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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland
+Disclosed, by Anonymous
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed
+       In an Address to the People of England, in Which It Is Proved by Incontrovertible Facts, That the System for Some Years Pursued in That Country, Has Driven It into Its Present Dreadful Situation
+
+
+Author: Anonymous
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 2, 2008  [eBook #25300]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION IN
+IRELAND DISCLOSED***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Martin Pettit, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION IN IRELAND DISCLOSED,
+
+IN AN _Address to the People of England_.
+
+IN WHICH IT IS PROVED BY INCONTROVERTIBLE FACTS,
+
+THAT THE _System for some Years pursued in that Country_,
+
+HAS DRIVEN IT INTO ITS PRESENT DREADFUL SITUATION.
+
+
+BY AN IRISH EMIGRANT.
+
+Insita mortalibus natura violentiæ resistere. TACITUS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_LONDON_:
+
+Printed for J. S. JORDAN, No. 166, Fleet Street.
+
+[PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE.]
+
+
+
+
+CAUSES OF THE REBELLION,
+
+&c. &c.
+
+
+FELLOW SUBJECTS,
+
+It is always a bold undertaking in a private individual to become the
+advocate of a suffering people. It is peculiarly difficult at the
+present moment to be the advocate of the people of Ireland, because
+there are among them men who have taken the power of redress into their
+own hands, and committed acts of outrage and rebellion which no
+sufferings could justify, and which can only tend to aggravate ten-fold
+the other calamities of their country. Deeply impressed, however, as I
+am with a conviction that these difficulties stand in my way, I shall
+yet venture to state to Englishmen the case of Ireland. In doing so, I
+rest not on a vain confidence in my own strength, but on the nature of
+the cause I plead; for I am convinced, that when the train of measures
+which have led that miserable country into its present situation shall
+be fully disclosed, it will be but little difficult to rouze the people
+of England not merely to commiserate a distressed country, but excite
+them to exert their constitutional endeavours, as head of the British
+empire, to avert the destruction of its principal member.
+
+There is another circumstance which gives me hope. The people of England
+at this hour feel themselves much more interested in what concerns
+Irishmen, than they have ever done at any former period. Whatever
+mischiefs may have resulted to human society from that kind of
+philosophic illumination by which modern times are distinguished, one
+certain good at least has been produced by it--men have become better
+acquainted--the bond of a common nature has been strengthened--and each
+country begins to feel an interest in the concerns of every other. It is
+not to a more extensive personal intercourse, or to the creation of any
+new principles of political union, that this is to be attributed. It is
+owing solely to an increased communication of sentiment and feeling--to
+a knowledge which has diffused itself through the world that the human
+mind is every where made of the same materials, and that on all the
+great questions which concern man's interest in society, the men of
+every country think alike. Hence has arisen an increased sympathy
+between nations--if not between those who govern them, at least between
+those by whom they are constituted; and hence too has it followed, that
+those national antipathies which had so long debased and afflicted
+mankind, are now become less strong and rancorous; and, it may be
+reasonable to hope, will one day be known no more.
+
+It is not, however, on the influence of this nascent principle of
+philanthropy among nations that I ground my principal hope, when I call
+on Englishmen to hear with an ear of kindness and concern the complaint
+of a sister-country. I resort to a still more powerful principle--I
+shall call on them as a people famed even in barbarous times for those
+feelings of generosity and compassion, which are inseparable from
+valour--I shall call on them as a FREE people, to watch with caution the
+progress of despotism toward their own shores, stalking in all its
+horrors of murder, pillage, and flames, through the territory of a
+neighbour--I shall call even on their INTEREST, to save from utter ruin,
+political, commercial, and constitutional, the most valuable member of
+the British empire! If Englishmen look with horror on the enormities of
+France, I will call on them to let crimes of as black a dye perpetrated
+in Ireland meet their share of detestation. If they who subvert the good
+order of society--who overleap the bounds fixed by the law of Nature
+itself to guard the liberty, life, and property of individuals against
+the spoiler, be fit objects of reprobation, I shall turn the eyes of all
+the good and wise in England toward that faction by whose counsels and
+whose deeds the fairest island in the British empire has been made a
+theatre on which lawless outrage has played its deadly freaks!
+
+When I speak in terms thus strong of that system under which the people
+of Ireland have suffered for some years, and by which they have been
+goaded into acts of folly and madness which no good man is either able
+or inclined to defend, let me not too early be charged with declamation.
+There are some cases in which no language can be declamatory because no
+words can aggravate them. If I shall not shew before I conclude this
+address that the case of Ireland is one of them, let me _then_ be
+branded with the epithet of empty talker!
+
+It will not be necessary for me, in stating to the people of England
+the calamities under which Ireland smarts, and the causes which produced
+them, to go farther back than that period at which she became, nominally
+at least, an independent country. What remains of her history before
+that period the honour of both countries calls on us to forget--a
+mistaken but overbearing principle of domination and monopoly on one
+hand, fed and strengthened by a servile and base acquiescence on the
+other, constitute the outline of the sketch--an idle and beggared
+populace, a jobbing legislature, proscriptions, penal laws, &c. &c. are
+the disgusting materials with which it must be filled. That Time should
+quickly draw his veil over such a scene, and cover it with oblivion
+would be the natural wish of every British and Irish heart, were it not
+that scenes still more disgraceful to both countries and more calamitous
+to one of them have succeeded--scenes which force the mind to revert
+with regret to those days of poverty and peace, when, as there existed
+little wealth to excite avarice, and little spirit to aggravate the
+ambition of party, that little remained inviolate, and the miserable
+cabin, though filled with objects of disgusting wretchedness, was yet
+the secure covering and castle of its humble owner.--How different his
+present situation! when in laying down his head at night he fears lest
+before morning he shall be rouzed by the cries of his family in flames,
+or dragged from his bed by military ruffians, to be hanged at his own
+door!
+
+Forgetting then the many causes of discontent with the people of England
+which existed in Ireland prior to the year 1782, I shall call the
+attention of this country to only those transactions which have taken
+place since that time--and indeed to many of those transactions it would
+not be necessary to advert at all, were it not for that minute and
+elaborate detail which has been made of them by a well known public
+character in a late publication,[1] for the purpose of proving that
+Ireland deserved what she suffered--that she has been always sottishly
+discontented and basely ungrateful. But I call on Englishmen to judge
+impartially for themselves--nor let the confident assertion or bold
+recrimination of an accused man pre-occupy their decision on the merits
+and the sufferings of an unhappy people.
+
+It will scarcely be denied at this day, that the people of Ireland did
+right in calling for the independence of their legislature in the year
+1782, and in pressing that claim on the British minister, until he
+yielded to its force.--It is admitted that Ireland, on that occasion,
+while she armed herself to repel the foes of Britain, while her
+population poured to her shores to resist the insulting fleet of the
+enemy, and preserve her connexion with the empire, acted with the proper
+and true spirit of a brave and loyal people in calling on the British
+Parliament for a renunciation of that claim to rule her which was
+originally founded only on her weakness, and was supported by no other
+argument than power. While this then is admitted, let it be remembered,
+that they who opposed this just claim of Ireland to be free, must have
+been the advocates of a slavish system--and that the people of Ireland
+might fairly entertain doubts of the sincere attachment of such men to
+her cause.--Let it be remembered, that the men who said to a country
+struggling for the legitimate power of governing for itself, "You have
+no right to make your own laws--you are materials fit only to be
+governed by strangers," were not men in whom that country, when she
+succeeded in the struggle, could place much confidence. In fact, she
+did not confide in them. It was thought necessary to watch attentively
+the measures of men who had reluctantly assented to the manumission of
+their country, and who were believed to have such a deeply rooted
+attachment to the principles of the old court, that they would lose no
+opportunity of re-inducing upon the nation those bonds which she had
+broken only by a combination of fortunate circumstances, concurring with
+her own efforts.
+
+In this consciousness of the danger with which they were surrounded from
+false friends, originated that doubt which is now charged on the people
+of Ireland as a first proof of wanton discontent--I mean a doubt about
+the validity of the simple repeal of the 6th Geo. III. as an act of
+renunciation. Discontent on this subject arose and became general in
+Ireland almost immediately on the repeal of that obnoxious statute; and
+from the zeal and warmth with which it was attempted to _beat it down_,
+did for a time put the kingdom in a ferment. The men who have since that
+time scourged Ireland with a rod of iron, charge this as the
+commencement of the crimes of the country--the first overt act of her
+intemperance and violent propensity to discontent. Whether it deserves
+that epithet Englishmen will judge, when they learn that this doubt was
+first suggested by some of the best lawyers--the warmest friends and the
+most enlightened and able men whom Ireland ever knew--by Walter Hussey
+Burgh--by Henry Flood, and by the brilliant phalanx of constitutional
+lawyers who at that time graced the popular cause--men "to whom
+compared" the most proud and petulant of her present persecutors "are
+but the insects of a summer's day." These gentlemen had been the
+long-tried friends of the country--they had been found pure in
+principle, and in intellect superior to their contemporaries. Where,
+therefore, was the wonder, that the people should adopt an opinion
+sanctioned and inculcated by such venerable names? What was there
+strange or criminal in believing, that a country which only retracted in
+silence a claim for more than half a century enforced and acted on, did
+but suspend for the present a right which she believed to exist, and
+which she would not fail to urge again in more favourable circumstances?
+The partisans of the Irish Chancellor act with as much confidence on
+_his_ opinions in cases where common understandings have less to guide
+them: why then should the people of Ireland be branded as seditious and
+disaffected, for following, in a matter of law, the counsels of men
+whose integrity she had tried, and whose talents were acknowledged?
+
+It is true, indeed, there was on the other side of this question a name
+to which Ireland owed much, and to whose subsequent exertions in her
+cause, though fruitless, she owes perhaps still more--Mr. Grattan. _He_
+thought the simple repeal of itself a valid and full renunciation. But
+it may be said for the people of Ireland, that Mr. Grattan, when this
+question was agitated, stood in circumstances which deducted much from
+his high authority. He had but just come from the Treasury, after
+receiving 50,000l. for his past services--and it was too generally known
+in Ireland, that there was some quality in Treasury gold, however
+acquired, which attracted the possessor powerfully towards the Castle.
+The private judgement of Mr. Grattan might also be reasonably supposed
+to have a bias on the question, from the circumstance of being himself
+the adviser of the simple repeal--the idea of an explicit renunciation
+not having been started when Mr. Grattan's principal exertions, seconded
+by the voice of the people, triumphed over the old system. There was
+another reason--Mr. Grattan's influence was weakened, if not lost, by
+the fallen character of those with whom he then acted. The people of
+Ireland were naturally jealous of those men who had uniformly supported
+the dominating principles of the British party in Ireland, and who had
+as violently opposed (though by more legitimate means) the exertions of
+the popular party to obtain an independent legislature, as they now do
+to prevent the reform of the legislative body. And finally, the opinion
+and authority of Mr. Grattan, however respectable were not thought an
+adequate counterpoize to the weight of those very numerous and most
+respectable opinions which were on this question in opposition to his.
+Under these circumstances, the charge of sottish discontent, which has
+been so confidently made against the Irish nation, will appear to be one
+of those foul calumnies by which a desperate and enraged faction strive
+to cover their own enormities. Englishmen, and the world, will see, that
+had Ireland at that critical moment adopted the advice of those who had
+always acted as enemies to her best interests, and rejected the counsels
+and opinions of those to whom she owed the most important obligations,
+she would _then_ indeed have been incorrigibly sottish.
+
+The next _crime_ with which the Irish nation stands charged, is their
+early and zealous efforts for parliamentary reform.--It has been
+enumerated as one of the causes which have produced the present horrible
+system of administration in Ireland, that shortly after the
+establishment of their legislative independence, a convention met in
+Dublin, consisting of representatives from the different Volunteer
+Associations, by whom the country had been saved from the common enemy,
+and who were supposed to have contributed much to the establishment of
+her independence. This convention had been constituted on the same
+principle (but with more circumspection and order) as that which was so
+well known by the name of the Dungannon meeting--an assembly, which
+though perfectly military, so far as its being constituted by armed
+citizens could make it so, did more towards asserting the independence
+of Ireland and procuring for her the most important advantages of
+constitution and commerce than any other which ever sat in Ireland. To
+the Dungannon meeting, however, no exceptions were taken--they were
+suffered to meet--to resolve--and to point out in the most decisive tone
+the grievances under which they supposed the country laboured. Their
+remonstrances were carried even to the foot of the throne, and the
+father of his people, uninfluenced by that romantic sense of dignity,
+which has since produced such lamentable effects in Irish
+Parliaments--graciously received, and wisely attended to their
+remonstrances.--The jesuitical or Machiavelian distinction between
+citizens in red clothes and in coloured ones, had not yet been thought
+of--it was considered sufficient to entitle an address or petition to a
+respectful hearing, if it was substantially the sense of a great body of
+the property and population of the state, no matter whether they spoke
+in the character of volunteers associated to defend the constitution, or
+as freeholders assembled only to exercise its privileges.
+
+It is not for me now to defend the convention of that day from the
+imputation of false policy and imprudence, in preferring the character
+of soldiers to that of citizens in their deliberative capacity, but I
+cannot help observing--First, that the Irish administration have never
+manifested any dislike of military bodies--real, mercenary, foreign
+soldiers,--expressing publicly _their_ sentiments on great public
+questions, when those sentiments coincided with the politics of the
+Castle--witness the manifestoes with which the Irish newspapers have
+for the last year or two been crouded, from Scotch and English mercenary
+troops, in which these zealous advocates for religion and liberty
+declare themselves friends to this or that measure, publish their
+determination to support them--and sometimes conclude by letting the
+Irish public know--_they had not come thither to be trifled
+with_.--Secondly, I must remark, that tho' the great objection to the
+volunteer convention was its being armed, and consisting of the
+representatives of an armed body, yet opposition equally violent has
+been since made to other representative bodies _not_ military--instance
+the calumny with which the servants of the Irish administration have
+blackened the Catholic committee--and, above all, instance the Athlone
+convention, the meeting of which administration were so solicitous to
+prevent, that they ventured on a law to prevent for ever the meeting of
+any representative body--the House of Commons excepted.
+
+By these circumstances it seems sufficiently clear, that the
+inconceivable aversion entertained against this body, and the memory of
+it, was founded not in its being military, but in its being
+representative and popular--not in its constitution, but in its
+object.--With respect to its being a representative body, I profess, for
+my own part, I cannot conceive why for that reason the Irish government
+and the Irish Chancellor have held it so much in abomination. You,
+Englishmen, who understand that constitution of which you are properly
+so proud, will be surprized to hear that representative bodies are
+unconstitutional.--If you heard this asserted with much confidence by a
+lawyer, you would say he had studied special pleading rather than the
+British constitution.--If you heard this doctrine swallowed implicitly
+by an assembly of legislators, you would say they were still unfit to
+govern themselves. What is it, you would ask, that forms the general and
+pervading principle of the British constitution, if not the
+representative one? Every petty corporation, you would observe, elects
+representatives to act for them in their Common Council--the council
+elect Aldermen, and these again their Mayor--all on the same
+principle--that of having the sense of the multitude concentrated, and
+their business dispatched at once with ease and order. Nay, every
+Freeman is himself but a representative, not indeed of other men--but of
+his own property.
+
+But it is impossible that this should have been the real ground of
+objection to the Convention, however it might have been urged as the
+ostensible one--for it is obvious, that if the principle of
+representation be a fair and useful principle to adopt in collecting the
+sense of the people with respect to laws or taxes, it must also be a
+useful and fair principle to resort to, in every other instance, where
+great bodies of men are permitted to express their common sense as they
+are _unquestionably_ in petitioning for redress of grievances, &c. No,
+Englishmen! it was not because the Convention was unconstitutional as
+being representative, but because it was chosen to recommend, as the
+sense of the Irish people (for the Volunteers of that day were people of
+Ireland,)--a parliamentary reform, and to consider of a specific plan.
