the measure; nor do I believe that one advantage will result from it, or from any other convention between Ireland and Great Britain, which the English Minister proposes, and which the English mercantile interest approves of, no convention or community of interest ever will be equitably conducted when both parties are not equally able to assert their own rights, and to resist the innovations or injustice of the other. How far our commerce is likely to be fostered by the hand which has nearly crushed it, or our rights attended to by the power which has annihilated them, it is not necessary to be commented upon. I beg my countrymen not to suppose, that I think the measure is a good one; no, but I know it to be inevitable, I beg them not to suppose that I place the smallest reliance, on the promises of equity, and disinterestedness of the Minister. No, but I know that we cannot either reject the measure, or insist on the performance of the treaty; I know that our part of it will be signed and most strictly performed, and that the English part of it will be filled up, how and when it suits the Minister. "I would beg the people to remember that it is the wish of the Minister to have them in a state of insurrection that he may have a pretext for this measure; it was his wish to have them driven into insurrection before; it was his command to goad them into it; and hence the system of unparalleled cruelties which we have witnessed.' It was equally the wish of the friends of the country, to keep the People from commotion, as it was that of the Minister to bring them to it. 66 Insurrection has been one of the favourites of that man (Pitt); he has tried it in France; he has attempted it in Holland; and he effected it in Ireland-steering wide, in his political career, of every principle of avowed and understood policy; he astonishes and awes,-bewilders and leads a fascinated people. Minister of England, you are a great man! while I detest your principles and deprecate your measures, I admit your abilities!for fifteen years you have ruled Great Britain-you have converted a fluctuating and delicate situation, into a certain and 1 England has always pursued this policy to gain a pretext for some measure by which she alone would be benefited. In the near future she will attempt to force an outbreak in Ireland by some coercion act, that she may reduce the number of Irish members to Parliament, the only provision of the Act of the Union which has not been abrogated. Brutality of Irish Parliament to Irishmen 221 critical one.-You have blinded a selfish nation to their own interest, and led them on to their own destruction.-You have paralyzed, or energized all Europe. You have sent Liberty to the Asiatic and the Indian. You have persecuted the spirit, and the genius has arisen to avenge the persecution-wherever the fetters of slavery have gone, the Genius of Emancipation has followed- You have conceived uncommon designs- You have attempted them, and they have failed- Man of immeasur able talents, why have you not learnt that rectitude would have assisted you!-why has not your policy taught you sometimes to appear to feel like a man—and why has not your reason detected the fallacy of your crooked policy! For fifteen years you have held the helm of Britain, you have ruled her with an undivided and absolute authority-you have ruled her ill-you have been to England a bad Minister-to Ireland a destroying spirit-passing over the land with devastation, sparing only those whose thresholds were marked with blood. You have fought to precipitate her into a gulph which you have formed for England, and you have overwhelmed her in chaos and confusion-whether to Ireland is to rise light out of darkness, and order from discord; yet remains with that Providence, whose inscrutable wisdom works good out of evil, and often makes the crimes of men the instruments of good to the species." Miss Emmet in another article, addressed to Parliament, stated': 'In common with most of my countrymen, I have looked with indifference to the adoption or rejection of an Union. And in common with them, I now feel the utmost alarm and anxiety at the proposal of that bill, which is, I find, to precede and ensure the hopes that you would reject this measure, from the conviction that it preceded an Union. If I did not know that its name and tenor, will ensure it many partisans, even among the opposers of the Union-if I did not know, that Parliament has been in the habit of adopting measures of coercion, without considering whether they were necessary, or whether they must not be in 1 A Letter to the Irish Parliament on the Intended Bill for Loyalizing Military Law, with the motto, "There is no sure foundation set on blood." Dublin, 1799, p. 15. jurious- You had a system of coercion handed down to you from your forefathers; you have enlarged it-what has been the result? Has peace arisen from persecution, or content from oppression? No; the people have groaned under the oppression -they have writhed under, and resisted the persecution. You have seen them discontented-have you removed the grievances? You have enacted new laws, each more oppressive than the last; you have driven them from discontent, to rebellion. Ignorance and superstition were receding from your land-you have recalled them; you have made them the inheritance of Irishmen; you have sought to make them their only birthright. But have you ever tried conciliation; have