ede these would throw such a weight into the
scale of government as would effectually tranquillize the country.
Administration, however, took up the contrary opinion, and decided on a
continuation of coercive measures. They pretended, that the people of
Ireland were rebels, and that with rebels conciliation should not be
tried. They assumed, in the first place, that all the United Irishmen
were traitors--in the second, that that society comprehended the great
body of the people, or that those who were not of that body approved
heartily of all the measures which had been carried on for some years
back by the Irish Cabinet. No account was made of that great and
respectable class of men who, while they looked with detestation on
those acts of insubordination, of assassination, and treason, which had
followed the adoption of the present system, contemplated with the most
unqualified reprobation that system itself. Determined, therefore, to
scourge the nation out of that ill temper into which the scourge had
driven it, what step did administration fix on? They send a military
force under General Lake to the province of Ulster, and enjoin him to
act at his discretion for disarming the freemen of the North, and
enforcing content and tranquillity at the point of the bayonet!

It is not necessary to waste much reasoning on this measure. The
constitution prescribes the interposition of the sword only in cases of
open insurrection or rebellion. If the province of Ulster was in that
state, what indignation must not the two countries feel at the wicked
pertinacity of the Irish Cabinet in a system which led to that issue? If
it were not in rebellion, what punishment could be too great for those
who resorted without necessity to that last and dreadful remedy--a
military force vested with discretionary powers, for disorders properly
within the cognizance of the civil magistrate? But the administration
justify themselves by the plea, that the proceedings of these United
Irishmen were too subtle and cautious to be met by the ordinary
exertions of the civil power, though they were not yet in open
rebellion. They must take the praise, therefore, of having created a new
species of opposition to established government, hitherto unknown, by
directing, without intermission, the force of the state not against open
violence, but against political principle; by warring, not with men
whose aim was anarchy and plunder, but men skilled in, and zealou