+It was this that the corrupt part of the Irish Government dreaded. They
+had been stunned by the unexpected blow struck by the people in
+asserting the independence of the legislature: for whatever credit the
+Parliament of that day may assume for the part which they acted in that
+business, it requires no argument to prove to a discerning man, that
+they were passive instruments in the people's hand--they only re-echoed
+the voice of an armed nation which they conceived too loud to be
+smothered, and were hurried on irresistibly by that enthusiastic
+sentiment for national independence, which the ability of _one_ great
+mind, aided by a fortunate concurrence of existing circumstances, had
+excited. But at the period I now speak of, the party of the British
+Minister had recovered from the astonishment into which the successful
+and prompt energy of the nation had thrown him. He now began to reflect
+on the extensive consequence which must follow from the restoration to
+Ireland of the right of legislating for herself. It was soon felt, that
+there now remained in the hands of the court faction in Ireland, only
+one instrument by which the effect of the recent revolution could be
+checked or frustrated; and that was, the borough system. It was seen,
+that whatever nominal independence the Irish legislature might have
+attained, yet while a majority of the Commons' House was constituted of
+members returned immediately by the crown influence, the will of the
+crown or the will of the British Cabinet must still be the law which
+would bind Ireland. To preserve the borough system then, at all hazards,
+became from that moment the great object of the dominating faction. The
+Convention was an engine which seemed to threaten its immediate and
+complete overthrow; it was therefore resolved, by all means, to effect
+its ruins. The staunch hounds which had fattened for years on the vitals
+of the country, but had been for some time kept at bay by the universal
+energy of the public mind, were again hallooed into action. In addition
+to these were introduced new forces from every quarter, but principally
+from the old aristocratic families, who had monopolized for a century
+the power and wealth of the country. On the memorable night when Mr.
+Flood presented to the House the petition of the Convention, was made
+the grand effort which was to decide whether the will of the nation or
+that of the old faction should govern. The latter was victorious. The
+people, with the characteristic levity of their nation, repulsed in this
+great effort, for the present, at least, shrunk back from the contest.
+The victorious party, possessing means of the most extensive and
+corrupting influence, strained them to the utmost; and gaining ground
+from that moment on the sense of the nation on that main point, have
+continued triumphantly and insolently to prostrate the people of
+Ireland. Every thinking and steady Irishman, however, retained his
+opinion as to the necessity of reform, and continued by the few means in
+his power, to promote it. At this point, then, commenced the separation
+between the Irish administration with their partisans in Parliament and
+the Irish people, and from that time they have gone in directly opposite
+directions.
+
+Such, Englishmen, is another of the crimes with which we are charged,
+and for which the highest law authority in our country has declared we
+merit to be deprived of all the benefits of the British constitution!
+For this we have been called a sottish, an insatiable, and tumultuous
+people--and to punish us for this offence the world has been told we
+deserve all those horrible calamities which, year after year, since that
+time have been inflicted on us!
+
+I have already said, that the people and the parliamentary supporters of
+administration separated from the moment when the Irish House of Commons
+extinguished the public hope on the important measure of parliamentary
+reform. The grand argument urged by the House of Commons against a
+reform at that time was, that it would be a surrender of the dignity and
+independence of the legislature to adopt a measure proposed to it on the
+point of a bayonet. The Convention proved the malice of the argument by
+the manner in which they bore the insulting rejection of their petition:
+having discharged the duty which they were created to perform, they
+dissolved, not only without a threat but without a murmur. The people,
+with a patience and moderation of which perhaps few more laudable
+instances are to be found in the history of any country, acquiesced, or
+submitted in silence to the decision of the legislation on this their
+most esteemed and favourite application. No doubt they hoped that a
+Parliament who refused to receive the petition of the people when
+presented as soldiers, would listen with a more patient ear to their
+claims when presented in another character. But this hope having been
+tried for five years without effect, was at last relinquished. The
+pertinacity with which all applications on the subject of reform were
+rejected, put it beyond doubt that reform was an object which by
+ordinary means could never be obtained. It was, however, a measure too
+big, when it had once gotten possession of the public mind, to be let go
+without a struggle. Accordingly, whatever of intelligence, of zeal, or
+of public spirit the country possessed, continued to be directed toward
+the acquisition of this great object. Among other modes which had been
+devised for giving greater efficacy to the public will on this subject,
+was that of forming societies which should have for their sole object to
+animate, to direct, to concentrate, the exertions of the people in the
+pursuit of this favourite and vital measure. Of these societies the
+first was formed in Dublin, of a few men whose talents, principles, and
+character, moral and political, gave such weight and popularity to their
+union, as soon swelled its numbers to a great magnitude, which, while it
+gave hope to the friends of the popular cause, excited in the
+administration very lively alarm. But it was yet more the principles of
+this body than its numbers which alarmed administration. The original
+members of the society, men of minds not only firmly attached to the
+political interests of this country, but superior to the influence of
+bigotry, which had been the most powerful instrument in the hands of the
+Court faction for dividing and weakening the people, made it a radical
+principle of their union to promote an abolition of all religious
+distinction, and to procure for _all_ the freemen of the state, whatever
+might be their religious sentiments, a participation in _all_ the
+privileges of the British constitution. A reform in Parliament,
+accompanied by such a principle as this, became a measure in which every
+man in the country was interested; and the catholics, who constitute
+the great majority of the people, more interested than others. The
+consequence was, that men of every description of religion, men of every
+rank in life, not immediately under the controul or influence of the
+Castle, adopted the principles of the society, or solicited admission
+into the ranks. The fear and the hatred of administration was soon
+manifested. Every art was used to blacken the principles of the
+society--its principal members were pointed out as the agitators of
+sedition--the enemies of social order--and men who aimed at nothing less
+than a subversion of the constitution and separation from Great Britain,
+under the pretext of reform and emancipation. The prints which were in
+the pay of the Castle vomited out daily the most gross, the most
+malignant, and irritating calumnies; and even the senate itself, now
+really forgetting its dignity, condescended to become the scurrilous
+aggressor not merely of the society at large, but of particular, and, in
+many instances, inconsiderable members of it.
+
+It was this despicable conduct in the prevailing faction in Ireland that
+laid the ground work of all the mischiefs which have since affected our
+unhappy country. The Irish Minister who paid the money of the people to
+cover their name with infamy and their principles with dishonour, him I
+charge with having first implanted in the minds of the multitude that
+invincible detestation of the system by which they were governed, that
+has since ended in assassination and treason. His subordinate agents,
+who in the folly and venom of their hearts at one time charged the great
+body of the Catholics with disaffection, at another held up to ridicule
+and odium the names of individuals of the most respectable and unsullied
+characters--at one time sneering at the merchant, at another insulting
+the tradesman, them I charge with having irritated the people of Ireland
+wantonly and wickedly, by calling forth the personal feelings, the
+pride, and sensibility of individuals, into a personal and revengeful
+opposition to the British name and British connection. What would
+Englishmen have felt, how would Englishmen have acted, had two or three
+individuals, strangers to their country, despicable in point of birth or
+talents, and considerable only from fortuitous elevation to offices
+which they were unfit to fill, ventured to insult their national
+character--to accuse of treason every man who dared to complain of his
+sufferings or his privations, or assumed the courage to exercise the
+humble privilege of petitioning for redress? If the saucy hirelings of a
+foreign Cabinet should publicly avow contempt for the men who uphold the
+strength and consequence of the state by useful industry, and tell the
+merchant and manufacturer that it was not for such fellows to deal in
+politics, to seek for rights, or talk of constitution--would not the
+spirit of the nation rise against their insolence, and make them feel
+how much more valuable _he_ is who promotes the comfort and welfare of
+society by commerce or by labour, than _he_ who lives upon the spoil of
+the community in something _worse_ than idleness?
+
+It was this arrogance in the Castle servants, the result of their
+conscious strength in corruption, that scouted with contempt and insult,
+out of the Irish House of Commons in 1795, the petition of three
+millions of Catholics, fully and impartially represented. Was not this
+an aggression of administration against the people? And yet the
+partisans of that administration--nay, the first mover in it, has had
+the confidence to assert, that the discontents and tumults of the people
+_preceded_ the measures of which they complain. Englishmen will
+determine, whether the Irish nation, consisting principally of
+Catholics, had or had not reason to be disgusted with the administration
+of the government under which they lived, when by the influence of that
+administration not only their wishes were not consulted, not only their
+general sense disregarded, but even their supplications spurned without
+a hearing from that body which professed to be, and which ought to be,
+their representatives.
+
+If it be granted that such conduct in the popular representation of a
+nation was calculated to excite discontent and destroy confidence, what
+followed that transaction must have had a much more powerful tendency to
+alienate the affection of the people, and produce those direful
+consequences which are now boldly said to have arisen unprovoked. When
+the Irish Catholics perceived, from the manner in which their petition
+for the elective franchise was treated, that in the Irish House of
+Commons they were not to look for friends, they resorted to the Throne.
+The supplications which had met only with contumely when addressed to
+the Irish Commons, was received with favour by a British King, acting
+with the advice of a British Cabinet. In the next session, the speech
+from the throne recommended to the Irish Parliament to take into their
+consideration the situation of the King's Catholic subjects. No sooner
+was this hint received from the British Cabinet, than those very men,
+who but last year pledged their lives and fortunes to perpetuate the
+exclusion of the Irish Catholics from the privileges of freemen, because
+to admit them to share those privileges would be a subversion of the
+constitution and establishment, surrendered that opinion with as much
+promptness and facility as they had shewn violence and rancour in taking
+it up. Without any petition from the Catholics, without any change of
+circumstances, except the declaration of the will of the British
+Cabinet, that privilege which was last year refused with so much
+harshness and disdain, was this year spontaneously conceded!
+
+Will any man who knows any thing of men and of the feelings and motives
+which actuate them, assert that there was any thing in this concession
+which should attach more firmly the Irish Catholics to the Irish House
+of Commons? Will he say that this was one of those gracious measures
+which an enlightened legislature would adopt to soften the exasperation
+of national discontent? Probably he will rather say, it was fitted to
+evince more strongly than ever the necessity of reforming the
+constitution of that assembly, which, from the inconsistency of its
+measures, appeared evidently the instrument of a foreign will, not the
+authentic organ of the national sense.
+
+Let him, or them whose hot folly, whose rank bigotry, or whose petulant
+and stolid zeal led the Irish Commons into this disgraceful and
+contemptible situation, feel the blush of shame and confusion burn their
+cheek, when they reflect on these scenes. Let them, while it is yet in
+their power, atone to their offended country for the fatal consequences
+of their advice, before those records which are to inform future ages
+impress on their names for ever the indelible character of--PUBLIC
+ENEMY.
+
+In speaking of these transactions I have not attended to chronological
+accuracy. There were other measures to which the administration of
+Ireland had resorted to prop up their power, and form a substitute for
+that legitimate strength which is to be found only in the chearful
+support of a contented people--there were other measures which they
+adopted to beat down the public voice, and overbear the general sense of
+the nation. Among these were wanton prosecutions of innocent and
+respectable men, sometimes for libels, which all publications were
+construed to be that dared to talk of reform as a good measure, or of
+constitutional rights as things to be desired; others for crimes of a
+deeper die--for sedition and for treason. The evidence adduced in
+support of these charges were often the vilest of the rabble, whose
+testimony on the trials was discredited even by themselves, and the
+prisoners discharged, to the honour of themselves and the detestation of
+their accusers. Such was the case of the Drogheda merchants, on whose
+trial came out proofs of subornation and perjury which would shock
+credibility. These, however, were but venial errors, compared with those
+more mortal sins against the constitution and against common right, with
+which the Irish administration stands charged--sins, which including a
+violation of general and vital principles, may be fairly reckoned among
+those great and leading causes which have reduced Ireland to the
+dreadful state of discontent and disorder in which she now stands.
+
+Of these, one was the Convention Bill--a measure proposed by
+administration, and adopted by the Parliament of that day, for the
+avowed purpose of preventing the Catholics from collecting the sense of
+their body on a petition to Parliament, or to the Throne, for the
+elective franchise. This bill, if it did not annihilate a popular right,
+certainly narrowed it to a degree which, in a great measure, under the
+then existing circumstances, destroyed its efficacy. It had been one of
+the special pleading tricks of the Irish Court, when the people
+expressed their sense on particular measures, if there happened to be
+any variations of mode or sentiment in the application of different
+bodies, to take occasion, from these variations, to reject the whole as
+inconsistent. This scheme had been practised with much plausibility on
+the question of reform. No reform, they contended, was practicable,
+which would content the nation; because of the many petitions which had
+been presented from the different counties, cities, and towns in the
+country, and of the many plans which had been proposed, no two were
+found perfectly to correspond--as if when the general sense of the
+people was fully expressed, no attention should be paid to it, because
+there was not to be found in the various expressions of that sense that
+perfect coincidence which on a general question of morals or politics it
+is absolutely impossible to attain. It had also been boldly and
+shamelessly asserted by administration, in opposition to the most
+general and public declaration of the Catholic body, that the claim of
+the elective franchise was only the suggestion of a few turbulent
+agitators, and that the great bulk of the Catholics had neither
+solicitude nor desire about the matter. To give the lie to this hardy
+and absurd assertion, the Catholics resolved upon a measure which would
+put the matter beyond doubt, and by collecting into a focus the sense of
+their body, and expressing that sense in a simple and explicit manner,
+would take from their enemies the two great arguments by which they had
+defeated the popular applications for reform. Administration, however,
+were too vigilant to suffer the Catholics to get hold of this powerful
+weapon. The Convention Bill, by which all representative assemblies were
+made illegal, and punishable with the severest penalties, proposed in
+haste, and passed with precipitation, deprived them of the only means of
+giving to the legislature that simple and indubitable declaration of
+the general sense, which, however, the legislature insisted on as a
+necessary preliminary to hearing their complaints.
+
+Here certainly was another of those measures which without any crime in
+the people of Ireland was levelled at one of their most valuable
+privileges. Let the people of England judge, whether under the
+circumstances I have mentioned, it was not likely to wound deeply the
+feelings of three-fourths of his Majesty's Irish subjects--and, combined
+as it was with the insulting rejection of the Catholic petition, and the
+subsequent concession, at the instance of the British Cabinet, of that
+favour which was refused to Irish supplication--let Englishmen say,
+whether it may not fairly be reckoned among the wanton and unprovoked
+causes of the present discontents.
+
+The Convention Bill, however mischievous it may have been by aggravating
+the discontent which had already spread through the mass of the people,
+was yet more mischievous by stopping up that channel through which
+popular discontent discharges itself with most safety--that of petition
+and remonstrance. So little effect had been found to result from the
+petitions of individuals in the legislature on any of the great
+questions which in any degree interfered with the system adopted by
+administration, and in which they seemed resolved to persevere, that it
+was thought futile and absurd to resort to that mode of stating
+complaint or soliciting redress. If a corporation petitioned, they were
+answered only by an observation on the manner in which the petition was
+obtained, by contrasting it with other petitions procured by Castle
+influence, or by some sarcastic remark on their profession or character.
+If a body of citizens petitioned, they were porter-house politicians or
+bankrupt traders. There remained, therefore, no way in which the people
+could lay their complaints before the legislature, with any hope of
+relief, but in that general way of a representative body, which, while
+it gave weight and consistency to their application, obviated those
+pitiful arts by which the Castle continued to elude and frustrate the
+wishes of the people. The Convention Bill, by rendering that mode
+impracticable, compressed the public discontents, and while it encreased
+the irritation, left no vent to its violence but in assassination and
+conspiracy.
+
+That such would be the consequence of this measure, administration were
+solemnly warned. It was urged on them, but without effect, that in every
+country where the freedom of remonstrance and complaint was denied,
+secret conspiracy or open insurrection took the place of angry but
+harmless petition. Italy was mentioned; and it was said, rather with the
+spirit of a prophet than a politician, that if this bill passed, Ireland
+would become more infamous for private assassination than Italy itself.
+The Society of United Irishmen was not yet become a clandestine or an
+illegal body--but it was foretold, that this bill would create
+clandestine and seditious meetings: for it was easy to see, that when
+discontented people were prevented from uttering their complaints, they
+would substitute other modes of redress for angry publication. But with
+the administration of Ireland, or the Irish House of Commons of that
+day, advice and remonstrance were vain. They boldly ventured on a
+measure of which these consequences were foreseen, yet now profess to
+wonder why such consequences have happened. On the folly of their
+counsels, then, the people of Ireland are justified in charging the
+assassinations--the sedition--the conspiracy, which have disgraced their
+country: they are not the native growth of her soil! They have been
+begotten only by insolence and injury upon the stifled indignation of a
+volatile and feeling people!
