guilt was original and unprovoked,
were exercised without mercy against the latter; whose errors were the
ebullition of untaught nature repelling in an untaught way, the most
wanton and unparalleled aggression.

There were some collateral circumstances which contributed to give full
effect to the impression which the enormities of the Orange society were
calculated to make on the minds of the lower orders. The severity with
which administration had followed the United Irishmen by dispersing
their meetings, seizing their papers, and prosecuting as libels every
publication which emanated from them, had driven them to the necessity
of meeting secretly, and admitting members into their society in a
private and mysterious manner. Between secret meetings and conspiracy
the interval is small--between meeting secretly for constitutional
purposes and meeting to alter or overthrow the constitution, the
interval is perhaps still less. Whether the objects or the United Irish
societies were at this period unconstitutional or not, it is certain the
meetings were clandestine, and that of the lower class of people numbers
flocked to them who were admitted only on condition of taking an oath to
be true to the body--_i. e._ to keep its secrets, and to devote
themselves to the pursuit of the two great popular objects--Catholic
Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. The impression which the minds of
the lower order of the people would be apt to receive at the discussion
of these meetings cannot be considered as very likely to mitigate their
zeal in opposition to the persecutors of the Catholics, or to form their
minds to receive with patient forbearance the severities which were now
every where exercised indiscriminately against the United Irishmen and
Defenders--terms which, in the indiscriminating language of the senate
and the Castle, were considered as synonymous.

In considering the effect which the extensive and secret meetings of the
United Irishmen produced on the dispositions of the lower people it is
not necessary to ascertain whether the designs of that body were or were
not treasonable. It is sufficient that were they precisely limited to
their professed objects, emancipation and reform, the effect of them on
the mass of the public by whom they were constituted must be adverse to
the system which administration had adopted, and which they now began to
force on the nation by means the most unjustifiable.

If this statement of