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, an