+
+But the Convention act was not the only measure to which the party
+abusing the powers of government in Ireland resorted, to tame or to
+irritate the Irish people. The Gunpowder Bill, prior in order and time,
+which deprived the Irish subject in a great measure of the
+constitutional power of self-defence, prepared the minds of the people
+for receiving the full impression of the Convention act, which narrowed
+another of his rights. The attempt to annihilate the independence of the
+country, by insisting on the right of Britain to choose a regent for
+Ireland, and the subsequent attempt of the same kind in 1785 to
+substitute a commercial boon for the right of self-government, had
+already gone far toward producing a tendency to irritation in the
+people, which these more vital attacks completed.
+
+Nor did even these measures, insidious, violent, and unconstitutional as
+they were, produce so much discontent as the tone and the spirit in
+which they were tarried into execution. The most insulting imputations
+on the loyalty, and even on the intellect of the nation, were daily
+made by the needy adventurers, whom chance, or perhaps infamous
+services, had raised to a place in the administration. The public prints
+were polluted by the foulest calumny against every man who had the
+virtue and the courage to oppose a system which he foresaw must
+eventually terminate in the ruin of the country. Some of the basest of
+mankind, distinguished, however, by more than usual talents for
+perversion and invective, were appointed to conduct those publications
+which were paid by the public money for abusing the national character.
+The Whig Club, consisting of noblemen and gentlemen who, by possessing
+large property and extensive connections in the country, felt themselves
+bound to oppose the mad measures of men who, as they were mostly
+foreigners, had no interest but to turn the present moment to most
+advantage, were held up to the public, both in and out of Parliament, as
+enemies to the tranquillity of the state, and anxious only, at all
+events, to raise themselves to power.
+
+The conduct of administration to the Whig Club, indeed, deserves
+peculiar confederation, as it evinces, in the fullest manner, that it
+was not the irregular or unconstitutional proceedings of this or that
+body of men--of the Volunteer Convention, or of the United Irish
+Society--but the measures which these bodies recommended, against which
+the influence and force of government was turned. The Whig Club had
+formed themselves on the most constitutional and moderate principles.
+Their object was to obtain for the people of Ireland, by a concentration
+of their parliamentary influence and exertions, those laws by which the
+British constitution was guarded, against the encroachments of the
+executive power; and by the want of which in Ireland, her constitution
+seemed to have but a precarious existence at the pleasure of the Court.
+Such were a Pension Bill, for limiting the influence resulting to the
+Crown by an indefinite power of granting pensions--a Place Bill, to
+secure the independence of the House of Commons, by making the
+acceptance of office by a member a vacation of his seat--a
+Responsibility Bill, by which the men intrusted with the management of
+the public treasure, or enjoying high official situations in the
+government of the country, should be responsible to Parliament for their
+conduct and advice. These were the measures which the Club undertook at
+their formation to press upon minister. They subsequently adopted
+others on which the sense of the people became too generally known to be
+at all doubtful. The question of reform and Catholic emancipation they
+did not take up, until the nation called for them in a manner which
+proved the concession of them to be essential to the peace of the
+country.
+
+Of the constitutionality of those measures which the Whig Club
+originally espoused, no man could entertain a doubt. They were the law
+of England. The manner in which these measures were urged by the Whig
+Club was equally constitutional. They brought them before Parliament by
+bill and by motion, supported by arguments which were answered only by
+majorities consisting of those placemen and pensioners, those borough
+members and irresponsible officers, against whose parliamentary
+existence they were levelled. This constitutional pursuit of
+constitutional measures--how did the Irish administration treat it? By
+imputing the worst motives to those by whom they were proposed--by
+impeaching their loyalty to their Sovereign--by the most open and bold
+avowal of the existence, and the necessity of corruption in the
+government--by the most contumelious indifference for the public voice,
+and, finally, by affixing the most disgraceful and irritating marks of
+suspicion on every nobleman and man of property in either house of
+Parliament, who dared to support those pretensions of the people to the
+benefits of the British constitution. The removal of that good and
+estimable character, the Earl of Charlemont, from the office of Governor
+of the County of Armagh--an office which might be considered as
+hereditary in his family, and to which his estate in that county gave
+him a kind of indefeasible right, is one instance of a number. It will
+ever be remembered as a damning proof of the foolish and wicked
+malignity of the Irish administration against the friends of the Irish
+people.
+
+These arts of the Castle, however, were unable to counteract or repress
+the persevering effects of the Whig Club. It is not necessary in this
+place to enter into a defence of the motives of that body in thus
+contending for the interests of the public. It is sufficient that the
+measures which they patronized were in a high degree beneficial to the
+Irish nation; and whether they urged them from a wish to raise
+themselves to office, or from a principle of pure patriotism, was to
+the public immaterial. That they supported them zealously and
+faithfully, from whatever motive, was indubitable. _So_ zealously and
+faithfully indeed did they exert themselves, that the very same men who
+had for years made a constant and violent opposition to those measures,
+exhausting every epithet of reprobation which the English language
+afforded, both against them and their supporters, yet at last found
+themselves obliged to concede them to the unrelaxing vigour of these
+gentlemen, supported by the general sense of the country. It is the
+concession of these measures that the friends of the Irish junto call
+"CONCILIATION!" These are the favours which they say Ireland has
+received, and which they contend ought for ever to have silenced popular
+complaint, and put a period to the demands of the country! Had they been
+yielded at an earlier time, before the long, long irritation which the
+obstinate refusal of them for several successive years had produced,
+they would have been received with gratitude by the nation, and the
+effect would have been general tranquillity and content. But the Irish
+administration knew neither how to concede nor withhold--their
+resistance was without strength, and their concessions without kindness.
+Like the Roman King and the Sybils, they withheld the price of public
+content, until the people, aggravated by refusal, insisted on still
+higher terms; and, indeed, rose in their demands, beyond what an
+administration, bankrupt in character and confidence, were able to grant
+them. What a Minister of comprehensive mind and enlarged views would
+have granted to the people with magnanimity at once, and what if thus
+granted, would have taken the tongue from discontent, and left
+disaffection no handle to use against the peace of the country, the
+Irish administration conceded piece-meal--one little measure after
+another--reluctantly and with hesitation; thus teaching the people that
+what was granted could not be withheld, and that the same means which
+had extorted one concession from the weakness of government would be
+equally successful in extorting others. Nay, at the very moment when
+they were yielding those measures to the perseverance of opposition,
+supported by the public sense, they continued to load those very men by
+whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul
+invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the
+people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely
+through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the
+country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity
+of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and
+those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have
+bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of
+exciting in numbers of the inhabitants of that country a deep hatred of
+the British name and connection.
+
+When Englishmen contemplate for a moment this picture of the
+"conciliation" which the Irish nation has received with so much
+ingratitude, it is possible they may conclude that nothing has happened
+which might not have reasonably been expected. Possibly they will think
+it not unnatural that the people should have received, with little sense
+of obligation, measures which were never conceded until they came to
+form only a small part of what was demanded as rights--and that they
+should rather feel indignant at the insult and abuse heaped on them by a
+few contemptible and obscure adventurers, than acknowledge gratitude for
+benefits long kept back, and, at length, reluctantly yielded.
+
+I have dwelt thus long on the early conduct of the Irish administration
+for two reasons--the one to vindicate the people of Ireland from the
+insolent charge made against them by their enemies--"That conciliation
+had been tried in vain with that sottish and discontented people--that
+they had not intellect to understand, nor gratitude to acknowledge
+benefits--and that, therefore, the present system of unconstitutional
+coercion and deprivation was resorted to of necessity:"--the other was
+to shew, that whatever discontent has been recently shewn in Ireland,
+whatever crimes have been committed for political purposes, had their
+remote origin in that system by which the powers of government had been
+abused in Ireland for several years back. Whether I have succeeded in
+this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and
+constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is
+incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the
+people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of
+ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy
+country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end
+the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the
+necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system adopted by the
+weak, hot-headed, and petulant men to whom the administration of Ireland
+was entrusted, operating upon a generous and loyal but irritable and
+warm people.
+
+But had the Irish junto rested at the point to which we have now come in
+describing their system, Ireland would not now have to appeal for pity
+or for aid to the British nation. It is the subsequent measures to which
+they resorted, and for which no precedent is to be found in the history
+of this or any other country pretending to laws, or rights, or
+constitution, that we complain of. It is by these that Ireland has been
+lashed into madness, and driven to crimes and to follies which her sober
+reason would have looked at with detestation. It shall be now my
+business to advert to those measures--to shew that they have generally
+preceded those crimes of the people which are alledged to have produced
+them--that they have been severe and desperate beyond what the necessity
+of the case called for--that their probable result will be a military
+despotism--that they cannot tranquillize the country but by the
+destruction of every degree of constitutional liberty--that, therefore,
+the people of Great Britain are interested in preventing the progress of
+that system in Ireland--and, finally, that if the two great objects of
+the public in Ireland were honestly and fully conceded, and if the
+people were re-instated in the blessings of the constitution by the
+establishment of a mild and just administration, peace and content would
+be restored to the country, disaffection would vanish, and the
+connection of the two islands become closer and more permanent than
+ever.
+
+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.
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed, by Anonymous</title>
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland
+Disclosed, by Anonymous</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed</p>
+<p>       In an Address to the People of England, in Which It Is Proved by Incontrovertible Facts, That the System for Some Years Pursued in That Country, Has Driven It into Its Present Dreadful Situation</p>
+<p>Author: Anonymous</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 2, 2008  [eBook #25300]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION IN IRELAND DISCLOSED***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Martin Pettit,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>THE</h3>
+
+<h1>CAUSES</h1>
+
+<h3>OF THE</h3>
+
+<h2>REBELLION IN IRELAND</h2>
+
+<h2>DISCLOSED,</h2>
+
+<h4>IN AN</h4>
+
+<h2><i>Address to the People of England</i>.</h2>
+
+<h4>IN WHICH IT IS PROVED BY</h4>
+
+<h2>INCONTROVERTIBLE FACTS,</h2>
+
+<h4>THAT THE</h4>
+
+<h2><i>System for some Years pursued in that Country</i>,</h2>
+
+<h4>HAS DRIVEN IT INTO ITS PRESENT</h4>
+
+<h2>DREADFUL SITUATION.</h2>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<h3>BY AN IRISH EMIGRANT.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Insita mortalibus natura violenti&aelig; resistere. TACITUS.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>LONDON</i>:</p>
+
+<p class="center">Printed for J. S. JORDAN, No. 166, Fleet Street.</p>
+
+<p class="center">[PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE.]</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>CAUSES</h1>
+
+<h4>OF THE</h4>
+
+<h2>REBELLION,</h2>
+
+<h3>&amp;c. &amp;c.</h3>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p>FELLOW SUBJECTS,</p>
+
+<p>It is always a bold undertaking in a private individual to become the
+advocate of a suffering people. It is peculiarly difficult at the
+present moment to be the advocate of the people of Ireland, because
+there are among them men who have taken the power of redress into their
+own hands, and committed acts of outrage and rebellion which no
+sufferings could justify, and which can only tend to aggravate ten-fold
+the other calamities of their country. Deeply impressed, however, as I
+am with a conviction that these difficulties stand in my way, I shall
+yet venture to state to Englishmen the case of Ireland. In doing so, I
+rest not on a vain confidence in my own strength, but on the nature of
+the cause I plead; for I am convinced, that when the train of measures
+which have led that miserable country into its present situation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> shall
+be fully disclosed, it will be but little difficult to rouze the people
+of England not merely to commiserate a distressed country, but excite
+them to exert their constitutional endeavours, as head of the British
+empire, to avert the destruction of its principal member.</p>
+
+<p>There is another circumstance which gives me hope. The people of England
+at this hour feel themselves much more interested in what concerns
+Irishmen, than they have ever done at any former period. Whatever
+mischiefs may have resulted to human society from that kind of
+philosophic illumination by which modern times are distinguished, one
+certain good at least has been produced by it&mdash;men have become better
+acquainted&mdash;the bond of a common nature has been strengthened&mdash;and each
+country begins to feel an interest in the concerns of every other. It is
+not to a more extensive personal intercourse, or to the creation of any
+new principles of political union, that this is to be attributed. It is
+owing solely to an increased communication of sentiment and feeling&mdash;to
+a knowledge which has diffused itself through the world that the human
+mind is every where made of the same materials, and that on all the
+great questions which concern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> man's interest in society, the men of
+every country think alike. Hence has arisen an increased sympathy
+between nations&mdash;if not between those who govern them, at least between
+those by whom they are constituted; and hence too has it followed, that
+those national antipathies which had so long debased and afflicted
+mankind, are now become less strong and rancorous; and, it may be
+reasonable to hope, will one day be known no more.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, however, on the influence of this nascent principle of
+philanthropy among nations that I ground my principal hope, when I call
+on Englishmen to hear with an ear of kindness and concern the complaint
+of a sister-country. I resort to a still more powerful principle&mdash;I
+shall call on them as a people famed even in barbarous times for those
+feelings of generosity and compassion, which are inseparable from
+valour&mdash;I shall call on them as a <span class="smaller">FREE</span> people, to watch with caution the
+progress of despotism toward their own shores, stalking in all its
+horrors of murder, pillage, and flames, through the territory of a
+neighbour&mdash;I shall call even on their <span class="smaller">INTEREST</span>, to save from utter ruin,
+political, commercial, and constitutional, the most valuable member of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+the British empire! If Englishmen look with horror on the enormities of
+France, I will call on them to let crimes of as black a dye perpetrated
+in Ireland meet their share of detestation. If they who subvert the good
+order of society&mdash;who overleap the bounds fixed by the law of Nature
+itself to guard the liberty, life, and property of individuals against
+the spoiler, be fit objects of reprobation, I shall turn the eyes of all
+the good and wise in England toward that faction by whose counsels and
+whose deeds the fairest island in the British empire has been made a
+theatre on which lawless outrage has played its deadly freaks!</p>
+
+<p>When I speak in terms thus strong of that system under which the people
+of Ireland have suffered for some years, and by which they have been
+goaded into acts of folly and madness which no good man is either able
+or inclined to defend, let me not too early be charged with declamation.
