drying clothes; the winds stood your friends: the French could only
get into Ireland in small numbers, and the rebels were defeated.
Since then, all the remaining kingdoms of Europe have been
destroyed; and the Irish see that their national independence is
gone, without having received any single one of those advantages
which they were taught to expect from the sacrifice. All good
things were to flow from the Union; they have none of them gained
anything. Every man's pride is wounded by it; no man's interest is
promoted. In the seventh year of that union four million Catholics,
lured by all kinds of promises to yield up the separate dignity and
sovereignty of their country, are forced to squabble with such a man
as Mr. Spencer Perceval for five thousand pounds with which to
educate their children in their own mode of worship, he, the same
Mr. Spencer, having secured to his own Protestant self a
reversionary portion of the public money amounting to four times
that sum. A senior Proctor of the University of Oxford, the head of
a house, or the examining chaplain to a bishop, may believe these
things can last; but every man of the world, whose understanding has
been exercised in the business of life, must see (and see with a
breaking heart) that they will soon come to a fearful termination.

Our conduct to Ireland during the whole of this war has been that of
a man who subscribes to hospitals, weeps at charity sermons, carries
out broth and blankets to beggars, and then comes home and beats his
wife and children. We had compassion for the victims of all other
oppression and injustice except our own. If Switzerland was
threatened, away went a Treasury Clerk with a hundred thousand
pounds for Switzerland; large bags of money were kept constantly
under sailing orders; upon the slightest demonstration towards
Naples, down went Sir William Hamilton upon his knees, and begged