throughout the whole of Ireland against the Union? It is now one
month since I returned from that country; I have never seen so
extraordinary, so alarming, and so rapid a change in the sentiments
of any people. Those who disliked the Union before are quite
furious against it now; those who doubted doubt no more; those who
were friendly to it have exchanged that friendship for the most
rooted aversion; in the midst of all this (which is by far the most
alarming symptom), there is the strongest disposition on the part of
the northern Dissenters to unite with the Catholics, irritated by
the faithless injustice with which they have been treated. If this
combination does take place (mark what I say to you), you will have
meetings all over Ireland for the cry of No Union; that cry will
spread like wild-fire, and blaze over every opposition; and if this
be the case, there is no use in mincing the matter; Ireland is gone,
and the death-blow of England is struck; and this event may happen
INSTANTLY--before Mr. Canning and Mr. Hookham Frere have turned Lord
Howick's last speech into doggerel rhymne; before "the near and dear
relations" have received another quarter of their pension, or Mr.
Perceval conducted the Curates' Salary Bill safely to a third
reading. If the mind of the English people, cursed as they now are
with that madness of religious dissension which has been breathed
into them for the purposes of private ambition, can be alarmed by
any remembrances, and warned by any events, they should never forget
how nearly Ireland was lost to this country during the American war;
that it was saved merely by the jealousy of the Protestant Irish
towards the Catholics, then a much more insignificant and powerless
body than they now are. The Catholic and the Dissenter have since
combined together against you. Last war, the winds, those ancient
and unsubsidised allies of England; the winds, upon which English
ministers depend as much for saving kingdoms as washerwomen do for