+There are some cases in which no language can be declamatory because no
+words can aggravate them. If I shall not shew before I conclude this
+address that the case of Ireland is one of them, let me <i>then</i> be
+branded with the epithet of empty talker!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p><p>It will not be necessary for me, in stating to the people of England
+the calamities under which Ireland smarts, and the causes which produced
+them, to go farther back than that period at which she became, nominally
+at least, an independent country. What remains of her history before
+that period the honour of both countries calls on us to forget&mdash;a
+mistaken but overbearing principle of domination and monopoly on one
+hand, fed and strengthened by a servile and base acquiescence on the
+other, constitute the outline of the sketch&mdash;an idle and beggared
+populace, a jobbing legislature, proscriptions, penal laws, &amp;c. &amp;c. are
+the disgusting materials with which it must be filled. That Time should
+quickly draw his veil over such a scene, and cover it with oblivion
+would be the natural wish of every British and Irish heart, were it not
+that scenes still more disgraceful to both countries and more calamitous
+to one of them have succeeded&mdash;scenes which force the mind to revert
+with regret to those days of poverty and peace, when, as there existed
+little wealth to excite avarice, and little spirit to aggravate the
+ambition of party, that little remained inviolate, and the miserable
+cabin, though filled with objects of disgusting wretchedness, was yet
+the secure covering and castle of its humble owner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>&mdash;How different his
+present situation! when in laying down his head at night he fears lest
+before morning he shall be rouzed by the cries of his family in flames,
+or dragged from his bed by military ruffians, to be hanged at his own
+door!</p>
+
+<p>Forgetting then the many causes of discontent with the people of England
+which existed in Ireland prior to the year 1782, I shall call the
+attention of this country to only those transactions which have taken
+place since that time&mdash;and indeed to many of those transactions it would
+not be necessary to advert at all, were it not for that minute and
+elaborate detail which has been made of them by a well known public
+character in a late publication,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> for the purpose of proving that
+Ireland deserved what she suffered&mdash;that she has been always sottishly
+discontented and basely ungrateful. But I call on Englishmen to judge
+impartially for themselves&mdash;nor let the confident assertion or bold
+recrimination of an accused man pre-occupy their decision on the merits
+and the sufferings of an unhappy people.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>It will scarcely be denied at this day, that the people of Ireland did
+right in calling for the independence of their legislature in the year
+1782, and in pressing that claim on the British minister, until he
+yielded to its force.&mdash;It is admitted that Ireland, on that occasion,
+while she armed herself to repel the foes of Britain, while her
+population poured to her shores to resist the insulting fleet of the
+enemy, and preserve her connexion with the empire, acted with the proper
+and true spirit of a brave and loyal people in calling on the British
+Parliament for a renunciation of that claim to rule her which was
+originally founded only on her weakness, and was supported by no other
+argument than power. While this then is admitted, let it be remembered,
+that they who opposed this just claim of Ireland to be free, must have
+been the advocates of a slavish system&mdash;and that the people of Ireland
+might fairly entertain doubts of the sincere attachment of such men to
+her cause.&mdash;Let it be remembered, that the men who said to a country
+struggling for the legitimate power of governing for itself, "You have
+no right to make your own laws&mdash;you are materials fit only to be
+governed by strangers," were not men in whom that country, when she
+succeeded in the struggle, could place much confidence. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> fact, she
+did not confide in them. It was thought necessary to watch attentively
+the measures of men who had reluctantly assented to the manumission of
+their country, and who were believed to have such a deeply rooted
+attachment to the principles of the old court, that they would lose no
+opportunity of re-inducing upon the nation those bonds which she had
+broken only by a combination of fortunate circumstances, concurring with
+her own efforts.</p>
+
+<p>In this consciousness of the danger with which they were surrounded from
+false friends, originated that doubt which is now charged on the people
+of Ireland as a first proof of wanton discontent&mdash;I mean a doubt about
+the validity of the simple repeal of the 6th Geo. III. as an act of
+renunciation. Discontent on this subject arose and became general in
+Ireland almost immediately on the repeal of that obnoxious statute; and
+from the zeal and warmth with which it was attempted to <i>beat it down</i>,
+did for a time put the kingdom in a ferment. The men who have since that
+time scourged Ireland with a rod of iron, charge this as the
+commencement of the crimes of the country&mdash;the first overt act of her
+intemperance and violent propensity to discontent. Whether it deserves
+that epithet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> Englishmen will judge, when they learn that this doubt was
+first suggested by some of the best lawyers&mdash;the warmest friends and the
+most enlightened and able men whom Ireland ever knew&mdash;by Walter Hussey
+Burgh&mdash;by Henry Flood, and by the brilliant phalanx of constitutional
+lawyers who at that time graced the popular cause&mdash;men "to whom
+compared" the most proud and petulant of her present persecutors "are
+but the insects of a summer's day." These gentlemen had been the
+long-tried friends of the country&mdash;they had been found pure in
+principle, and in intellect superior to their contemporaries. Where,
+therefore, was the wonder, that the people should adopt an opinion
+sanctioned and inculcated by such venerable names? What was there
+strange or criminal in believing, that a country which only retracted in
+silence a claim for more than half a century enforced and acted on, did
+but suspend for the present a right which she believed to exist, and
+which she would not fail to urge again in more favourable circumstances?
+The partisans of the Irish Chancellor act with as much confidence on
+<i>his</i> opinions in cases where common understandings have less to guide
+them: why then should the people of Ireland be branded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> as seditious and
+disaffected, for following, in a matter of law, the counsels of men
+whose integrity she had tried, and whose talents were acknowledged?</p>
+
+<p>It is true, indeed, there was on the other side of this question a name
+to which Ireland owed much, and to whose subsequent exertions in her
+cause, though fruitless, she owes perhaps still more&mdash;Mr. Grattan. <i>He</i>
+thought the simple repeal of itself a valid and full renunciation. But
+it may be said for the people of Ireland, that Mr. Grattan, when this
+question was agitated, stood in circumstances which deducted much from
+his high authority. He had but just come from the Treasury, after
+receiving 50,000l. for his past services&mdash;and it was too generally known
+in Ireland, that there was some quality in Treasury gold, however
+acquired, which attracted the possessor powerfully towards the Castle.
+The private judgement of Mr. Grattan might also be reasonably supposed
+to have a bias on the question, from the circumstance of being himself
+the adviser of the simple repeal&mdash;the idea of an explicit renunciation
+not having been started when Mr. Grattan's principal exertions, seconded
+by the voice of the people, triumphed over the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> system. There was
+another reason&mdash;Mr. Grattan's influence was weakened, if not lost, by
+the fallen character of those with whom he then acted. The people of
+Ireland were naturally jealous of those men who had uniformly supported
+the dominating principles of the British party in Ireland, and who had
+as violently opposed (though by more legitimate means) the exertions of
+the popular party to obtain an independent legislature, as they now do
+to prevent the reform of the legislative body. And finally, the opinion
+and authority of Mr. Grattan, however respectable were not thought an
+adequate counterpoize to the weight of those very numerous and most
+respectable opinions which were on this question in opposition to his.
+Under these circumstances, the charge of sottish discontent, which has
+been so confidently made against the Irish nation, will appear to be one
+of those foul calumnies by which a desperate and enraged faction strive
+to cover their own enormities. Englishmen, and the world, will see, that
+had Ireland at that critical moment adopted the advice of those who had
+always acted as enemies to her best interests, and rejected the counsels
+and opinions of those to whom she owed the most important obligations,
+she would <i>then</i> indeed have been incorrigibly sottish.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p><p>The next <i>crime</i> with which the Irish nation stands charged, is their
+early and zealous efforts for parliamentary reform.&mdash;It has been
+enumerated as one of the causes which have produced the present horrible
+system of administration in Ireland, that shortly after the
+establishment of their legislative independence, a convention met in
+Dublin, consisting of representatives from the different Volunteer
+Associations, by whom the country had been saved from the common enemy,
+and who were supposed to have contributed much to the establishment of
+her independence. This convention had been constituted on the same
+principle (but with more circumspection and order) as that which was so
+well known by the name of the Dungannon meeting&mdash;an assembly, which
+though perfectly military, so far as its being constituted by armed
+citizens could make it so, did more towards asserting the independence
+of Ireland and procuring for her the most important advantages of
+constitution and commerce than any other which ever sat in Ireland. To
+the Dungannon meeting, however, no exceptions were taken&mdash;they were
+suffered to meet&mdash;to resolve&mdash;and to point out in the most decisive tone
+the grievances under which they supposed the country laboured. Their
+remonstrances were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> carried even to the foot of the throne, and the
+father of his people, uninfluenced by that romantic sense of dignity,
+which has since produced such lamentable effects in Irish
+Parliaments&mdash;graciously received, and wisely attended to their
+remonstrances.&mdash;The jesuitical or Machiavelian distinction between
+citizens in red clothes and in coloured ones, had not yet been thought
+of&mdash;it was considered sufficient to entitle an address or petition to a
+respectful hearing, if it was substantially the sense of a great body of
+the property and population of the state, no matter whether they spoke
+in the character of volunteers associated to defend the constitution, or
+as freeholders assembled only to exercise its privileges.</p>
+
+<p>It is not for me now to defend the convention of that day from the
+imputation of false policy and imprudence, in preferring the character
+of soldiers to that of citizens in their deliberative capacity, but I
+cannot help observing&mdash;First, that the Irish administration have never
+manifested any dislike of military bodies&mdash;real, mercenary, foreign
+soldiers,&mdash;expressing publicly <i>their</i> sentiments on great public
+questions, when those sentiments coincided with the politics of the
+Castle&mdash;witness the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> manifestoes with which the Irish newspapers have
+for the last year or two been crouded, from Scotch and English mercenary
+troops, in which these zealous advocates for religion and liberty
+declare themselves friends to this or that measure, publish their
+determination to support them&mdash;and sometimes conclude by letting the
+Irish public know&mdash;<i>they had not come thither to be trifled
+with</i>.&mdash;Secondly, I must remark, that tho' the great objection to the
+volunteer convention was its being armed, and consisting of the
+representatives of an armed body, yet opposition equally violent has
+been since made to other representative bodies <i>not</i> military&mdash;instance
+the calumny with which the servants of the Irish administration have
+blackened the Catholic committee&mdash;and, above all, instance the Athlone
+convention, the meeting of which administration were so solicitous to
+prevent, that they ventured on a law to prevent for ever the meeting of
+any representative body&mdash;the House of Commons excepted.</p>
+
+<p>By these circumstances it seems sufficiently clear, that the
+inconceivable aversion entertained against this body, and the memory of
+it, was founded not in its being military, but in its being
+representative and popular&mdash;not in its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> constitution, but in its
+object.&mdash;With respect to its being a representative body, I profess, for
+my own part, I cannot conceive why for that reason the Irish government
+and the Irish Chancellor have held it so much in abomination. You,
+Englishmen, who understand that constitution of which you are properly
+so proud, will be surprized to hear that representative bodies are
+unconstitutional.&mdash;If you heard this asserted with much confidence by a
+lawyer, you would say he had studied special pleading rather than the
+British constitution.&mdash;If you heard this doctrine swallowed implicitly
+by an assembly of legislators, you would say they were still unfit to
+govern themselves. What is it, you would ask, that forms the general and
+pervading principle of the British constitution, if not the
+representative one? Every petty corporation, you would observe, elects
+representatives to act for them in their Common Council&mdash;the council
+elect Aldermen, and these again their Mayor&mdash;all on the same
+principle&mdash;that of having the sense of the multitude concentrated, and
+their business dispatched at once with ease and order. Nay, every
+Freeman is himself but a representative, not indeed of other men&mdash;but of
+his own property.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p><p>But it is impossible that this should have been the real ground of
+objection to the Convention, however it might have been urged as the
+ostensible one&mdash;for it is obvious, that if the principle of
+representation be a fair and useful principle to adopt in collecting the
+sense of the people with respect to laws or taxes, it must also be a
+useful and fair principle to resort to, in every other instance, where
+great bodies of men are permitted to express their common sense as they
+are <i>unquestionably</i> in petitioning for redress of grievances, &amp;c. No,
+Englishmen! it was not because the Convention was unconstitutional as
+being representative, but because it was chosen to recommend, as the
+sense of the Irish people (for the Volunteers of that day were people of
+Ireland,)&mdash;a parliamentary reform, and to consider of a specific plan.
+It was this that the corrupt part of the Irish Government dreaded. They
+had been stunned by the unexpected blow struck by the people in
+asserting the independence of the legislature: for whatever credit the
+Parliament of that day may assume for the part which they acted in that
+business, it requires no argument to prove to a discerning man, that
+they were passive instruments in the people's hand&mdash;they only re-echoed
+the voice of an armed nation which they conceived too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> loud to be
+smothered, and were hurried on irresistibly by that enthusiastic
+sentiment for national independence, which the ability of <i>one</i> great
+mind, aided by a fortunate concurrence of existing circumstances, had
+excited. But at the period I now speak of, the party of the British
+Minister had recovered from the astonishment into which the successful
+and prompt energy of the nation had thrown him. He now began to reflect
+on the extensive consequence which must follow from the restoration to
+Ireland of the right of legislating for herself. It was soon felt, that
+there now remained in the hands of the court faction in Ireland, only
+one instrument by which the effect of the recent revolution could be
+checked or frustrated; and that was, the borough system. It was seen,
+that whatever nominal independence the Irish legislature might have
+attained, yet while a majority of the Commons' House was constituted of
+members returned immediately by the crown influence, the will of the
+crown or the will of the British Cabinet must still be the law which
+would bind Ireland. To preserve the borough system then, at all hazards,
+became from that moment the great object of the dominating faction. The
+Convention was an engine which seemed to threaten its immediate and
+complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> overthrow; it was therefore resolved, by all means, to effect
+its ruins. The staunch hounds which had fattened for years on the vitals
+of the country, but had been for some time kept at bay by the universal
+energy of the public mind, were again hallooed into action. In addition
+to these were introduced new forces from every quarter, but principally
+from the old aristocratic families, who had monopolized for a century
+the power and wealth of the country. On the memorable night when Mr.
+Flood presented to the House the petition of the Convention, was made
+the grand effort which was to decide whether the will of the nation or
+that of the old faction should govern. The latter was victorious. The
+people, with the characteristic levity of their nation, repulsed in this
+great effort, for the present, at least, shrunk back from the contest.
+The victorious party, possessing means of the most extensive and
+corrupting influence, strained them to the utmost; and gaining ground
+from that moment on the sense of the nation on that main point, have
+continued triumphantly and insolently to prostrate the people of
+Ireland. Every thinking and steady Irishman, however, retained his
+opinion as to the necessity of reform, and continued by the few means in
+his power, to promote it. At this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> point, then, commenced the separation
+between the Irish administration with their partisans in Parliament and
+the Irish people, and from that time they have gone in directly opposite
+directions.</p>
+
+<p>Such, Englishmen, is another of the crimes with which we are charged,
+and for which the highest law authority in our country has declared we
+merit to be deprived of all the benefits of the British constitution!
+For this we have been called a sottish, an insatiable, and tumultuous
+people&mdash;and to punish us for this offence the world has been told we
+deserve all those horrible calamities which, year after year, since that
+time have been inflicted on us!</p>
+
+<p>I have already said, that the people and the parliamentary supporters of
+administration separated from the moment when the Irish House of Commons
+extinguished the public hope on the important measure of parliamentary
+reform. The grand argument urged by the House of Commons against a
+reform at that time was, that it would be a surrender of the dignity and
+independence of the legislature to adopt a measure proposed to it on the
+point of a bayonet. The Convention proved the malice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> of the argument by
+the manner in which they bore the insulting rejection of their petition:
+having discharged the duty which they were created to perform, they
+dissolved, not only without a threat but without a murmur. The people,
+with a patience and moderation of which perhaps few more laudable
+instances are to be found in the history of any country, acquiesced, or
+submitted in silence to the decision of the legislation on this their
+most esteemed and favourite application. No doubt they hoped that a
+Parliament who refused to receive the petition of the people when
+presented as soldiers, would listen with a more patient ear to their
+claims when presented in another character. But this hope having been
+tried for five years without effect, was at last relinquished. The
+pertinacity with which all applications on the subject of reform were
+rejected, put it beyond doubt that reform was an object which by
+ordinary means could never be obtained. It was, however, a measure too
+big, when it had once gotten possession of the public mind, to be let go
+without a struggle. Accordingly, whatever of intelligence, of zeal, or
+of public spirit the country possessed, continued to be directed toward
+the acquisition of this great object. Among other modes which had been
+devised for giving greater efficacy to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> the public will on this subject,
+was that of forming societies which should have for their sole object to
+animate, to direct, to concentrate, the exertions of the people in the
+pursuit of this favourite and vital measure. Of these societies the
+first was formed in Dublin, of a few men whose talents, principles, and
+character, moral and political, gave such weight and popularity to their
+union, as soon swelled its numbers to a great magnitude, which, while it
+gave hope to the friends of the popular cause, excited in the
+administration very lively alarm. But it was yet more the principles of
+this body than its numbers which alarmed administration. The original
+members of the society, men of minds not only firmly attached to the
+political interests of this country, but superior to the influence of
+bigotry, which had been the most powerful instrument in the hands of the
+Court faction for dividing and weakening the people, made it a radical
+principle of their union to promote an abolition of all religious
+distinction, and to procure for <i>all</i> the freemen of the state, whatever
+might be their religious sentiments, a participation in <i>all</i> the
+privileges of the British constitution. A reform in Parliament,
+accompanied by such a principle as this, became a measure in which every
+man in the country was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> interested; and the catholics, who constitute
+the great majority of the people, more interested than others. The
+consequence was, that men of every description of religion, men of every
+rank in life, not immediately under the controul or influence of the
+Castle, adopted the principles of the society, or solicited admission
+into the ranks. The fear and the hatred of administration was soon
+manifested. Every art was used to blacken the principles of the
+society&mdash;its principal members were pointed out as the agitators of
+sedition&mdash;the enemies of social order&mdash;and men who aimed at nothing less
+than a subversion of the constitution and separation from Great Britain,
+under the pretext of reform and emancipation. The prints which were in
+the pay of the Castle vomited out daily the most gross, the most
+malignant, and irritating calumnies; and even the senate itself, now
+really forgetting its dignity, condescended to become the scurrilous
+aggressor not merely of the society at large, but of particular, and, in
+many instances, inconsiderable members of it.</p>
+
+<p>It was this despicable conduct in the prevailing faction in Ireland that
+laid the ground work of all the mischiefs which have since affected our
+unhappy country. The Irish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>Minister who paid the money of the people to
+cover their name with infamy and their principles with dishonour, him I
+charge with having first implanted in the minds of the multitude that
+invincible detestation of the system by which they were governed, that
+has since ended in assassination and treason. His subordinate agents,
+who in the folly and venom of their hearts at one time charged the great
+body of the Catholics with disaffection, at another held up to ridicule
+and odium the names of individuals of the most respectable and unsullied
+characters&mdash;at one time sneering at the merchant, at another insulting
+the tradesman, them I charge with having irritated the people of Ireland
+wantonly and wickedly, by calling forth the personal feelings, the
+pride, and sensibility of individuals, into a personal and revengeful
+opposition to the British name and British connection. What would
+Englishmen have felt, how would Englishmen have acted, had two or three
+individuals, strangers to their country, despicable in point of birth or
+talents, and considerable only from fortuitous elevation to offices
+which they were unfit to fill, ventured to insult their national
+character&mdash;to accuse of treason every man who dared to complain of his
+sufferings or his privations, or assumed the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>courage to exercise the
+humble privilege of petitioning for redress? If the saucy hirelings of a
+foreign Cabinet should publicly avow contempt for the men who uphold the
+strength and consequence of the state by useful industry, and tell the
+merchant and manufacturer that it was not for such fellows to deal in
+politics, to seek for rights, or talk of constitution&mdash;would not the
+spirit of the nation rise against their insolence, and make them feel
+how much more valuable <i>he</i> is who promotes the comfort and welfare of
+society by commerce or by labour, than <i>he</i> who lives upon the spoil of
+the community in something <i>worse</i> than idleness?</p>
+
+<p>It was this arrogance in the Castle servants, the result of their
+conscious strength in corruption, that scouted with contempt and insult,
+out of the Irish House of Commons in 1795, the petition of three
+millions of Catholics, fully and impartially represented. Was not this
+an aggression of administration against the people? And yet the
+partisans of that administration&mdash;nay, the first mover in it, has had
+the confidence to assert, that the discontents and tumults of the people
+<i>preceded</i> the measures of which they complain. Englishmen will
+determine, whether the Irish nation, consisting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> principally of
+Catholics, had or had not reason to be disgusted with the administration
+of the government under which they lived, when by the influence of that
+administration not only their wishes were not consulted, not only their
+general sense disregarded, but even their supplications spurned without
+a hearing from that body which professed to be, and which ought to be,
+their representatives.</p>
+
+<p>If it be granted that such conduct in the popular representation of a
+nation was calculated to excite discontent and destroy confidence, what
+followed that transaction must have had a much more powerful tendency to
+alienate the affection of the people, and produce those direful
+consequences which are now boldly said to have arisen unprovoked. When
+the Irish Catholics perceived, from the manner in which their petition
+for the elective franchise was treated, that in the Irish House of
+Commons they were not to look for friends, they resorted to the Throne.
