t their share of detestation. If they who subvert the good
order of society--who overleap the bounds fixed by the law of Nature
itself to guard the liberty, life, and property of individuals against
the spoiler, be fit objects of reprobation, I shall turn the eyes of all
the good and wise in England toward that faction by whose counsels and
whose deeds the fairest island in the British empire has been made a
theatre on which lawless outrage has played its deadly freaks!

When I speak in terms thus strong of that system under which the people
of Ireland have suffered for some years, and by which they have been
goaded into acts of folly and madness which no good man is either able
or inclined to defend, let me not too early be charged with declamation.
There are some cases in which no language can be declamatory because no
words can aggravate them. If I shall not shew before I conclude this
address that the case of Ireland is one of them, let me _then_ be
branded with the epithet of empty talker!

It will not be necessary for me, in stating to the people of England
the calamities under which Ireland smarts, and the causes which produced
them, to go farther back than that period at which she became, nominally
at least, an independent country. What remains of her history before
that period the honour of both countries calls on us to forget--a
mistaken but overbearing principle of domination and monopoly on one
hand, fed and strengthened by a servile and base acquiescence on the
other, constitute the outline of the sketch--an idle and beggared
populace, a jobbing legislature, proscriptions, penal laws, &c. &c. are
the disgusting materials with which it must be filled. That Time should
quickly draw his veil over such a scene, and cover it with oblivion
would be the natural wish of every British and Irish heart, were it not
that scenes still more disgraceful to both countries and more calamitous
to one of them have succeeded--scenes which force the mind to revert
with regret to those days of poverty and peace, when, as there existed
little wealth to excite avarice, and little spirit to aggravate the
ambition of party, that little remained inviolate, and the miserable
cabin, though filled with objects of disgusting wretchedness, was yet
the secure covering and castle of its humble owner.--How different his
present situation! when in laying down his head at night he fears lest
before morning he shall be rouzed by the cries of hi