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tainted only, I would not complain of our accufer, I would ask alone if a century of of kindness, cannot efface our fathers' feverity? But when the grantees of Cromwell and the King, when the children of their foldiers, and the heirs of their rapacity reproach us with their own gains, when they accufe us of their own crime, and array the fpoil and plunder they have feized, amongst the articles of our impeachment, I know not, I confefs, with what temper to anfwer them, whether with fcorn, or argument: nor whether their grofs abfurdity proceeds from the confufion of their own understandings, or their contempt for our's? But let the crimes of centuries be blazoned out; let the annals of rancour and revenge be ranfacked, and the avarice and cruelty of thefe conquerors be dreffed in all the colours of popular exaggeration, ftill I think their crime of omiffion was greater than their crime of commiffion, and their cruelty in

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not uniting Ireland, worse than their cruelty of confifcation. Cromwell, it is well known, would have united Holland, fo that the policy could not have been unknown to him; and William had that occafion and opportunity which have occurred after an hundred years, with the fame crimes, and wickeder rebellions. Another century has found the fame feuds, the fame maffaores, and the fame untamed ferocity, the fame unreclaimed barbarity in the Irish people; and it has fortunately found the fame power and fortune of the British arms defending their conqueft, and maintaining their colony. What is the refult of all this experience, what the wisdom we may learn in this dreadful school?

Shall we fuffer these evils to remain, and thrive, and spring up again? or lay the axe to the vivacious root which we have lopped fo often, and to fuch little purpose ?. Shall we

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profit by the cruel leffons of adversity, or perfevere in this career of evils to new maffacres and imperishable rebellions? Shall we perform that which we condemn every fovereign and every administration for neglecting, or imitate their neglect in spite of our condemnation, and in fpite of the unutterable calamities that stream from it.

That the native Irish should retain their hoftility, appears to me, I confefs, under the circumstances I have fet down, more unwife than unnatural. That, remaining in the state almost of their barbarous ancestors, they should retain their paffions, and commit their exceffes;-that they should remember injuries which have never been effaced, and make continual claim upon lands from which they have been difpoffeffed by ufurpers who have extinguished their crime by no benefits, no affimilation, no adoption-that they fhould complain of non-refident landlords, and a chain of leases between the owner and

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the tenant of the foil;-that they should repine at paying taxes to a colony they hate, and tithes to a clergy they abhor-and finally, that fore with real wrongs, and intoxicated with vifions of liberty; deceived by foreign gold, and the artifices of domestic treason, they should be goaded or guided into rebellion-I confefs it appears to me both as natural and as imprudent as the empire of the paffions ufually is found to be. But when I hear the colony itself complain of our yoke, and accufe us of oppreffions when I hear the very perfons, guilty of all thefe wrongs, or for whose fake they have been perpetrated, impeach us with their own crimes, and of our connivance, I proteft I am at a lofs whether to attribute it to the fuppofed confufion of their ideas, or to the perversity of their heart. I have more indulgence for the catholic confpirator, than for the proteftant complaint; his principle is to be traced in the heart of man, and his motives lie deep in the very nature of his being I know not

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of any calamity or danger that has reached or threatened England, where his conduct has not been uniform and direct. Has there been a difputed title, a pretender to the crown, a pseudo-prince, or a rebellion ? he has joined them all, as fo many occafions to affert his right, and throw off the tyranny of England. He is the ally of Perkin Warbeck, and of James the fecond. From Henry the seventh to the king's illness, he has watched his opportunity of emancipation and revenge. It is now only that his conduct is become abfurd, when England offers union, and as the confequence of it, emancipation: now that she has at length adopted that liberal and enlightened policy which will place him upon the fame footing as her colony, and admit him to the full participation of the bleffings of her imperial, free, and equal conftitution. It is wifer, indeed, to become a Briton, than to nourish an eternal and unprofitable hoftility. It is wifer to be admitted into the fovereignty, than to make war upon it. To unite, is wiser

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