+The supplications which had met only with contumely when addressed to
+the Irish Commons, was received with favour by a British King, acting
+with the advice of a British Cabinet. In the next session, the speech
+from the throne recommended to the Irish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>Parliament to take into their
+consideration the situation of the King's Catholic subjects. No sooner
+was this hint received from the British Cabinet, than those very men,
+who but last year pledged their lives and fortunes to perpetuate the
+exclusion of the Irish Catholics from the privileges of freemen, because
+to admit them to share those privileges would be a subversion of the
+constitution and establishment, surrendered that opinion with as much
+promptness and facility as they had shewn violence and rancour in taking
+it up. Without any petition from the Catholics, without any change of
+circumstances, except the declaration of the will of the British
+Cabinet, that privilege which was last year refused with so much
+harshness and disdain, was this year spontaneously conceded!</p>
+
+<p>Will any man who knows any thing of men and of the feelings and motives
+which actuate them, assert that there was any thing in this concession
+which should attach more firmly the Irish Catholics to the Irish House
+of Commons? Will he say that this was one of those gracious measures
+which an enlightened legislature would adopt to soften the exasperation
+of national discontent? Probably he will rather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> say, it was fitted to
+evince more strongly than ever the necessity of reforming the
+constitution of that assembly, which, from the inconsistency of its
+measures, appeared evidently the instrument of a foreign will, not the
+authentic organ of the national sense.</p>
+
+<p>Let him, or them whose hot folly, whose rank bigotry, or whose petulant
+and stolid zeal led the Irish Commons into this disgraceful and
+contemptible situation, feel the blush of shame and confusion burn their
+cheek, when they reflect on these scenes. Let them, while it is yet in
+their power, atone to their offended country for the fatal consequences
+of their advice, before those records which are to inform future ages
+impress on their names for ever the indelible character of&mdash;<span class="smaller">PUBLIC
+ENEMY</span>.</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of these transactions I have not attended to chronological
+accuracy. There were other measures to which the administration of
+Ireland had resorted to prop up their power, and form a substitute for
+that legitimate strength which is to be found only in the chearful
+support of a contented people&mdash;there were other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> measures which they
+adopted to beat down the public voice, and overbear the general sense of
+the nation. Among these were wanton prosecutions of innocent and
+respectable men, sometimes for libels, which all publications were
+construed to be that dared to talk of reform as a good measure, or of
+constitutional rights as things to be desired; others for crimes of a
+deeper die&mdash;for sedition and for treason. The evidence adduced in
+support of these charges were often the vilest of the rabble, whose
+testimony on the trials was discredited even by themselves, and the
+prisoners discharged, to the honour of themselves and the detestation of
+their accusers. Such was the case of the Drogheda merchants, on whose
+trial came out proofs of subornation and perjury which would shock
+credibility. These, however, were but venial errors, compared with those
+more mortal sins against the constitution and against common right, with
+which the Irish administration stands charged&mdash;sins, which including a
+violation of general and vital principles, may be fairly reckoned among
+those great and leading causes which have reduced Ireland to the
+dreadful state of discontent and disorder in which she now stands.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>Of these, one was the Convention Bill&mdash;a measure proposed by
+administration, and adopted by the Parliament of that day, for the
+avowed purpose of preventing the Catholics from collecting the sense of
+their body on a petition to Parliament, or to the Throne, for the
+elective franchise. This bill, if it did not annihilate a popular right,
+certainly narrowed it to a degree which, in a great measure, under the
+then existing circumstances, destroyed its efficacy. It had been one of
+the special pleading tricks of the Irish Court, when the people
+expressed their sense on particular measures, if there happened to be
+any variations of mode or sentiment in the application of different
+bodies, to take occasion, from these variations, to reject the whole as
+inconsistent. This scheme had been practised with much plausibility on
+the question of reform. No reform, they contended, was practicable,
+which would content the nation; because of the many petitions which had
+been presented from the different counties, cities, and towns in the
+country, and of the many plans which had been proposed, no two were
+found perfectly to correspond&mdash;as if when the general sense of the
+people was fully expressed, no attention should be paid to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> it, because
+there was not to be found in the various expressions of that sense that
+perfect coincidence which on a general question of morals or politics it
+is absolutely impossible to attain. It had also been boldly and
+shamelessly asserted by administration, in opposition to the most
+general and public declaration of the Catholic body, that the claim of
+the elective franchise was only the suggestion of a few turbulent
+agitators, and that the great bulk of the Catholics had neither
+solicitude nor desire about the matter. To give the lie to this hardy
+and absurd assertion, the Catholics resolved upon a measure which would
+put the matter beyond doubt, and by collecting into a focus the sense of
+their body, and expressing that sense in a simple and explicit manner,
+would take from their enemies the two great arguments by which they had
+defeated the popular applications for reform. Administration, however,
+were too vigilant to suffer the Catholics to get hold of this powerful
+weapon. The Convention Bill, by which all representative assemblies were
+made illegal, and punishable with the severest penalties, proposed in
+haste, and passed with precipitation, deprived them of the only means of
+giving to the legislature that simple and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>indubitable declaration of
+the general sense, which, however, the legislature insisted on as a
+necessary preliminary to hearing their complaints.</p>
+
+<p>Here certainly was another of those measures which without any crime in
+the people of Ireland was levelled at one of their most valuable
+privileges. Let the people of England judge, whether under the
+circumstances I have mentioned, it was not likely to wound deeply the
+feelings of three-fourths of his Majesty's Irish subjects&mdash;and, combined
+as it was with the insulting rejection of the Catholic petition, and the
+subsequent concession, at the instance of the British Cabinet, of that
+favour which was refused to Irish supplication&mdash;let Englishmen say,
+whether it may not fairly be reckoned among the wanton and unprovoked
+causes of the present discontents.</p>
+
+<p>The Convention Bill, however mischievous it may have been by aggravating
+the discontent which had already spread through the mass of the people,
+was yet more mischievous by stopping up that channel through which
+popular discontent discharges itself with most safety&mdash;that of petition
+and remonstrance. So little effect had been found to result from the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>petitions of individuals in the legislature on any of the great
+questions which in any degree interfered with the system adopted by
+administration, and in which they seemed resolved to persevere, that it
+was thought futile and absurd to resort to that mode of stating
+complaint or soliciting redress. If a corporation petitioned, they were
+answered only by an observation on the manner in which the petition was
+obtained, by contrasting it with other petitions procured by Castle
+influence, or by some sarcastic remark on their profession or character.
+If a body of citizens petitioned, they were porter-house politicians or
+bankrupt traders. There remained, therefore, no way in which the people
+could lay their complaints before the legislature, with any hope of
+relief, but in that general way of a representative body, which, while
+it gave weight and consistency to their application, obviated those
+pitiful arts by which the Castle continued to elude and frustrate the
+wishes of the people. The Convention Bill, by rendering that mode
+impracticable, compressed the public discontents, and while it encreased
+the irritation, left no vent to its violence but in assassination and
+conspiracy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p><p>That such would be the consequence of this measure, administration were
+solemnly warned. It was urged on them, but without effect, that in every
+country where the freedom of remonstrance and complaint was denied,
+secret conspiracy or open insurrection took the place of angry but
+harmless petition. Italy was mentioned; and it was said, rather with the
+spirit of a prophet than a politician, that if this bill passed, Ireland
+would become more infamous for private assassination than Italy itself.
+The Society of United Irishmen was not yet become a clandestine or an
+illegal body&mdash;but it was foretold, that this bill would create
+clandestine and seditious meetings: for it was easy to see, that when
+discontented people were prevented from uttering their complaints, they
+would substitute other modes of redress for angry publication. But with
+the administration of Ireland, or the Irish House of Commons of that
+day, advice and remonstrance were vain. They boldly ventured on a
+measure of which these consequences were foreseen, yet now profess to
+wonder why such consequences have happened. On the folly of their
+counsels, then, the people of Ireland are justified in charging the
+assassinations&mdash;the sedition&mdash;the conspiracy, which have disgraced their
+country: they are not the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>native growth of her soil! They have been
+begotten only by insolence and injury upon the stifled indignation of a
+volatile and feeling people!</p>
+
+<p>But the Convention act was not the only measure to which the party
+abusing the powers of government in Ireland resorted, to tame or to
+irritate the Irish people. The Gunpowder Bill, prior in order and time,
+which deprived the Irish subject in a great measure of the
+constitutional power of self-defence, prepared the minds of the people
+for receiving the full impression of the Convention act, which narrowed
+another of his rights. The attempt to annihilate the independence of the
+country, by insisting on the right of Britain to choose a regent for
+Ireland, and the subsequent attempt of the same kind in 1785 to
+substitute a commercial boon for the right of self-government, had
+already gone far toward producing a tendency to irritation in the
+people, which these more vital attacks completed.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did even these measures, insidious, violent, and unconstitutional as
+they were, produce so much discontent as the tone and the spirit in
+which they were tarried into execution. The most insulting imputations
+on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> loyalty, and even on the intellect of the nation, were daily
+made by the needy adventurers, whom chance, or perhaps infamous
+services, had raised to a place in the administration. The public prints
+were polluted by the foulest calumny against every man who had the
+virtue and the courage to oppose a system which he foresaw must
+eventually terminate in the ruin of the country. Some of the basest of
+mankind, distinguished, however, by more than usual talents for
+perversion and invective, were appointed to conduct those publications
+which were paid by the public money for abusing the national character.
+The Whig Club, consisting of noblemen and gentlemen who, by possessing
+large property and extensive connections in the country, felt themselves
+bound to oppose the mad measures of men who, as they were mostly
+foreigners, had no interest but to turn the present moment to most
+advantage, were held up to the public, both in and out of Parliament, as
+enemies to the tranquillity of the state, and anxious only, at all
+events, to raise themselves to power.</p>
+
+<p>The conduct of administration to the Whig Club, indeed, deserves
+peculiar confederation, as it evinces, in the fullest manner, that it
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> not the irregular or unconstitutional proceedings of this or that
+body of men&mdash;of the Volunteer Convention, or of the United Irish
+Society&mdash;but the measures which these bodies recommended, against which
+the influence and force of government was turned. The Whig Club had
+formed themselves on the most constitutional and moderate principles.
+Their object was to obtain for the people of Ireland, by a concentration
+of their parliamentary influence and exertions, those laws by which the
+British constitution was guarded, against the encroachments of the
+executive power; and by the want of which in Ireland, her constitution
+seemed to have but a precarious existence at the pleasure of the Court.
+Such were a Pension Bill, for limiting the influence resulting to the
+Crown by an indefinite power of granting pensions&mdash;a Place Bill, to
+secure the independence of the House of Commons, by making the
+acceptance of office by a member a vacation of his seat&mdash;a
+Responsibility Bill, by which the men intrusted with the management of
+the public treasure, or enjoying high official situations in the
+government of the country, should be responsible to Parliament for their
+conduct and advice. These were the measures which the Club undertook at
+their formation to press upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> minister. They subsequently adopted
+others on which the sense of the people became too generally known to be
+at all doubtful. The question of reform and Catholic emancipation they
+did not take up, until the nation called for them in a manner which
+proved the concession of them to be essential to the peace of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>Of the constitutionality of those measures which the Whig Club
+originally espoused, no man could entertain a doubt. They were the law
+of England. The manner in which these measures were urged by the Whig
+Club was equally constitutional. They brought them before Parliament by
+bill and by motion, supported by arguments which were answered only by
+majorities consisting of those placemen and pensioners, those borough
+members and irresponsible officers, against whose parliamentary
+existence they were levelled. This constitutional pursuit of
+constitutional measures&mdash;how did the Irish administration treat it? By
+imputing the worst motives to those by whom they were proposed&mdash;by
+impeaching their loyalty to their Sovereign&mdash;by the most open and bold
+avowal of the existence, and the necessity of corruption in the
+government&mdash;by the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> contumelious indifference for the public voice,
+and, finally, by affixing the most disgraceful and irritating marks of
+suspicion on every nobleman and man of property in either house of
+Parliament, who dared to support those pretensions of the people to the
+benefits of the British constitution. The removal of that good and
+estimable character, the Earl of Charlemont, from the office of Governor
+of the County of Armagh&mdash;an office which might be considered as
+hereditary in his family, and to which his estate in that county gave
+him a kind of indefeasible right, is one instance of a number. It will
+ever be remembered as a damning proof of the foolish and wicked
+malignity of the Irish administration against the friends of the Irish
+people.</p>
+
+<p>These arts of the Castle, however, were unable to counteract or repress
+the persevering effects of the Whig Club. It is not necessary in this
+place to enter into a defence of the motives of that body in thus
+contending for the interests of the public. It is sufficient that the
+measures which they patronized were in a high degree beneficial to the
+Irish nation; and whether they urged them from a wish to raise
+themselves to office, or from a principle of pure patriotism,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> was to
+the public immaterial. That they supported them zealously and
+faithfully, from whatever motive, was indubitable. <i>So</i> zealously and
+faithfully indeed did they exert themselves, that the very same men who
+had for years made a constant and violent opposition to those measures,
+exhausting every epithet of reprobation which the English language
+afforded, both against them and their supporters, yet at last found
+themselves obliged to concede them to the unrelaxing vigour of these
+gentlemen, supported by the general sense of the country. It is the
+concession of these measures that the friends of the Irish junto call
+"<span class="smaller">CONCILIATION</span>!" These are the favours which they say Ireland has
+received, and which they contend ought for ever to have silenced popular
+complaint, and put a period to the demands of the country! Had they been
+yielded at an earlier time, before the long, long irritation which the
+obstinate refusal of them for several successive years had produced,
+they would have been received with gratitude by the nation, and the
+effect would have been general tranquillity and content. But the Irish
+administration knew neither how to concede nor withhold&mdash;their
+resistance was without strength, and their concessions without kindness.