you ever attempted amelioration?Never. From the first moment that an English foot prest this ground, to the present, the system has been a system of cruelty, untinged with mercy. I much fear that the period for Parliament to assert its independence, is past; I fear that Parliament has formed the tomb of its own independence, and the liberty of the country. An independent Parliament cannot exist in an enslaved country; the liberties of one, and the independence of the other, must exist or expire together. But if your wishes, or your misguided policy, shall induce you to continue the system of devastation; if you determine still to increase, and never to diminish the sufferings of your countrymen; you must indeed exterminate -you must destroy, not simply four hundred thousand men, you must destroy four millions of people-you must annihilate not only the present, but the growing generation. You must sweep off the earth, not Irishmen alone, but Irishwomen and Irish children! It is not enough that you tear the father from his family! the man from his country! if you leave the wife to weep for her husband, the children to lament their father; you leave increasing enemies to oppression; you add to the spirit of patriotism, the desire of vengeance. Will the woman whose husband has been torn from her, forget how she has been deprived of him? Will she not seek revenge? Too surely she will-she will support her misery, in the hope of retribution; she will teach it to her children; she will entail it on them with her blessing-and when the moment arrives to seek this vengeance, she will nerve the arm of her son, and animate his heart, by the recital of his father's sufferings, and his father's fate. The woman will forget that she Hopeless Appeal to Patriotism 223 is a mother, in remembrance that she is no longer a wife! and the tears of maternal affection, suppressed by the remembrance of unavenged injuries; she will, with the unmoistened eye of corroded despair, send her only hope into the field of danger, to seek revenge. Will the boy forget that his father loved liberty? Will he not learn to love it too? He will imbibe the love of it with his mother's milk-he will enhale it from her sighs; it will be consecrated by her tears-his young and feeble hand will grasp the engine of liberty and vengeance; his beating heart, and fervid imagination anticipate the moment of resistance—and to repress oppression, and to seek liberty will seem a duty, not less imposed by filial affection, than by patriotism. "Pause, I beseech you, before you sign the mandate of destruction; before you commit yourselves against your country; before entail on your you children the curses of your countrymen. If penal laws are to restore peace, are there not enough of them? Have you not one for every offence that can be committed, or imagined? Have you not six of your own creating? But they have proved insufficient to tranquillize a distracted country; they have irritated and inflamed the public mind-you know this; you feel this; but instead of repeating, or correcting those avowed sources of public discontent; you enact a new one, more grievous, more oppressive, than any which at present exists. "And if this measure passes, it will indeed be your last act as a Legislative Body-for as to the Union, it is not to be considered as your measure; you would oppose it if you could; you will accept it, because you must-to you therefore does not attach any of the responsibility of that, farther than as your previous conduct has enabled the Minister to force it. "A little time, and you will not have the power either to injure or serve that devoted country- Oh yet leave it something, for which it may learn not to curse your duration, and rejoice in your extinction-let your last act be rather an act of mercy than of cruelty; so may your memory be hallowed by the forgiveness and regret of your country -if your Parliamentary career is over, do not let its termination be marked by cruelty-if the legislative sun of this horizon is to set forever, do not make it set in blood—let its last rays shine with the purified brightness of penitent conciliation; let its last beams diffuse vivifying warmth, which its meridian splendor denied." CHAPTER XIII BILL FOR THE "UNION PROPOSED EFFORT TO GET A MAJORITY IN PARLIAMENT PEOPLE OPPOSED, PETI- DECLARED PEOPLE UNABLE TO MEET FOR CONSULTATION THE "Rebellion" of 1798 is considered to have commenced on the 23d of May, shortly after the arrest of all the leaders and when Wexford rose as one man in consequence of the atrocities committed by the Orangeman yeomanry quartered upon them, who were sent there to effect that end. On the 22d of January, 1799, the Bill for the Union was first proposed by the Government and the proposition was rejected by the Irish House of Commons. Newenham states': "Petitions from the freeholds of twenty-six counties out of thirty-two, were presented against the Union in February in 1800; accompanied by petitions of the freemen, electors, merchants, &c. of ten towns, including Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Drogheda and Newry. These petitions, which then appeared without any of an opposite nature, except from the counties of Monaghan and Down, from whence petitions against the Union had also been transmitted, proved, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the measure was peculiarly repugnant to the wishes of the people of Ireland." 1 P. 276. |