1 forcing the acts of conformity and uniformity. Was there a massacre at Scullabogue? Was there none, after promise of quarter, and therefore more infamous, at the Curragh of Kildare? Would they put their enemies out of the protection of the law, had not their enemies already put them out of the king's peace? Would they disarm them, had they not the gun-powder bill.? Would they deny them the right of petitioning for mercy, had they not the convention bill? Would they depopulate a province, had they not the example of Carhampton? Would they make men "tamer than gelt cats," had they not that atrocious and insolent denunciation of the Chancellor Lord Clare, to sanction them? Would they half-hang them, had they not a thousand examples? Would they execute them by torch-light, had they not the acts of the grand-jurors of Louth? Would they violate their women, had they not the honor of their own wives and daughters crying vengeance in their ears? Would they employ against them the agency of informers and spies, the scum and refuge of the creation, had they not Armstrong, Reynolds, Hughes, Sirr, Sands, Swan, Newell, Murdock, Dutton and O'Brian, and a myriad besides? Would they confiscate their estates, were those estates not plundered from themselves? Would they commit the power of life and death over their persons to the meanest and most ignorant of mankind, were *A remarkable circumstance is, that this Chancellor, by the kick of a horse, suffered a privation similar to that with which he threatened his countrymen, and died in conse. quence. not foreign mercenaries already justices_of_peace ?* Could there be a crime invented or named tor which they had no precedent? And briefly, what had they more to do than open the statute book, and read the acts of indemnity for these applauded deeds of "ardent loyalty and vigour beyond the law?" I will then only ask this one question: was that precept good which God revealed to man, to "do unto others, as they would it should be done, unto them ?" Let us then learn to abber all crimes alike. Let us not cant like hypocrites on one side, and be obdurate as Devils on the other. Let us hasten to do away unjust calumnies, which serve to provoke, but never to reform. Lt men be impartial, that they may enjoy peace. Let those who have been cruel, by future acts of liberal justice and unfeigned contrition, wipe away, if it be yet possible, the stings of deadly injury. This present unnatural order of human things cannot endure. The delirium of antiphilosophy, and the tever of antipatriotism, cannot long be sustained. Already the sneer of the sycophant, and sauciness of the pro-, tected jackanapes, and the insolence of the fool, begin to "stink in the nostrils of men." Out of the calamities of mankind, a new order must arise. Let us raise our thoughts to the dignity of such an æra, and cease to be obstinate in unworthiness; and let those whose ambition aims at distinction, seek it * To so great a length was this wonderful abuse carried on, that Lord Cornwallis issued an order, that they should not, in future, act as JUSTICES, until they were of age. in the furtherance of human liberty, and the welfare of their species. But to return-Whether the rebels did act as cruelly as their adversaries, let Lord Kingsborough answer; he was in their hands, and he was released, as were other men of no less power and note, who had exhausted their imagination in devising and executing tortures. At the close of the appendix, you will find a few instances of the atrocities committed upon the Irish; from which you may faintly conceive the universal misery of a country where such deeds were without number. Summary. THUS, for six hundred years and more, have we seen our country exposed to never ceasing torments, and struggling against oppressions as cruel as absurd. We have seen, that it was not, as the ignorant imagine, or the crafty affect to think, in the fortuitous accidents of the times, that its late troubles had their origin.. It was a chronic malady, and the agitations of our days were but its symptoms. The quack may assume importance from the seeming cure, but the disease still burns like a covered fire. All nations have had their civil dissentions, and their wars; but Ireland has groaned unremittingly under the blighting and corrupting influence of foreign and jealous domination. Her fruitful soil has been laid waste with fire and sword: confiscated to the profit of adventurers and plunderers; and much of it (a seeming paradox) three times confiscated; first in the hands of its ancient and law'ul owners, and then in those of the confiscators themselves. We have seen that country, formed by nature's hand for happiness, prosperity and universal commerce, afflicted with misery, beggary and bondage; her native inhabitants removed from the soil which their ancestors once cultivated, that animals might be raised to feed a British navy, the enemy of their commerce and of the world's repose; or to nourish India planters, not an ounce of whose produce in return they could import in ships of their own nation. The very fleeces of the flocks they fed, made prize to the cupidity of British manufacturers, to whose selfish principles the Irish manufactures have been ever sacrificed. And on those provisions, raised at the expence of human existence, and exported from a country where the people starve, within the space of forty years, twenty-three embargoes were laid, to favor the exclusive avarice of Leadenhall contractors; and the fortunes of thousands thereby often ruined in a day. From the stinted revenues of this wretched country, millions drained annually to supply the luxuries of absentees, the most malignant of our enemies, revilers, and vituperators. A place and pension list of an extravagance so gigantic, filled by such characters (from the German Prince, down to the servile satelite of St. James's) that the Livre Rouge of ancient Versailles compared to it, would blush a still deeper red at its own paltry insignificance !* A people, victim of rapacity, naked, poor, and hungry, deprived of education, robbed of their liberty and natural rights, who lay them down in weariness, and rise but to new toils! A debt, which, in the short period of the last twenty-four years, has encreased from two to sixty millions sterling! in the contemplation of which, the Irish have but one sentiment of consolation, that in their insolvency they are secure. And that the prodigal, for whose use it has been raised, must answer for it with his own-and God knows how! Union of Ireland with England-Irishmen with AFTER SO many ages of civil war and carnage, how lovely to the ear sounds the hallowed name of UNION; but not that union which binds the slave to his master, the sufferer to his tormentor, the wretch to his oppressor. Not that union formed by a parliament the scourge and execration of their own country; the scorn and derision of the minister who bought them like slaves, and jeeringly pretend to have bought their country with them. Not that union * The Pension List alone, at this moment, exceeds one hun dred and fifty thousand pounds sterling per annum. |