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.