sh
King to rule a depopulated, a desolated, and a discontented country?
Will fire and sword restore content and confidence to the land? Will the
slaughter of a hundred thousand of the people of Ireland reconcile the
survivors to that system of mal-government which they have risen to
oppose? Will the faction which has provoked this scene of slaughter,
become more popular by the carnage they have occasioned?

Englishmen!--your fellow subjects of Ireland now call on you to
consider the case of a distracted country, as that of brethren united by
the tie of a common nature, and by the still closer tie of a common
Sovereign; both entitled to the advantages of the same constitution,
each depending, in some measure, on the others strength. For one hundred
years you have found in the people of Ireland a faithful and firm
friend--though for much of that period we laboured under the most
distressing disadvantages, destitute of the means of wealth, and aliens
from the most important benefits of the British constitution, we have
yet borne our sufferings with patient and uncomplaining attachment to a
British Sovereign, and to the British cause. In our poverty we still
contributed to the exigencies of the empire. When an extension of our
means enabled us to give more largely towards the common stock, we
poured forth our blood and treasure in the cause of Britain with more
than the zeal of brothers. In our fallen state, with an island reeking
with blood, and the sword at our throat, directed by an administration
in the best and in the worst of times hostile to Ireland, we call upon
you to assist in rescuing our country from utter and irretrievable
ruin--we implore you to interfere for us with our common Sovereign--to
solicit at his paternal hand the removal of those wicked men, who by
abusing the confidence of their Sovereign, and sacrificing their duty to
his people, to the gratification of ambitious views or native
malevolence, have belied the Irish nation; and by their obstinate and
relentless cruelty have driven it to madness. We conjure you to think of
us as of men enamoured of liberty and animated by that zealous
attachment to monarchy, limited by law, which has given immortality to
the name of Englishmen--though at the same time, as of men, among whom
many have been hurried into unpardonable indiscretions while the great
body remain a loyal, though a suffering people.--In a word, we solicit
your sympathy as brethren, and your in