himself beheld an enemy stretched at his feet by the act of his hand. And at the period of the Canada rebellion, he was on frequent occasions severe against what he denounced as the folly as well as crime of the insurgents in having recourse to arms, and launching their cause on a sea of blood, instead
of the purer waters of peaceful and legal agitation. There can be no doubt, we repeat, of his sincerity. Whether even his unparalleled degree of power over his countrymen, whose heaving millions he seems to sway as the moon the tides of the ocean, will
suffice to restrain them from all the natural impulses of their brave spirits and quick hands, remains yet to be seen. God grant that he may! But if-he does, it will be in spite of the difficulties created, or at least increased, by those intemperate friends, here or elsewhere, who, in direct opposition to him and his efforts, send to the Irish people such suggestions and such stimulations as those above alluded to. The object in view is not, as so many seem to suppose, a dismemberment of the empire, the erection of a distinct national independence for Ireland. In point of population and revenue, indeed, that beautiful island, which has been
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with that instalment of right, if not found to work satisfactorily. The catalogue of grievances of which the Irish have to complain under the Union, is a longer one than we have space, or than there is any occasion for us to detail. For this purpose, it is unnecessary to go back to the antiqui ties of the subject, though they too have their bearing upon even the actual pre sent state of the question, from the con sistent uniformity of ruthlessness, in every form of plunder and oppression, by which, from the earliest period, the English government of Ireland was characterized ; and of which some of the fruits, to the present day, are to be found in that bitter hatred of English domina tion ranklin yet so deeply in the Irish heart. This national feeling, even though its earlier roots may have to be sought centuries and centuries ago, in periods whose long-buried atrocities it is a worse than idle task to dig up now, out of the catacombs of the past to the horror and disgust of the present, yet constitutes a living and practical politi cal fact, which the wise statesman can
not cast out of the account as an im portant element in the present question. And the period is, indeed, so recent down to which the tyrannical rule of Ireland by the “ English Ascendency” continued animated by a spirit little better than that of its worst and bloodi est day—the forced relaxation of the chain of oppression, link after link, has been at once so reluctant and so ungra~ cious—the remnants and results of the old treatment, with that relation of conquered subjection and degradation on which it was based, are yet so many and so galling~that it cannot be any subject of surprise that the heredi tary transmission of this feeling, still perpetually, in greater or less degree, renewed and refreshed, should have thus kept it alive, and so deeply and thoroughly woven it into the texture of the national character. The history of the Act of Union itself,
not more adorned by the loveliness of her daughters than the genius of her sons, would be fully competent to main tain a national position of dignity and importance in the European scale: after the first-rate powers of France, Austria, Russia and Prussia, the only ones that would be entitled to rank on the same level with her being Spain and Turkey. But it is merely a legis lative separation that is sought, and not a disjunction from the British empire and crown. The right of local self legislation, by a domestic parliament, in connection still with a common executive, is what is demanded, such as, indeed, existed in Ireland, in full force, for a period of nearly twenty years anterior to 1800, the date of that act of union of which the abrogation is too, while so recent as to be within the now sought. And, in fact, O’Connell memory of many who can relate the has even declared himself willing to recollections of those dark and dis accept of an inferior local legislature, astrous days, and traditionally familiar subject to the paramount control of an to the whole people, presents such a. imperial parliament, if unable to obtain mass of abomination and atrocity, of the full restoration of an equal and which that act was the object and the independent parliament,——though with result, that it may be said itself alone out any pledge of final contentment to constitute the sufficient motive for
