contempt, is too strong
and too much attached to the present form of government, notwithstanding
what they had suffered, either to be overcome by the force, or seduced
by the artifice of disaffection, to forego their allegiance. There
remains then only the other alternative--and of that what will be the
effect? Rebellion will be quelled by power, but the existing causes of
discontent--those causes which through a long series of petty conflicts
have at length terminated in the present dreadful issue, will remain
rankling in the bosom of the country. Conscious of its force,
administration will, with an high hand, bear still more hard on the
constitutional rights of the people--at least against those rights which
are calculated to guard them against the tyranny of an ambitious
faction. Knowing the hatred which the Irish nation bear to the set who
have heaped on her head those calamities under which she now groans, and
of which centuries will not remove the effects, will the Irish
administration, think you, resign that extraordinary unconstitutional
force which in course of the struggle they have acquired? Impossible! If
we can reason at all on the event, it is most reasonable to believe,
that the military system which shall have subdued the discontents of
Ireland, will continue to govern it. Will it be for the safety, or for
the honour of England that her sister country should be a military
despotism?

In one event only, then, does there appear to be a gleam of hope that
Ireland may yet become a free, happy, and contented member of the
British empire--and that is, in a suppression of the present
insurrection--in a change of the men by whom the affairs of Ireland have
been for some years so abominably administered--and in a change of that
system which has hitherto been pursued by them. If Englishmen value
their own liberty, which the contiguity of despotism must always hazard,
or feel sympathy for the sufferings of an unfortunate people, whose
attachment to Britain has been proved during the course of an anxious
and changeful century, to these objects will they direct their efforts.

Already thousands of the people of Ireland have fallen in the
contest--and yet the standard of rebellion is erect. More of the blood
of Ireland must be shed, before Ireland, under the present system, is
restored to peace. A military chief governor has been sent over, not to
appease but to subdue. He _may_ subdue--but is it the pride of a Briti