their oppressors. The wonder has long been, that, under such a
terrible regime, Ireland had not sunk into the most hopeless
barbarism, or that England had not absorbed her, until, as Lord Byron
once observed on the subject, they had become one and indivisible, as
"the shark with his prey." No more desperate attempt has ever been
made to blot out a nation, and none has ever failed more signally;
for, notwithstanding this dreadful cannonade of ages, backed up with
the final and murderous assault of the Reformation and the Georges,
Ireland, to-day, is more powerful and united than she has ever been
since the sceptre of the Dane was broken upon her historic shores.
This fact is sustained by evidences teeming upon us from every point
of the compass. A great and mysterious embodiment of her influence,
and a vague and oppressive sense of her unseen presence, hang
ominously over all the councils of her task-masters, and build up
strange dynasties in the disturbed slumbers of even royalty itself.
Nor bolt nor bar can shut out the low mutterings of her approaching
thunder, or exclude her ubiquitous hand from tracing, in letters of
blood, the impending doom of her infamous oppressor upon the wall.
Heaven has decreed it; and thus it is, that, in more than one quarter
of the globe the exiled children of her matchless hills and vales
have multiplied into a positive power, that, inflamed with the
memories of her undeserved sufferings, shall, one day, be
precipitated upon her enemies with the most destructive and
overwhelming effect, and humble them forever in the dust.

To avert this blow has now become a desideratum so great with
England, that all her cunning and genius are brought to bear upon the
subject. So long as Ireland was dependent solely upon her own
resources, and the spirit of revolution confined strictly within her
borders, England felt herself competent to avert the evil day, for an