+Like the Roman King and the Sybils,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> they withheld the price of public
+content, until the people, aggravated by refusal, insisted on still
+higher terms; and, indeed, rose in their demands, beyond what an
+administration, bankrupt in character and confidence, were able to grant
+them. What a Minister of comprehensive mind and enlarged views would
+have granted to the people with magnanimity at once, and what if thus
+granted, would have taken the tongue from discontent, and left
+disaffection no handle to use against the peace of the country, the
+Irish administration conceded piece-meal&mdash;one little measure after
+another&mdash;reluctantly and with hesitation; thus teaching the people that
+what was granted could not be withheld, and that the same means which
+had extorted one concession from the weakness of government would be
+equally successful in extorting others. Nay, at the very moment when
+they were yielding those measures to the perseverance of opposition,
+supported by the public sense, they continued to load those very men by
+whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul
+invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the
+people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely
+through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the
+country and its claims. Thus,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> in the hands of those men, the benignity
+of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and
+those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have
+bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of
+exciting in numbers of the inhabitants of that country a deep hatred of
+the British name and connection.</p>
+
+<p>When Englishmen contemplate for a moment this picture of the
+"conciliation" which the Irish nation has received with so much
+ingratitude, it is possible they may conclude that nothing has happened
+which might not have reasonably been expected. Possibly they will think
+it not unnatural that the people should have received, with little sense
+of obligation, measures which were never conceded until they came to
+form only a small part of what was demanded as rights&mdash;and that they
+should rather feel indignant at the insult and abuse heaped on them by a
+few contemptible and obscure adventurers, than acknowledge gratitude for
+benefits long kept back, and, at length, reluctantly yielded.</p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt thus long on the early conduct of the Irish administration
+for two reasons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>&mdash;the one to vindicate the people of Ireland from the
+insolent charge made against them by their enemies&mdash;"That conciliation
+had been tried in vain with that sottish and discontented people&mdash;that
+they had not intellect to understand, nor gratitude to acknowledge
+benefits&mdash;and that, therefore, the present system of unconstitutional
+coercion and deprivation was resorted to of necessity:"&mdash;the other was
+to shew, that whatever discontent has been recently shewn in Ireland,
+whatever crimes have been committed for political purposes, had their
+remote origin in that system by which the powers of government had been
+abused in Ireland for several years back. Whether I have succeeded in
+this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and
+constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is
+incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the
+people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of
+ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy
+country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end
+the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the
+necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system adopted by the
+weak, hot-headed, and petulant men to whom the administration of Ireland
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> entrusted, operating upon a generous and loyal but irritable and
+warm people.</p>
+
+<p>But had the Irish junto rested at the point to which we have now come in
+describing their system, Ireland would not now have to appeal for pity
+or for aid to the British nation. It is the subsequent measures to which
+they resorted, and for which no precedent is to be found in the history
+of this or any other country pretending to laws, or rights, or
+constitution, that we complain of. It is by these that Ireland has been
+lashed into madness, and driven to crimes and to follies which her sober
+reason would have looked at with detestation. It shall be now my
+business to advert to those measures&mdash;to shew that they have generally
+preceded those crimes of the people which are alledged to have produced
+them&mdash;that they have been severe and desperate beyond what the necessity
+of the case called for&mdash;that their probable result will be a military
+despotism&mdash;that they cannot tranquillize the country but by the
+destruction of every degree of constitutional liberty&mdash;that, therefore,
+the people of Great Britain are interested in preventing the progress of
+that system in Ireland&mdash;and, finally, that if the two great objects of
+the public in Ireland were honestly and fully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> conceded, and if the
+people were re-instated in the blessings of the constitution by the
+establishment of a mild and just administration, peace and content would
+be restored to the country, disaffection would vanish, and the
+connection of the two islands become closer and more permanent than
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+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;&mdash;for in numberless instances where the unfortunate inhabitants
+refused to obey the mandate, their habitations were pulled down or
+burned by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;there is another which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> 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?&mdash;"That better men could not be found in the country!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for they had
+already experienced that the rigour of old prejudices was abated, and
+that men now began to consider each other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> rather as men than as
+religionists.&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> 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&mdash;The Orange-men had deprived the Catholics of their arms&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;between meeting secretly for constitutional
+purposes and meeting to alter or overthrow the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> 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&mdash;<i>i. e.</i> to keep its secrets, and to devote
+themselves to the pursuit of the two great popular objects&mdash;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&mdash;terms which, in the indiscriminating language of the senate
+and the Castle, were considered as synonymous.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> 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&mdash;<i>i. e.</i> transport him for life.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p><p>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&mdash;it may be without guilt, because the punishment was
+inflicted without trial&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;but must the military or
+civil tyrant be protected <i>by</i> law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> <i>against</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> people of England
+it were superfluous to dwell on that event; for with the circumstances
+of <i>that</i>, <i>they</i>, 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&mdash;against the
+restoration of the constitution to Ireland&mdash;and against a mitigation of
+the coercive system. If treason have spread widely through the
+country&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;it was not, I say,
+such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> 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
+<i>imperium in imperio</i> 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&mdash;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 <i>their</i> 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>active in transporting suspected persons, &amp;c.
+&amp;c. had been assassinated.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that even of the United Irishmen
+the greater part wished only for the admission of the Catholics and
+reform&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> 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!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a
+military force vested with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>But I deny that Ulster was in such a state as to justify the measure
+that was then taken&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> arms should be
+brought in by a certain village or district&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Of the system thus steadily pursued by the Irish administration, the
+Irish legislature expressed their most hearty and zealous
+approbation.&mdash;Throughout the whole train of violent measures to which
+the Irish administration resorted, the Irish Parliament went with them
+<i>pari passu</i>. 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> 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 <i>one</i> such mind on Irish politics would have produced
+the most important benefits.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> of the island, the disturbances broke out with much
+encreased enormity in other parts of the country.&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;they sent them troops, not to disarm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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!</p>
+
+<p>At this point I stop&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> 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!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;when I call
+on them to examine with anxious care the motives in which they
+originated, and the end to which they lead&mdash;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&mdash;to raise on the broad basis of <span class="smaller">CORRUPT
+INFLUENCE</span> 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&mdash;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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>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.&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;because this intention was avowed and gloried in<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>&mdash;and,
+finally, because from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>The flame which by these means has been kindled in Ireland can be
+extinguished but in one of two ways&mdash;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&mdash;and of that what will be the
+effect? Rebellion will be quelled by power, but the existing causes of
+discontent&mdash;those causes which through a long series of petty conflicts
+have at length terminated in the present dreadful issue, will remain
+rankling in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>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&mdash;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?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and that is, in a suppression of the present
+insurrection&mdash;in a change of the men by whom the affairs of Ireland have
+been for some years so abominably administered&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Already thousands of the people of Ireland have fallen in the
+contest&mdash;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 <i>may</i> subdue&mdash;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?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>Englishmen!&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;we implore you to interfere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> for us with our common Sovereign&mdash;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&mdash;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.&mdash;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!</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>FINIS.</h4>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Vide Irish Chancellor's speech on Lord Moira's motion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Mr. J. Claud Beresford's Speeches in the House of
+Commons during the session of 1797.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland
+Disclosed, by Anonymous
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed
+       In an Address to the People of England, in Which It Is Proved by Incontrovertible Facts, That the System for Some Years Pursued in That Country, Has Driven It into Its Present Dreadful Situation
+
+
+Author: Anonymous
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 2, 2008  [eBook #25300]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION IN
+IRELAND DISCLOSED***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Martin Pettit, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION IN IRELAND DISCLOSED,
+
+IN AN _Address to the People of England_.
+
+IN WHICH IT IS PROVED BY INCONTROVERTIBLE FACTS,
+
+THAT THE _System for some Years pursued in that Country_,
+
+HAS DRIVEN IT INTO ITS PRESENT DREADFUL SITUATION.
+
+
+BY AN IRISH EMIGRANT.
+
+Insita mortalibus natura violentiae resistere. TACITUS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_LONDON_:
+
+Printed for J. S. JORDAN, No. 166, Fleet Street.
+
+[PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE.]
+
+
+
+
+CAUSES OF THE REBELLION,
+
+&c. &c.
+
+
+FELLOW SUBJECTS,
+
+It is always a bold undertaking in a private individual to become the
+advocate of a suffering people. It is peculiarly difficult at the
+present moment to be the advocate of the people of Ireland, because
+there are among them men who have taken the power of redress into their
+own hands, and committed acts of outrage and rebellion which no
+sufferings could justify, and which can only tend to aggravate ten-fold
+the other calamities of their country. Deeply impressed, however, as I
+am with a conviction that these difficulties stand in my way, I shall
+yet venture to state to Englishmen the case of Ireland. In doing so, I
+rest not on a vain confidence in my own strength, but on the nature of
+the cause I plead; for I am convinced, that when the train of measures
+which have led that miserable country into its present situation shall
+be fully disclosed, it will be but little difficult to rouze the people
+of England not merely to commiserate a distressed country, but excite
+them to exert their constitutional endeavours, as head of the British
+empire, to avert the destruction of its principal member.
+
+There is another circumstance which gives me hope. The people of England
+at this hour feel themselves much more interested in what concerns
+Irishmen, than they have ever done at any former period. Whatever
+mischiefs may have resulted to human society from that kind of
+philosophic illumination by which modern times are distinguished, one
+certain good at least has been produced by it--men have become better
+acquainted--the bond of a common nature has been strengthened--and each
+country begins to feel an interest in the concerns of every other. It is
+not to a more extensive personal intercourse, or to the creation of any
+new principles of political union, that this is to be attributed. It is
+owing solely to an increased communication of sentiment and feeling--to
+a knowledge which has diffused itself through the world that the human
+mind is every where made of the same materials, and that on all the
+great questions which concern man's interest in society, the men of
+every country think alike. Hence has arisen an increased sympathy
+between nations--if not between those who govern them, at least between
+those by whom they are constituted; and hence too has it followed, that
+those national antipathies which had so long debased and afflicted
+mankind, are now become less strong and rancorous; and, it may be
+reasonable to hope, will one day be known no more.
+
+It is not, however, on the influence of this nascent principle of
+philanthropy among nations that I ground my principal hope, when I call
+on Englishmen to hear with an ear of kindness and concern the complaint
+of a sister-country. I resort to a still more powerful principle--I
+shall call on them as a people famed even in barbarous times for those
+feelings of generosity and compassion, which are inseparable from
+valour--I shall call on them as a FREE people, to watch with caution the
+progress of despotism toward their own shores, stalking in all its
+horrors of murder, pillage, and flames, through the territory of a
+neighbour--I shall call even on their INTEREST, to save from utter ruin,
+political, commercial, and constitutional, the most valuable member of
+the British empire! If Englishmen look with horror on the enormities of
+France, I will call on them to let crimes of as black a dye perpetrated
+in Ireland meet their share of detestation. If they who subvert the good
+order of society--who overleap the bounds fixed by the law of Nature
+itself to guard the liberty, life, and property of individuals against
+the spoiler, be fit objects of reprobation, I shall turn the eyes of all
+the good and wise in England toward that faction by whose counsels and
+whose deeds the fairest island in the British empire has been made a
+theatre on which lawless outrage has played its deadly freaks!
+
+When I speak in terms thus strong of that system under which the people
+of Ireland have suffered for some years, and by which they have been
+goaded into acts of folly and madness which no good man is either able
+or inclined to defend, let me not too early be charged with declamation.
+There are some cases in which no language can be declamatory because no
+words can aggravate them. If I shall not shew before I conclude this
+address that the case of Ireland is one of them, let me _then_ be
+branded with the epithet of empty talker!
+
+It will not be necessary for me, in stating to the people of England
+the calamities under which Ireland smarts, and the causes which produced
+them, to go farther back than that period at which she became, nominally
+at least, an independent country. What remains of her history before
+that period the honour of both countries calls on us to forget--a
+mistaken but overbearing principle of domination and monopoly on one
+hand, fed and strengthened by a servile and base acquiescence on the
+other, constitute the outline of the sketch--an idle and beggared
+populace, a jobbing legislature, proscriptions, penal laws, &c. &c. are
+the disgusting materials with which it must be filled. That Time should
+quickly draw his veil over such a scene, and cover it with oblivion
+would be the natural wish of every British and Irish heart, were it not
+that scenes still more disgraceful to both countries and more calamitous
+to one of them have succeeded--scenes which force the mind to revert
+with regret to those days of poverty and peace, when, as there existed
+little wealth to excite avarice, and little spirit to aggravate the
+ambition of party, that little remained inviolate, and the miserable
+cabin, though filled with objects of disgusting wretchedness, was yet
+the secure covering and castle of its humble owner.--How different his
+present situation! when in laying down his head at night he fears lest
+before morning he shall be rouzed by the cries of his family in flames,
+or dragged from his bed by military ruffians, to be hanged at his own
+door!
+
+Forgetting then the many causes of discontent with the people of England
+which existed in Ireland prior to the year 1782, I shall call the
+attention of this country to only those transactions which have taken
+place since that time--and indeed to many of those transactions it would
+not be necessary to advert at all, were it not for that minute and
+elaborate detail which has been made of them by a well known public
+character in a late publication,[1] for the purpose of proving that
+Ireland deserved what she suffered--that she has been always sottishly
+discontented and basely ungrateful. But I call on Englishmen to judge
+impartially for themselves--nor let the confident assertion or bold
+recrimination of an accused man pre-occupy their decision on the merits
+and the sufferings of an unhappy people.
+
+It will scarcely be denied at this day, that the people of Ireland did
+right in calling for the independence of their legislature in the year
+1782, and in pressing that claim on the British minister, until he
+yielded to its force.--It is admitted that Ireland, on that occasion,
+while she armed herself to repel the foes of Britain, while her
+population poured to her shores to resist the insulting fleet of the
+enemy, and preserve her connexion with the empire, acted with the proper
+and true spirit of a brave and loyal people in calling on the British
+Parliament for a renunciation of that claim to rule her which was
+originally founded only on her weakness, and was supported by no other
+argument than power. While this then is admitted, let it be remembered,
+that they who opposed this just claim of Ireland to be free, must have
+been the advocates of a slavish system--and that the people of Ireland
+might fairly entertain doubts of the sincere attachment of such men to
+her cause.--Let it be remembered, that the men who said to a country
+struggling for the legitimate power of governing for itself, "You have
+no right to make your own laws--you are materials fit only to be
+governed by strangers," were not men in whom that country, when she
+succeeded in the struggle, could place much confidence. In fact, she
+did not confide in them. It was thought necessary to watch attentively
+the measures of men who had reluctantly assented to the manumission of
+their country, and who were believed to have such a deeply rooted
+attachment to the principles of the old court, that they would lose no
+opportunity of re-inducing upon the nation those bonds which she had
+broken only by a combination of fortunate circumstances, concurring with
+her own efforts.
+
+In this consciousness of the danger with which they were surrounded from
+false friends, originated that doubt which is now charged on the people
+of Ireland as a first proof of wanton discontent--I mean a doubt about
+the validity of the simple repeal of the 6th Geo. III. as an act of
+renunciation. Discontent on this subject arose and became general in
+Ireland almost immediately on the repeal of that obnoxious statute; and
+from the zeal and warmth with which it was attempted to _beat it down_,
+did for a time put the kingdom in a ferment. The men who have since that
+time scourged Ireland with a rod of iron, charge this as the
+commencement of the crimes of the country--the first overt act of her
+intemperance and violent propensity to discontent. Whether it deserves
+that epithet Englishmen will judge, when they learn that this doubt was
+first suggested by some of the best lawyers--the warmest friends and the
+most enlightened and able men whom Ireland ever knew--by Walter Hussey
+Burgh--by Henry Flood, and by the brilliant phalanx of constitutional
+lawyers who at that time graced the popular cause--men "to whom
+compared" the most proud and petulant of her present persecutors "are
+but the insects of a summer's day." These gentlemen had been the
+long-tried friends of the country--they had been found pure in
+principle, and in intellect superior to their contemporaries. Where,
+therefore, was the wonder, that the people should adopt an opinion
+sanctioned and inculcated by such venerable names? What was there
+strange or criminal in believing, that a country which only retracted in
+silence a claim for more than half a century enforced and acted on, did
+but suspend for the present a right which she believed to exist, and
+which she would not fail to urge again in more favourable circumstances?
