Page images
PDF
EPUB

made by those "lives and fortune's men," who had pledged themselves so sacredly to God and to their country, by tests, resolutions and oaths, to resist every innovation whatsoever in the constitution of their country, and with those declarations, in months, had ruthlessly dragged their tortured countrymen to the scaffold and the gibbet.

Think it not, then, Englishmen, that because our dwellings are consumed by fire, and our bodies lacerated with instruments of torture, that we are therefore united to you.

It is not because we have been in the damp and cheerless abysses of the vaulted dungeons, or worn out joyless seasons in the filthy holds of prison-ships and tenders, that we are united to you.

It is not because insult and ignominy have defiled the purity of our habitations, and that scarce a virtuous family but has its beloved victim to deplore, that we should be united to you.

It is not because you have corrupted our parliament,* bribed our aristocracy, and dragooned our people, that we are united to you,

It is not because you have lavished the treasures, mercilessly wrung from the hands of suffering wretchedness, with wanton prodigality upon panders, hangmen and informers, that we are united

to you.

It is not because you have trafficked with the word of God, and treacherously enflamed the ignorant to

*Two millions sterling were actually paid for this porpose.

bigotry, and the bigot to atrocity; seeking to excite amongst us every unkind and wicked passion of the soul, that we are now united to you.

It is not because stifling enquiry, refusing evidence, you mock us with the ghastly forms of murdered law, and massacre us in defiance of its very forms, that we are united to you.

It is not because usurping every organ of the public voice, you have, through a host of hirelings, filled the universe with your injurious ribaldry, covering your own cruelties and faithbreakings with the villain's argument of Necessity, or the prostituted name of Justice, that we are united to you.

It is not because, like the devoted victims of the auto da fé, you have blackened and disfigured us, lest sympathy or compassion should any where console us; exaggerated whatever vices we may have, and which we owe alone to your corrupting influence, and scoffed at the virtues that adorn us, that we are united to you.

It is not because every man, most honored and beloved amongst us, has been ruined and immolated; and every one most odious amongst us, raised to power and office, that we are united to you.

Believe me, those arts, but too successful heretofore, will not long suffice. The blighting shade which you had cast upon us, is hourly dissipating. The manifest conviction of crimes, at which human nature shudders, hangs over your own heads! You are not now at war with us alone, but with the universe.

W w

of

Our cause already brightens through the clouds of calumny and terror. The virtuous and the generous your own country are daily undeceived, and will, with cordiality, atone for the wrongs they have often ignorantly, and innocently, done us. Foreign nations have felt the perfidy of your alliance-the impotence of your protection-the sting of your pride! Amongst them already does our suffering cause find favor! And though we do not lift a hand against you, the workings of humanity, no longer biassed nor perverted, will succour the unfortunate; and the moral force of opinion, stronger than hosts in armor, will mine your cruel empire, and palsy your misused power. Those of us, who, to gain your favor have betrayed their country, will sink into contempt with the world, with you, and with themselves. The trappings and mock honors with which you have invested them, like splendid liveries, will mark their servile state; nor shall the wages of their iniquities protect them from due infamy. In vain, then, will you call those, dear to the cause of virtue, and honored in their country, traitors! An impartial generation will weigh us against each other. You will be no longer our judges and accusers. Stripped of those casual honors and ill-earned distinctions which had been ours, had we not scorned to win them by corruption, we shall be measured with one measure.— Then will it be seen whose stature and proportions are most goodly, whose morals are most pure-whose reason most enlightened-whose courage most true. If you be found then to excel us, it will be in vice, and

not in virtue-in meanness, not in dignity. And no longer will the love of country, which in all climes and ages has been honored as the first of virtues, be held a crime in Irishmen alone.

The time may come, and may be near at hand, when you may find it necessary once again to call on us to take up arms and fight your battles.

For whom, for what should Irishmen now fight? Why should the fallen be proud? Why should the slave be loftier than his state? Against whom should he shake his chains but him that hung them on him? Go you who wear the spoils, fight for your booty!— He is the lawful prize to him that wins the battle.

Who is enemy to Irishmen? A tyrant and a despot. Is it indeed? If so, we have not far to seek our enemy.

Who made the mighty despot? It was you, dull ministers. You strewed his paths with flowers, tendered the ladder to his young ambition, and were his humble footstools. He is most mighty in your littleness. He had one enemy, and only one, that could withstand him. That one you murdered. It was LIBERTY!

You scorned her alliance. You frighted her from off the very earth. Your peştilential breath empoisoned her. You scoffed and railed at her so wondrous wittily, that though you died for it, you could not win her back again. But when you saw your enemy on high, and seated in the throne of mortal glory, and all the universe cry-" hail great Cæsar !” Amazed and stupified at your own folly, but perti

nacious still in wickedness, you thought to cure your mischiefs by new crimes. Must we too share in your inglorious warfare, infernal machinations, and your plots? Must we, who would not take your ignominious lives by undue means, become assassins now to do you service? Must we now war against the harmless Danes? Must we bring fire and sword into that new and happy country where all our hopes and half our kindred dwell?

Are there no other kings to coalesce with? Have you then ruined all? Why then stand forth and fight your battles singly, and let the Irish rest in sullen peace? If liberty be truly such a jest as you' have taught the world to think it is-if it be odious, felony, and treason, why would you bid us now to fight for liberty? If we must serve a despot, let it be a splendid one, and we shall be less galled. The wretched bondsman cannot lose by changing. To him the mightiest master is the best. It we must be humbled, it is better still to fall before the LION, than the WOLF. Who is now the wolf? The cruelest-who is now the lion? The mightiest. You are no longer now the lion, but the wolf.

But Irishmen are generous, brave and loyal. They will forgive their wrongs, forget your insults, and march against the invader. Be it so. But who is this invader? Comes he with racks and scourges, to scatter reeking gibbets through our land; to pike our heads as monuments of scorn? Comes he with full battalions of informers? Does he invite men to lay down their arms, and then break faith with them,

« PreviousContinue »