we are to all the world, the annihilation of one of the most fertile
islands on the face of the globe, containing five millions of human
creatures, would be one of the most solid advantages which could
happen to this country. I doubt very much, in spite of all the just
abuse which has been lavished upon Bonaparte, whether there is any
one of his conquered countries the blotting out of which would be as
beneficial to him as the destruction of Ireland would be to us: of
countries I speak differing in language from the French, little
habituated to their intercourse, and inflamed with all the
resentments of a recently-conquered people. Why will you attribute
the turbulence of our people to any cause but the right--to any
cause but your own scandalous oppression? If you tie your horse up
to a gate, and beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks you?
If you have plagued and worried a mastiff dog for years, is he mad
because he flies at you whenever he sees you? Hatred is an active,
troublesome passion. Depend upon it, whole nations have always some
reason for their hatred. Before you refer the turbulence of the
Irish to incurable defects in their character, tell me if you have
treated them as friends and equals? Have you protected their
commerce? Have you respected their religion? Have you been as
anxious for their freedom as your own? Nothing of all this. What
then? Why you have confiscated the territorial surface of the
country twice over: you have massacred and exported her
inhabitants: you have deprived four-fifths of them of every civil
privilege: you have at every period made her commerce and
manufactures slavishly subordinate to your own: and yet the hatred
which the Irish bear to you is the result of an original turbulence
of character, and of a primitive, obdurate wildness, utterly
incapable of civilisation. The embroidered inanities and the sixth-
form effusions of Mr. Canning are really not powerful enough to make