+The partisans of the Irish Chancellor act with as much confidence on
+_his_ opinions in cases where common understandings have less to guide
+them: why then should the people of Ireland be branded as seditious and
+disaffected, for following, in a matter of law, the counsels of men
+whose integrity she had tried, and whose talents were acknowledged?
+
+It is true, indeed, there was on the other side of this question a name
+to which Ireland owed much, and to whose subsequent exertions in her
+cause, though fruitless, she owes perhaps still more--Mr. Grattan. _He_
+thought the simple repeal of itself a valid and full renunciation. But
+it may be said for the people of Ireland, that Mr. Grattan, when this
+question was agitated, stood in circumstances which deducted much from
+his high authority. He had but just come from the Treasury, after
+receiving 50,000l. for his past services--and it was too generally known
+in Ireland, that there was some quality in Treasury gold, however
+acquired, which attracted the possessor powerfully towards the Castle.
+The private judgement of Mr. Grattan might also be reasonably supposed
+to have a bias on the question, from the circumstance of being himself
+the adviser of the simple repeal--the idea of an explicit renunciation
+not having been started when Mr. Grattan's principal exertions, seconded
+by the voice of the people, triumphed over the old system. There was
+another reason--Mr. Grattan's influence was weakened, if not lost, by
+the fallen character of those with whom he then acted. The people of
+Ireland were naturally jealous of those men who had uniformly supported
+the dominating principles of the British party in Ireland, and who had
+as violently opposed (though by more legitimate means) the exertions of
+the popular party to obtain an independent legislature, as they now do
+to prevent the reform of the legislative body. And finally, the opinion
+and authority of Mr. Grattan, however respectable were not thought an
+adequate counterpoize to the weight of those very numerous and most
+respectable opinions which were on this question in opposition to his.
+Under these circumstances, the charge of sottish discontent, which has
+been so confidently made against the Irish nation, will appear to be one
+of those foul calumnies by which a desperate and enraged faction strive
+to cover their own enormities. Englishmen, and the world, will see, that
+had Ireland at that critical moment adopted the advice of those who had
+always acted as enemies to her best interests, and rejected the counsels
+and opinions of those to whom she owed the most important obligations,
+she would _then_ indeed have been incorrigibly sottish.
+
+The next _crime_ with which the Irish nation stands charged, is their
+early and zealous efforts for parliamentary reform.--It has been
+enumerated as one of the causes which have produced the present horrible
+system of administration in Ireland, that shortly after the
+establishment of their legislative independence, a convention met in
+Dublin, consisting of representatives from the different Volunteer
+Associations, by whom the country had been saved from the common enemy,
+and who were supposed to have contributed much to the establishment of
+her independence. This convention had been constituted on the same
+principle (but with more circumspection and order) as that which was so
+well known by the name of the Dungannon meeting--an assembly, which
+though perfectly military, so far as its being constituted by armed
+citizens could make it so, did more towards asserting the independence
+of Ireland and procuring for her the most important advantages of
+constitution and commerce than any other which ever sat in Ireland. To
+the Dungannon meeting, however, no exceptions were taken--they were
+suffered to meet--to resolve--and to point out in the most decisive tone
+the grievances under which they supposed the country laboured. Their
+remonstrances were carried even to the foot of the throne, and the
+father of his people, uninfluenced by that romantic sense of dignity,
+which has since produced such lamentable effects in Irish
+Parliaments--graciously received, and wisely attended to their
+remonstrances.--The jesuitical or Machiavelian distinction between
+citizens in red clothes and in coloured ones, had not yet been thought
+of--it was considered sufficient to entitle an address or petition to a
+respectful hearing, if it was substantially the sense of a great body of
+the property and population of the state, no matter whether they spoke
+in the character of volunteers associated to defend the constitution, or
+as freeholders assembled only to exercise its privileges.
+
+It is not for me now to defend the convention of that day from the
+imputation of false policy and imprudence, in preferring the character
+of soldiers to that of citizens in their deliberative capacity, but I
+cannot help observing--First, that the Irish administration have never
+manifested any dislike of military bodies--real, mercenary, foreign
+soldiers,--expressing publicly _their_ sentiments on great public
+questions, when those sentiments coincided with the politics of the
+Castle--witness the manifestoes with which the Irish newspapers have
+for the last year or two been crouded, from Scotch and English mercenary
+troops, in which these zealous advocates for religion and liberty
+declare themselves friends to this or that measure, publish their
+determination to support them--and sometimes conclude by letting the
+Irish public know--_they had not come thither to be trifled
+with_.--Secondly, I must remark, that tho' the great objection to the
+volunteer convention was its being armed, and consisting of the
+representatives of an armed body, yet opposition equally violent has
+been since made to other representative bodies _not_ military--instance
+the calumny with which the servants of the Irish administration have
+blackened the Catholic committee--and, above all, instance the Athlone
+convention, the meeting of which administration were so solicitous to
+prevent, that they ventured on a law to prevent for ever the meeting of
+any representative body--the House of Commons excepted.
+
+By these circumstances it seems sufficiently clear, that the
+inconceivable aversion entertained against this body, and the memory of
+it, was founded not in its being military, but in its being
+representative and popular--not in its constitution, but in its
+object.--With respect to its being a representative body, I profess, for
+my own part, I cannot conceive why for that reason the Irish government
+and the Irish Chancellor have held it so much in abomination. You,
+Englishmen, who understand that constitution of which you are properly
+so proud, will be surprized to hear that representative bodies are
+unconstitutional.--If you heard this asserted with much confidence by a
+lawyer, you would say he had studied special pleading rather than the
+British constitution.--If you heard this doctrine swallowed implicitly
+by an assembly of legislators, you would say they were still unfit to
+govern themselves. What is it, you would ask, that forms the general and
+pervading principle of the British constitution, if not the
+representative one? Every petty corporation, you would observe, elects
+representatives to act for them in their Common Council--the council
+elect Aldermen, and these again their Mayor--all on the same
+principle--that of having the sense of the multitude concentrated, and
+their business dispatched at once with ease and order. Nay, every
+Freeman is himself but a representative, not indeed of other men--but of
+his own property.
+
+But it is impossible that this should have been the real ground of
+objection to the Convention, however it might have been urged as the
+ostensible one--for it is obvious, that if the principle of
+representation be a fair and useful principle to adopt in collecting the
+sense of the people with respect to laws or taxes, it must also be a
+useful and fair principle to resort to, in every other instance, where
+great bodies of men are permitted to express their common sense as they
+are _unquestionably_ in petitioning for redress of grievances, &c. No,
+Englishmen! it was not because the Convention was unconstitutional as
+being representative, but because it was chosen to recommend, as the
+sense of the Irish people (for the Volunteers of that day were people of
+Ireland,)--a parliamentary reform, and to consider of a specific plan.
+It was this that the corrupt part of the Irish Government dreaded. They
+had been stunned by the unexpected blow struck by the people in
+asserting the independence of the legislature: for whatever credit the
+Parliament of that day may assume for the part which they acted in that
+business, it requires no argument to prove to a discerning man, that
+they were passive instruments in the people's hand--they only re-echoed
+the voice of an armed nation which they conceived too loud to be
+smothered, and were hurried on irresistibly by that enthusiastic
+sentiment for national independence, which the ability of _one_ great
+mind, aided by a fortunate concurrence of existing circumstances, had
+excited. But at the period I now speak of, the party of the British
+Minister had recovered from the astonishment into which the successful
+and prompt energy of the nation had thrown him. He now began to reflect
+on the extensive consequence which must follow from the restoration to
+Ireland of the right of legislating for herself. It was soon felt, that
+there now remained in the hands of the court faction in Ireland, only
+one instrument by which the effect of the recent revolution could be
+checked or frustrated; and that was, the borough system. It was seen,
+that whatever nominal independence the Irish legislature might have
+attained, yet while a majority of the Commons' House was constituted of
+members returned immediately by the crown influence, the will of the
+crown or the will of the British Cabinet must still be the law which
+would bind Ireland. To preserve the borough system then, at all hazards,
+became from that moment the great object of the dominating faction. The
+Convention was an engine which seemed to threaten its immediate and
+complete overthrow; it was therefore resolved, by all means, to effect
+its ruins. The staunch hounds which had fattened for years on the vitals
+of the country, but had been for some time kept at bay by the universal
+energy of the public mind, were again hallooed into action. In addition
+to these were introduced new forces from every quarter, but principally
+from the old aristocratic families, who had monopolized for a century
+the power and wealth of the country. On the memorable night when Mr.
+Flood presented to the House the petition of the Convention, was made
+the grand effort which was to decide whether the will of the nation or
+that of the old faction should govern. The latter was victorious. The
+people, with the characteristic levity of their nation, repulsed in this
+great effort, for the present, at least, shrunk back from the contest.
+The victorious party, possessing means of the most extensive and
+corrupting influence, strained them to the utmost; and gaining ground
+from that moment on the sense of the nation on that main point, have
+continued triumphantly and insolently to prostrate the people of
+Ireland. Every thinking and steady Irishman, however, retained his
+opinion as to the necessity of reform, and continued by the few means in
+his power, to promote it. At this point, then, commenced the separation
+between the Irish administration with their partisans in Parliament and
+the Irish people, and from that time they have gone in directly opposite
+directions.
+
+Such, Englishmen, is another of the crimes with which we are charged,
+and for which the highest law authority in our country has declared we
+merit to be deprived of all the benefits of the British constitution!
+For this we have been called a sottish, an insatiable, and tumultuous
+people--and to punish us for this offence the world has been told we
+deserve all those horrible calamities which, year after year, since that
+time have been inflicted on us!
+
+I have already said, that the people and the parliamentary supporters of
+administration separated from the moment when the Irish House of Commons
+extinguished the public hope on the important measure of parliamentary
+reform. The grand argument urged by the House of Commons against a
+reform at that time was, that it would be a surrender of the dignity and
+independence of the legislature to adopt a measure proposed to it on the
+point of a bayonet. The Convention proved the malice of the argument by
+the manner in which they bore the insulting rejection of their petition:
+having discharged the duty which they were created to perform, they
+dissolved, not only without a threat but without a murmur. The people,
+with a patience and moderation of which perhaps few more laudable
+instances are to be found in the history of any country, acquiesced, or
+submitted in silence to the decision of the legislation on this their
+most esteemed and favourite application. No doubt they hoped that a
+Parliament who refused to receive the petition of the people when
+presented as soldiers, would listen with a more patient ear to their
+claims when presented in another character. But this hope having been
+tried for five years without effect, was at last relinquished. The
+pertinacity with which all applications on the subject of reform were
+rejected, put it beyond doubt that reform was an object which by
+ordinary means could never be obtained. It was, however, a measure too
+big, when it had once gotten possession of the public mind, to be let go
+without a struggle. Accordingly, whatever of intelligence, of zeal, or
+of public spirit the country possessed, continued to be directed toward
+the acquisition of this great object. Among other modes which had been
+devised for giving greater efficacy to the public will on this subject,
+was that of forming societies which should have for their sole object to
+animate, to direct, to concentrate, the exertions of the people in the
+pursuit of this favourite and vital measure. Of these societies the
+first was formed in Dublin, of a few men whose talents, principles, and
+character, moral and political, gave such weight and popularity to their
+union, as soon swelled its numbers to a great magnitude, which, while it
+gave hope to the friends of the popular cause, excited in the
+administration very lively alarm. But it was yet more the principles of
+this body than its numbers which alarmed administration. The original
+members of the society, men of minds not only firmly attached to the
+political interests of this country, but superior to the influence of
+bigotry, which had been the most powerful instrument in the hands of the
+Court faction for dividing and weakening the people, made it a radical
+principle of their union to promote an abolition of all religious
+distinction, and to procure for _all_ the freemen of the state, whatever
+might be their religious sentiments, a participation in _all_ the
+privileges of the British constitution. A reform in Parliament,
+accompanied by such a principle as this, became a measure in which every
+man in the country was interested; and the catholics, who constitute
+the great majority of the people, more interested than others. The
+consequence was, that men of every description of religion, men of every
+rank in life, not immediately under the controul or influence of the
+Castle, adopted the principles of the society, or solicited admission
+into the ranks. The fear and the hatred of administration was soon
+manifested. Every art was used to blacken the principles of the
+society--its principal members were pointed out as the agitators of
+sedition--the enemies of social order--and men who aimed at nothing less
+than a subversion of the constitution and separation from Great Britain,
+under the pretext of reform and emancipation. The prints which were in
+the pay of the Castle vomited out daily the most gross, the most
+malignant, and irritating calumnies; and even the senate itself, now
+really forgetting its dignity, condescended to become the scurrilous
+aggressor not merely of the society at large, but of particular, and, in
+many instances, inconsiderable members of it.
+
+It was this despicable conduct in the prevailing faction in Ireland that
+laid the ground work of all the mischiefs which have since affected our
+unhappy country. The Irish Minister who paid the money of the people to
+cover their name with infamy and their principles with dishonour, him I
+charge with having first implanted in the minds of the multitude that
+invincible detestation of the system by which they were governed, that
+has since ended in assassination and treason. His subordinate agents,
+who in the folly and venom of their hearts at one time charged the great
+body of the Catholics with disaffection, at another held up to ridicule
+and odium the names of individuals of the most respectable and unsullied
+characters--at one time sneering at the merchant, at another insulting
+the tradesman, them I charge with having irritated the people of Ireland
+wantonly and wickedly, by calling forth the personal feelings, the
+pride, and sensibility of individuals, into a personal and revengeful
+opposition to the British name and British connection. What would
+Englishmen have felt, how would Englishmen have acted, had two or three
+individuals, strangers to their country, despicable in point of birth or
+talents, and considerable only from fortuitous elevation to offices
+which they were unfit to fill, ventured to insult their national
+character--to accuse of treason every man who dared to complain of his
+sufferings or his privations, or assumed the courage to exercise the
+humble privilege of petitioning for redress? If the saucy hirelings of a
+foreign Cabinet should publicly avow contempt for the men who uphold the
+strength and consequence of the state by useful industry, and tell the
+merchant and manufacturer that it was not for such fellows to deal in
+politics, to seek for rights, or talk of constitution--would not the
+spirit of the nation rise against their insolence, and make them feel
+how much more valuable _he_ is who promotes the comfort and welfare of
+society by commerce or by labour, than _he_ who lives upon the spoil of
+the community in something _worse_ than idleness?
+
+It was this arrogance in the Castle servants, the result of their
+conscious strength in corruption, that scouted with contempt and insult,
+out of the Irish House of Commons in 1795, the petition of three
+millions of Catholics, fully and impartially represented. Was not this
+an aggression of administration against the people? And yet the
+partisans of that administration--nay, the first mover in it, has had
+the confidence to assert, that the discontents and tumults of the people
+_preceded_ the measures of which they complain. Englishmen will
+determine, whether the Irish nation, consisting principally of
+Catholics, had or had not reason to be disgusted with the administration
+of the government under which they lived, when by the influence of that
+administration not only their wishes were not consulted, not only their
+general sense disregarded, but even their supplications spurned without
+a hearing from that body which professed to be, and which ought to be,
+their representatives.
+
+If it be granted that such conduct in the popular representation of a
+nation was calculated to excite discontent and destroy confidence, what
+followed that transaction must have had a much more powerful tendency to
+alienate the affection of the people, and produce those direful
+consequences which are now boldly said to have arisen unprovoked. When
+the Irish Catholics perceived, from the manner in which their petition
+for the elective franchise was treated, that in the Irish House of
+Commons they were not to look for friends, they resorted to the Throne.
+The supplications which had met only with contumely when addressed to
+the Irish Commons, was received with favour by a British King, acting
+with the advice of a British Cabinet. In the next session, the speech
+from the throne recommended to the Irish Parliament to take into their
+consideration the situation of the King's Catholic subjects. No sooner
+was this hint received from the British Cabinet, than those very men,
+who but last year pledged their lives and fortunes to perpetuate the
+exclusion of the Irish Catholics from the privileges of freemen, because
+to admit them to share those privileges would be a subversion of the
+constitution and establishment, surrendered that opinion with as much
+promptness and facility as they had shewn violence and rancour in taking
+it up. Without any petition from the Catholics, without any change of
+circumstances, except the declaration of the will of the British
+Cabinet, that privilege which was last year refused with so much
+harshness and disdain, was this year spontaneously conceded!
