and enlarged views would
have granted to the people with magnanimity at once, and what if thus
granted, would have taken the tongue from discontent, and left
disaffection no handle to use against the peace of the country, the
Irish administration conceded piece-meal--one little measure after
another--reluctantly and with hesitation; thus teaching the people that
what was granted could not be withheld, and that the same means which
had extorted one concession from the weakness of government would be
equally successful in extorting others. Nay, at the very moment when
they were yielding those measures to the perseverance of opposition,
supported by the public sense, they continued to load those very men by
whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul
invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the
people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely
through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the
country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity
of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and
those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have
bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of
exciting in numbers of the inhabitants of that country a deep hatred of
the British name and connection.

When Englishmen contemplate for a moment this picture of the
"conciliation" which the Irish nation has received with so much
ingratitude, it is possible they may conclude that nothing has happened
which might not have reasonably been expected. Possibly they will think
it not unnatural that the people should have received, with little sense
of obligation, measures which were never conceded until they came to
form only a small part of what was demanded as rights--and that they
should rather feel indignant at the insult and abuse heaped on them by a
few contemptible and obscure adventurers, than acknowledge gratitude for
benefits long kept back, and, at length, reluctantly yielded.

I have dwelt thus long on the early conduct of the Irish administration
for two reasons--the one to vindicate the people of Ireland from the
insolent charge made against them by their enemies--"That conciliation
had been tried in vain with that sottish and discontented people--that
they had not intellect to understand, nor gratitude to acknowledge
benefits--and that, therefore, the present system o