LETTER III.
MY Friends—Since I wrote my first letter to you many kind and flattering addresses have been made to you by exceedingly genteel and very rich noblemen and gentlemen. Those of you, especially who are Orangemen, seem to have somehow got into high favour with this genteel class, which must make you feel rather strange. I think. You have not been used to much recognition and encouragement of late years from British Viceroys or the noble and right worshipful grand masters. They rather avoided you—seemed, indeed, as many thought, somewhat ashamed of you and your old anniversaries. Once upon a time no Irish nobleman or British Minister dared make light of the colours of Aughrim and the Boyne. But can you divine any cause for the sudden change of late? Do you understand why the Whig Lord Clarendon calls you so many names of endearment, and the Earl of Enniskillen tenderly entreats you, as a father his only child? Can these men want anything from you?
Let us see what the drift of their addresses generally is. Lord Clarendon, the English Governor, congratulates you on your "loyalty" and your "attachment to the Constitution," and seems to calculate, though I know not why, upon a continuance of those exalted sentiments in the North. Lord Enniskillen, the Irish
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