+
+Will any man who knows any thing of men and of the feelings and motives
+which actuate them, assert that there was any thing in this concession
+which should attach more firmly the Irish Catholics to the Irish House
+of Commons? Will he say that this was one of those gracious measures
+which an enlightened legislature would adopt to soften the exasperation
+of national discontent? Probably he will rather say, it was fitted to
+evince more strongly than ever the necessity of reforming the
+constitution of that assembly, which, from the inconsistency of its
+measures, appeared evidently the instrument of a foreign will, not the
+authentic organ of the national sense.
+
+Let him, or them whose hot folly, whose rank bigotry, or whose petulant
+and stolid zeal led the Irish Commons into this disgraceful and
+contemptible situation, feel the blush of shame and confusion burn their
+cheek, when they reflect on these scenes. Let them, while it is yet in
+their power, atone to their offended country for the fatal consequences
+of their advice, before those records which are to inform future ages
+impress on their names for ever the indelible character of--PUBLIC
+ENEMY.
+
+In speaking of these transactions I have not attended to chronological
+accuracy. There were other measures to which the administration of
+Ireland had resorted to prop up their power, and form a substitute for
+that legitimate strength which is to be found only in the chearful
+support of a contented people--there were other measures which they
+adopted to beat down the public voice, and overbear the general sense of
+the nation. Among these were wanton prosecutions of innocent and
+respectable men, sometimes for libels, which all publications were
+construed to be that dared to talk of reform as a good measure, or of
+constitutional rights as things to be desired; others for crimes of a
+deeper die--for sedition and for treason. The evidence adduced in
+support of these charges were often the vilest of the rabble, whose
+testimony on the trials was discredited even by themselves, and the
+prisoners discharged, to the honour of themselves and the detestation of
+their accusers. Such was the case of the Drogheda merchants, on whose
+trial came out proofs of subornation and perjury which would shock
+credibility. These, however, were but venial errors, compared with those
+more mortal sins against the constitution and against common right, with
+which the Irish administration stands charged--sins, which including a
+violation of general and vital principles, may be fairly reckoned among
+those great and leading causes which have reduced Ireland to the
+dreadful state of discontent and disorder in which she now stands.
+
+Of these, one was the Convention Bill--a measure proposed by
+administration, and adopted by the Parliament of that day, for the
+avowed purpose of preventing the Catholics from collecting the sense of
+their body on a petition to Parliament, or to the Throne, for the
+elective franchise. This bill, if it did not annihilate a popular right,
+certainly narrowed it to a degree which, in a great measure, under the
+then existing circumstances, destroyed its efficacy. It had been one of
+the special pleading tricks of the Irish Court, when the people
+expressed their sense on particular measures, if there happened to be
+any variations of mode or sentiment in the application of different
+bodies, to take occasion, from these variations, to reject the whole as
+inconsistent. This scheme had been practised with much plausibility on
+the question of reform. No reform, they contended, was practicable,
+which would content the nation; because of the many petitions which had
+been presented from the different counties, cities, and towns in the
+country, and of the many plans which had been proposed, no two were
+found perfectly to correspond--as if when the general sense of the
+people was fully expressed, no attention should be paid to it, because
+there was not to be found in the various expressions of that sense that
+perfect coincidence which on a general question of morals or politics it
+is absolutely impossible to attain. It had also been boldly and
+shamelessly asserted by administration, in opposition to the most
+general and public declaration of the Catholic body, that the claim of
+the elective franchise was only the suggestion of a few turbulent
+agitators, and that the great bulk of the Catholics had neither
+solicitude nor desire about the matter. To give the lie to this hardy
+and absurd assertion, the Catholics resolved upon a measure which would
+put the matter beyond doubt, and by collecting into a focus the sense of
+their body, and expressing that sense in a simple and explicit manner,
+would take from their enemies the two great arguments by which they had
+defeated the popular applications for reform. Administration, however,
+were too vigilant to suffer the Catholics to get hold of this powerful
+weapon. The Convention Bill, by which all representative assemblies were
+made illegal, and punishable with the severest penalties, proposed in
+haste, and passed with precipitation, deprived them of the only means of
+giving to the legislature that simple and indubitable declaration of
+the general sense, which, however, the legislature insisted on as a
+necessary preliminary to hearing their complaints.
+
+Here certainly was another of those measures which without any crime in
+the people of Ireland was levelled at one of their most valuable
+privileges. Let the people of England judge, whether under the
+circumstances I have mentioned, it was not likely to wound deeply the
+feelings of three-fourths of his Majesty's Irish subjects--and, combined
+as it was with the insulting rejection of the Catholic petition, and the
+subsequent concession, at the instance of the British Cabinet, of that
+favour which was refused to Irish supplication--let Englishmen say,
+whether it may not fairly be reckoned among the wanton and unprovoked
+causes of the present discontents.
+
+The Convention Bill, however mischievous it may have been by aggravating
+the discontent which had already spread through the mass of the people,
+was yet more mischievous by stopping up that channel through which
+popular discontent discharges itself with most safety--that of petition
+and remonstrance. So little effect had been found to result from the
+petitions of individuals in the legislature on any of the great
+questions which in any degree interfered with the system adopted by
+administration, and in which they seemed resolved to persevere, that it
+was thought futile and absurd to resort to that mode of stating
+complaint or soliciting redress. If a corporation petitioned, they were
+answered only by an observation on the manner in which the petition was
+obtained, by contrasting it with other petitions procured by Castle
+influence, or by some sarcastic remark on their profession or character.
+If a body of citizens petitioned, they were porter-house politicians or
+bankrupt traders. There remained, therefore, no way in which the people
+could lay their complaints before the legislature, with any hope of
+relief, but in that general way of a representative body, which, while
+it gave weight and consistency to their application, obviated those
+pitiful arts by which the Castle continued to elude and frustrate the
+wishes of the people. The Convention Bill, by rendering that mode
+impracticable, compressed the public discontents, and while it encreased
+the irritation, left no vent to its violence but in assassination and
+conspiracy.
+
+That such would be the consequence of this measure, administration were
+solemnly warned. It was urged on them, but without effect, that in every
+country where the freedom of remonstrance and complaint was denied,
+secret conspiracy or open insurrection took the place of angry but
+harmless petition. Italy was mentioned; and it was said, rather with the
+spirit of a prophet than a politician, that if this bill passed, Ireland
+would become more infamous for private assassination than Italy itself.
+The Society of United Irishmen was not yet become a clandestine or an
+illegal body--but it was foretold, that this bill would create
+clandestine and seditious meetings: for it was easy to see, that when
+discontented people were prevented from uttering their complaints, they
+would substitute other modes of redress for angry publication. But with
+the administration of Ireland, or the Irish House of Commons of that
+day, advice and remonstrance were vain. They boldly ventured on a
+measure of which these consequences were foreseen, yet now profess to
+wonder why such consequences have happened. On the folly of their
+counsels, then, the people of Ireland are justified in charging the
+assassinations--the sedition--the conspiracy, which have disgraced their
+country: they are not the native growth of her soil! They have been
+begotten only by insolence and injury upon the stifled indignation of a
+volatile and feeling people!
+
+But the Convention act was not the only measure to which the party
+abusing the powers of government in Ireland resorted, to tame or to
+irritate the Irish people. The Gunpowder Bill, prior in order and time,
+which deprived the Irish subject in a great measure of the
+constitutional power of self-defence, prepared the minds of the people
+for receiving the full impression of the Convention act, which narrowed
+another of his rights. The attempt to annihilate the independence of the
+country, by insisting on the right of Britain to choose a regent for
+Ireland, and the subsequent attempt of the same kind in 1785 to
+substitute a commercial boon for the right of self-government, had
+already gone far toward producing a tendency to irritation in the
+people, which these more vital attacks completed.
+
+Nor did even these measures, insidious, violent, and unconstitutional as
+they were, produce so much discontent as the tone and the spirit in
+which they were tarried into execution. The most insulting imputations
+on the loyalty, and even on the intellect of the nation, were daily
+made by the needy adventurers, whom chance, or perhaps infamous
+services, had raised to a place in the administration. The public prints
+were polluted by the foulest calumny against every man who had the
+virtue and the courage to oppose a system which he foresaw must
+eventually terminate in the ruin of the country. Some of the basest of
+mankind, distinguished, however, by more than usual talents for
+perversion and invective, were appointed to conduct those publications
+which were paid by the public money for abusing the national character.
+The Whig Club, consisting of noblemen and gentlemen who, by possessing
+large property and extensive connections in the country, felt themselves
+bound to oppose the mad measures of men who, as they were mostly
+foreigners, had no interest but to turn the present moment to most
+advantage, were held up to the public, both in and out of Parliament, as
+enemies to the tranquillity of the state, and anxious only, at all
+events, to raise themselves to power.
+
+The conduct of administration to the Whig Club, indeed, deserves
+peculiar confederation, as it evinces, in the fullest manner, that it
+was not the irregular or unconstitutional proceedings of this or that
+body of men--of the Volunteer Convention, or of the United Irish
+Society--but the measures which these bodies recommended, against which
+the influence and force of government was turned. The Whig Club had
+formed themselves on the most constitutional and moderate principles.
+Their object was to obtain for the people of Ireland, by a concentration
+of their parliamentary influence and exertions, those laws by which the
+British constitution was guarded, against the encroachments of the
+executive power; and by the want of which in Ireland, her constitution
+seemed to have but a precarious existence at the pleasure of the Court.
+Such were a Pension Bill, for limiting the influence resulting to the
+Crown by an indefinite power of granting pensions--a Place Bill, to
+secure the independence of the House of Commons, by making the
+acceptance of office by a member a vacation of his seat--a
+Responsibility Bill, by which the men intrusted with the management of
+the public treasure, or enjoying high official situations in the
+government of the country, should be responsible to Parliament for their
+conduct and advice. These were the measures which the Club undertook at
+their formation to press upon minister. They subsequently adopted
+others on which the sense of the people became too generally known to be
+at all doubtful. The question of reform and Catholic emancipation they
+did not take up, until the nation called for them in a manner which
+proved the concession of them to be essential to the peace of the
+country.
+
+Of the constitutionality of those measures which the Whig Club
+originally espoused, no man could entertain a doubt. They were the law
+of England. The manner in which these measures were urged by the Whig
+Club was equally constitutional. They brought them before Parliament by
+bill and by motion, supported by arguments which were answered only by
+majorities consisting of those placemen and pensioners, those borough
+members and irresponsible officers, against whose parliamentary
+existence they were levelled. This constitutional pursuit of
+constitutional measures--how did the Irish administration treat it? By
+imputing the worst motives to those by whom they were proposed--by
+impeaching their loyalty to their Sovereign--by the most open and bold
+avowal of the existence, and the necessity of corruption in the
+government--by the most contumelious indifference for the public voice,
+and, finally, by affixing the most disgraceful and irritating marks of
+suspicion on every nobleman and man of property in either house of
+Parliament, who dared to support those pretensions of the people to the
+benefits of the British constitution. The removal of that good and
+estimable character, the Earl of Charlemont, from the office of Governor
+of the County of Armagh--an office which might be considered as
+hereditary in his family, and to which his estate in that county gave
+him a kind of indefeasible right, is one instance of a number. It will
+ever be remembered as a damning proof of the foolish and wicked
+malignity of the Irish administration against the friends of the Irish
+people.
+
+These arts of the Castle, however, were unable to counteract or repress
+the persevering effects of the Whig Club. It is not necessary in this
+place to enter into a defence of the motives of that body in thus
+contending for the interests of the public. It is sufficient that the
+measures which they patronized were in a high degree beneficial to the
+Irish nation; and whether they urged them from a wish to raise
+themselves to office, or from a principle of pure patriotism, was to
+the public immaterial. That they supported them zealously and
+faithfully, from whatever motive, was indubitable. _So_ zealously and
+faithfully indeed did they exert themselves, that the very same men who
+had for years made a constant and violent opposition to those measures,
+exhausting every epithet of reprobation which the English language
+afforded, both against them and their supporters, yet at last found
+themselves obliged to concede them to the unrelaxing vigour of these
+gentlemen, supported by the general sense of the country. It is the
+concession of these measures that the friends of the Irish junto call
+"CONCILIATION!" These are the favours which they say Ireland has
+received, and which they contend ought for ever to have silenced popular
+complaint, and put a period to the demands of the country! Had they been
+yielded at an earlier time, before the long, long irritation which the
+obstinate refusal of them for several successive years had produced,
+they would have been received with gratitude by the nation, and the
+effect would have been general tranquillity and content. But the Irish
+administration knew neither how to concede nor withhold--their
+resistance was without strength, and their concessions without kindness.
+Like the Roman King and the Sybils, they withheld the price of public
+content, until the people, aggravated by refusal, insisted on still
+higher terms; and, indeed, rose in their demands, beyond what an
+administration, bankrupt in character and confidence, were able to grant
+them. What a Minister of comprehensive mind and enlarged views would
+have granted to the people with magnanimity at once, and what if thus
+granted, would have taken the tongue from discontent, and left
+disaffection no handle to use against the peace of the country, the
+Irish administration conceded piece-meal--one little measure after
+another--reluctantly and with hesitation; thus teaching the people that
+what was granted could not be withheld, and that the same means which
+had extorted one concession from the weakness of government would be
+equally successful in extorting others. Nay, at the very moment when
+they were yielding those measures to the perseverance of opposition,
+supported by the public sense, they continued to load those very men by
+whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul
+invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the
+people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely
+through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the
+country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity
+of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and
+those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have
+bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of
+exciting in numbers of the inhabitants of that country a deep hatred of
+the British name and connection.
+
+When Englishmen contemplate for a moment this picture of the
+"conciliation" which the Irish nation has received with so much
+ingratitude, it is possible they may conclude that nothing has happened
+which might not have reasonably been expected. Possibly they will think
+it not unnatural that the people should have received, with little sense
+of obligation, measures which were never conceded until they came to
+form only a small part of what was demanded as rights--and that they
+should rather feel indignant at the insult and abuse heaped on them by a
+few contemptible and obscure adventurers, than acknowledge gratitude for
+benefits long kept back, and, at length, reluctantly yielded.
+
+I have dwelt thus long on the early conduct of the Irish administration
+for two reasons--the one to vindicate the people of Ireland from the
+insolent charge made against them by their enemies--"That conciliation
+had been tried in vain with that sottish and discontented people--that
+they had not intellect to understand, nor gratitude to acknowledge
+benefits--and that, therefore, the present system of unconstitutional
+coercion and deprivation was resorted to of necessity:"--the other was
+to shew, that whatever discontent has been recently shewn in Ireland,
+whatever crimes have been committed for political purposes, had their
+remote origin in that system by which the powers of government had been
+abused in Ireland for several years back. Whether I have succeeded in
+this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and
+constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is
+incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the
+people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of
+ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy
+country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end
+the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the
+necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system adopted by the
+weak, hot-headed, and petulant men to whom the administration of Ireland
+was entrusted, operating upon a generous and loyal but irritable and
+warm people.
+
+But had the Irish junto rested at the point to which we have now come in
+describing their system, Ireland would not now have to appeal for pity
+or for aid to the British nation. It is the subsequent measures to which
+they resorted, and for which no precedent is to be found in the history
+of this or any other country pretending to laws, or rights, or
+constitution, that we complain of. It is by these that Ireland has been
+lashed into madness, and driven to crimes and to follies which her sober
+reason would have looked at with detestation. It shall be now my
+business to advert to those measures--to shew that they have generally
+preceded those crimes of the people which are alledged to have produced
+them--that they have been severe and desperate beyond what the necessity
+of the case called for--that their probable result will be a military
+despotism--that they cannot tranquillize the country but by the
+destruction of every degree of constitutional liberty--that, therefore,
+the people of Great Britain are interested in preventing the progress of
+that system in Ireland--and, finally, that if the two great objects of
+the public in Ireland were honestly and fully conceded, and if the
+people were re-instated in the blessings of the constitution by the
+establishment of a mild and just administration, peace and content would
+be restored to the country, disaffection would vanish, and the
+connection of the two islands become closer and more permanent than
+ever.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION IN
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