ill would be our baseness if ever, even amid all the
heart-crushing calamities of the time, we shrunk in aught from our high
purposes, and from our vows for Ireland's regeneration.

"Nay, if but the hope of relief from our present distress were to
animate us, even so should we cry out for that home parliament which
alone can bring back wealth and abundance to the land--alone can guard
her from recurring season after season of want, of pestilence, of death!

"Be ready then in time, fellow-countrymen, the elections are at hand;
give us repealers--true and trusty repealers--men pledged to the safe,
peaceful, constitutional principles you have been taught by him whom
you followed so devotedly, and whom you mourn so affectionately and
sincerely!

"On you--on each one and all of you together, and on none but you, the
task now lies of helping Ireland at this fearful crisis of her fortunes.
Yours, and yours alone, will be the glories of success, or the shame
of not having sought it. Your distress has left the Repeal Association
without funds to aid your contest, and we can do no more than to exhort
and to advise. Let not the wily enemies of your freedom delude you. The
duty is upon you; the means are in your hands, not in ours; if the
duty be not done, poor Ireland will suffer the disastrous and ruinous
consequences; but the blame of them, and the shame, will be upon you.
Fellow-countrymen, this must not be--nay, this will not be. We answer
for you. Unaided, undirected, as you are, you will bestir yourselves--on
yourselves will depend, and you will achieve the victory. Meet in your
committees; encourage the timid, cheer up the desponding; turn away
with contempt from the whig or tory dependent, who would counsel you to
dishonour, and vote for none but a staunch repealer--for one who will
maintain the peace principles of the association, and aid it to work out
and re-establish the inalienable and imperishable right of Ireland to
legislate for herself.

"Had our own parliament ruled us, the landlords would not have had their
tyrannies sanctioned and increased in license till the suffering people
were reduced down to the lumper potato for a wretched, and, alas! a
fatally precarious subsistence. Our manufactures would yet exist, giving
comfort to our skilful artizans, and offering refuge to the peasant,
unable to obtain a maintenance upon the land. In every village
neighbourhood, the money raised by the hard toil of the labourer