government is entrusted will stifle in blood the discontents of the country. Of the first there is happily no danger. The numbers of the insurgents is much too small to endanger the connection, and that moderate and loyal party, which administration have hitherto treated with contempt, is too strong and too much attached to the present form of government, notwithstanding what they had suffered, either to be overcome by the force, or seduced by the artifice of disaffection, to forego their allegiance. There remains then only the other alternative--and of that what will be the effect? Rebellion will be quelled by power, but the existing causes of discontent--those causes which through a long series of petty conflicts have at length terminated in the present dreadful issue, will remain rankling in the bosom of the country. Conscious of its force, administration will, with an high hand, bear still more hard on the constitutional rights of the people--at least against those rights which are calculated to guard them against the tyranny of an ambitious faction. Knowing the hatred which the Irish nation bear to the set who have heaped on her head those calamities under which she now groans, and of which centuries will not remove the effects, will the Irish administration, think you, resign that extraordinary unconstitutional force which in course of the struggle they have acquired? Impossible! If we can reason at all on the event, it is most reasonable to believe, that the military system which shall have subdued the discontents of Ireland, will continue to govern it. Will it be for the safety, or for the honour of England that her sister country should be a military despotism?

In one event only, then, does there appear to be a gleam of hope that Ireland may yet become a free, happy, and contented member of the British empire--and that is, in a suppression of the present insurrection--in a change of the men by whom the affairs of Ireland have been for some years so abominably administered--and in a change of that system which has hitherto been pursued by them. If Englishmen value their own liberty, which the contiguity of despotism must always hazard, or feel sympathy for the sufferings of an unfortunate people, whose attachment to Britain has been proved during the course of an anxious and changeful century, to these objects will they direct their efforts.

Already thousands of the people of Ireland have fallen in the contest--and yet the standard of rebellion is erect. More of the blood of Ireland must be shed, before Ireland, under the present system, is restored to peace. A military chief governor has been sent over, not to appease but to subdue. He _may_ subdue--but is it the pride of a British King to rule a depopulated, a desolated, and a discontented country? Will fire and sword restore content and confidence to the land? Will the slaughter of a hundred thousand of the people of Ireland reconcile the survivors to that system of mal-government which they have risen to oppose? Will the faction which has provoked this scene of slaughter, become more popular by the carnage they have occasioned?

Englishmen!--your fellow subjects of Ireland now call on you to consider the case of a distracted country, as that of brethren united by the tie of a common nature, and by the still closer tie of a common Sovereign; both entitled to the advantages of the same constitution, each depending, in some measure, on the others strength. For one hundred years you have found in the people of Ireland a faithful and firm friend--though for much of that period we laboured under the most distressing disadvantages, destitute of the means of wealth, and aliens from the most important benefits of the British constitution, we have yet borne our sufferings with patient and uncomplaining attachment to a British Sovereign, and to the British cause. In our poverty we still contributed to the exigencies of the empire. When an extension of our means enabled us to give more largely towards the common stock, we poured forth our blood and treasure in the cause of Britain with more than the zeal of brothers. In our fallen state, with an island reeking with blood, and the sword at our throat, directed by an administration in the best and in the worst of times hostile to Ireland, we call upon you to assist in rescuing our country from utter and irretrievable ruin--we implore you to interfere for us with our common Sovereign--to solicit at his paternal hand the removal of those wicked men, who by abusing the confidence of their Sovereign, and sacrificing their duty to his people, to the gratification of ambitious views or native malevolence, have belied the Irish nation; and by their obstinate and relentless cruelty have driven it to madness. We conjure you to think of us as of men enamoured of liberty and animated by that zealous attachment to monarchy, limited by law, which has given immortality to the name of Englishmen--though at the same time, as of men, among whom many have been hurried into unpardonable indiscretions while the great body remain a loyal, though a suffering people.--In a word, we solicit your sympathy as brethren, and your influence as fellow subjects, with the common Father of both kingdoms, to save four millions of people from the insulting tyranny of Ministers who have abused their powers, and, instead of the mild genius of the British constitution, have governed by the galling despotism of a military mob!

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Vide Irish Chancellor's speech on Lord Moira's motion.

[2] See Mr. J. Claud Beresford's Speeches in the House of Commons during the session of 1797.