from the Act of
Settlement which we have drawn. In February 1844, the Irish
Attorney-General pronounced his views; _Blackwood's Magazine_ in
August or September 1843. A fact which we mention--not as imputing to
that learned gentleman any obligation to ourselves; for, on the
contrary, it strengthens the opinion to have been _independently_
adopted by different minds, but in order to acquit ourselves from the
natural suspicion of having, in a legal question, derived our own
views from a high legal authority.

3. Might not the Repeal Association have been arrested and prosecuted
at first, viz. in March 1843, as six months afterwards they were, on a
charge of conspiracy? That was a happy thought, by whomsoever
suggested; and strange that an idea, so often applied to minor
offences as well as to political offences, should not at once have
been seen to press with crushing effect upon these disturbers of the
public peace. Since the great change in the combination laws, this
doctrine of conspiracy is the only means by which masters retain any
power at all. Wheresoever there are reciprocal rights, for one of the
two antagonist interests to combine in defence of their own,
presupposes in very many cases an unfair disturbance of the legal
equilibrium. Society, as being an inert body in relation to any
separate interests of its own, and chiefly from the obscurity of these
interests, cannot be supposed to combine; and therefore cannot combine
even to prevent combinations. Government is the perpetual guardian and
organ of society in relation to its interests. Government, therefore,
prosecutes. This, however, left the original question as to the Repeal
of the Irish Union act, whether a lawful attempt or not lawful,
untouched. And necessary it was to do so. Had the prosecutor even been
satisfied on that point, no jury would have regarded it as other than
a delicate question in the casuistry of political metaphysics. But the
offence of combining, by means of tumultuous meetings, and by means of
connecting with this obscure question rancorous nationalities or
personalities, so as to make _that_ a matter of agitating interest to
poor men, which else they would have regarded as a pure scholastic
abstraction--this was a crime well understood by the jury; and thence
flowed the verdict. But could not the same verdict have been obtained
in the month of March? Certainly not. For the act of _conspiracy_ must
prove itself by collusion between s