ate 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 mee