ted of
their primary rights, thus pillaged, thus shorn like Samson of those
natural ornaments in which resided their natural strength, feeling
themselves (like that same Samson in the language of Milton) turned
out to the scorn of their countrymen as 'tame wethers' ridiculously
fleeced and mutilated--they droop, they languish as to all public
spirit; and whilst by temperament, by natural endowment, by continual
intercourse with the noble aristocracy of Britain (from whom also they
are chiefly descended), they _should_ be amongst the leading
chivalries of Europe, in very fact they are, for political or social
purposes, the most powerless gentry in existence. Acting in a
corporate capacity, they can do nothing. The malignant planet of this
low-born priesthood comes between them and the peasantry, eclipsing
oftentimes the sunshine of their comprehensive beneficence, and
_always_ destroying their power to discountenance[20] evil-doers. Here
is the sad excuse. But, for all that, we must affirm that, if the
Irish landed gentry do not yet come forward to retrieve the ground
which they have forfeited by inertia, history will record them as
passive colluders with the Dublin repealers. The evil is so
operatively deep, looking backward or forward, that we have purposely
brought it forward in a second aspect, viz., as contrasted with the
London press. For the one, as we have been showing, there is a strong
plea in palliation; for the other there is none.

Let us be frank. This is what we affirm, that it was, it is, it will be
hereafter, within the powers of the London press to have extinguished
the Repeal or any similar agitation; they could have done this, and this
they have _not_ done. But let us also not be misunderstood. Do we say
this in a spirit of disrespect? Are we amongst the parties who (when
characterizing the American press) infamously say, 'Let us, however,
look homewards to our own press, and be silent for very shame'? Are we
the people to join the vicious correspondent of an evening paper whom
but a week ago we saw denouncing the editor of the _Examiner_ newspaper
as a public nuisance, and recommending him as a fit subject of some
degrading punishment, for no better reason than that he had exercised
his undoubted right of exposing delinquencies or follies in a garrulous
lord? Far be such vilenesses from us. We honour the press of this
country. We know its constitution, and we know the mere impossibility
(were it onl