comet sweeping close to this planet of ours could hardly create more
unfeigned astonishment in the minds of people in general than did the
appearance of this wonderful newspaper, brimful of open and avowed
sedition, crammed with incitements to insurrection, and with diligently
prepared instructions for the destruction of her Majesty's troops,
barracks, stores, and magazines. Men rubbed their eyes, as they read its
articles and correspondence, scarcely believing that any man in his
sober senses would venture, in any part of the Queen's dominions, to put
such things in print. But there were the articles and the letters,
nevertheless, on fair paper and in good type, published in a duly
registered newspaper bearing the impressed stamp of the Customs--a sign
to all men that the proprietor was bound in heavy sureties to the
government against the publication of "libel, blasphemy, or
sedition"!--couched, moreover, in a style of language possessing such
grace and force, such delicacy of finish, and yet such marvellous
strength, rich with so much of quiet humour, and bristling with such
rasping sarcasm and penetrating invective, that they were read as an
intellectual luxury even by men who regarded as utterly wild and wicked
the sentiments they conveyed. The first editorial utterance in this
journal consisted of a letter from Mr. Mitchel to the Viceroy, in which
that functionary was addressed as "The Right Hon. the Earl of Clarendon,
Englishman, calling himself her Majesty's Lord Lieutenant-General and
General Governor of Ireland." The purport of the document was to
declare, above board, the aims and objects of the _United Irishman_, a
journal with which, wrote Mr. Mitchel, "your lordship and your
lordship's masters and servants are to have more to do than may be
agreeable either to you or me." That that purpose was to resume the
struggle which had been waged by Tone and Emmet, or, as Mr. Mitchel put
it, "the Holy War, to sweep this island clear of the English name and
nation." "We differ," he said, "from the illustrious conspirators of