a healthy intelligent people, rich in her fertile soil, rich in her harbours and navigable rivers, rich in her favourable position between the old and new worlds, rich in her insular situation, without usurping dominion over any people upon earth, what interest, what cause, what pretext can the administration of Ireland assign for the blood and the wealth they have lavished, in a war commenced in despotism, conducted in ignorance, and ending only by ruin? With 800,000 gallant citizens, able to arm, is it that the English and Scotch have more to fight for in Ireland than the Irish themselves, that we cannot be trusted with self defence? When in the unanointed republics of the Swiss, they can defy the invasion of Germany, of France, and Sardinia, those warlike and powerful nations, by which they are bounded, by that law which obliges every citizen from eighteen to sixty years old, to be provided with arms, why cannot Ireland defy the whole world by a like obligation? Why has the gunpowder act, which disarms our people, been passed? The answer is too plain for infatuation to mistake it. Happy for Ireland if the prime mover of mischief had borrowed the councils of that great and intuitive mind, England is ruined by having neglected; happy could he and his minions be taught, in the language and wisdom of Fox, that there is more strength to be gained by gaining the confidence of the people of Ireland, than in 40,000 of the best forces of Europe. Let them give up corruption, and they may safely disband the troops it has furnished; let them cease to narrow the limits of freedom, as the expansion of intellect demands that they should be extended; let them rest assured, that a system which cannot be supported without spies and informers, must soon be abandoned; instead of buying, of bribing, or of persecuting the press, let them strip falsehood of the advantages she gains by concealment and misrepresentation, and give to truth that light and publicity, with which she must ever prevail; let them recall those base orders throughout the post-offices, for violating the secrets of friendship, and betraying the credit of commerce; let them open the dungeons, by repealing those laws by which they are crowded; let them abolish what the chief magistrate's deputy calls the mildness of government, and give us an edequate representation for the basis of liberty, and I will stake my life on it, no nation shall ever invade us. But alas! my fellow citizens, I lament that the same infatuation, usurpation and folly, which have been so much the order of the day, will still prevent those equitable terms from being conceded: But mark me, the whole Irish fabric is supported by that of Great Britain, whose progress in ruin can only be equalled by her infatuation. If the principles of the French revolution are

as wicked, as destructive, and as diabolical as the minister has represented them, why was it necessary to involve the people of England in the horrors and ruin of war, that they may not be persuaded to adopt them? Is it that the extreme of vice is so seducing, that the most violent of remedy only could prevent a wise people from rushing to meet it? And although the minister has assigned day after day, different objects, for having involved them; and that every assertion on which he has founded his arguments of the day, have been belied by the facts of the morrow. Still they have been deaf to the councils of his glorious opponent, which, as long as tradition continues must ever remain a wonderful instance of the efforts of genius and patriotism, to rescue a besotted and misguided people from ruin; but the pri vileged and the rich yielding to fear and corruption, have deserted this champion of liberty, to prostrate themselves at the feet of that minister it was once their province to control: placing terror in the seat of reason, and sacrificing every species of industry to the manufacture of soldiers, they have looked to the bayonet of the mercenary for their only salvation. Presumptuous delusion! Do they imagine they can force back the current of public opinion? Is it by that corruption, whose necessities must increase by geometrical measure, whilst its means must decrease in the same rapid proportion? Is it by a carnage which would exhaust the creation? Is it by oaths wrung from oppression; know they not that the first oath of allegiance is from the king to the laws, the constitution and people; and that if swearing, without consideration, was binding, Charles could never have suffered, James have been excluded, nor a Brunswick have sat on the throne! We know that king, lords, and commons exist but by the people's permission; if useful, their titles can never be questioned; if not, they can never be bolstered by swearing. Vain efforts, to change the current of the human mind, like the noisy winds, which to the shallow sight, give a seeming current to the troubled face, whilst with ponderous weight great ocean moves the tide, with slow majestic pace to its predestined limits.

Although it were in nature to rescue Britain from impending destruction, it is not in nature that Ireland can be longer held by the disgraceful and ruinous vassalage by which she is bound. Much has been said of the loyalty of the South contrasted with that of the North; if they mean loyalty to that system of government which this administration have adopted, to the connexion with England on the present conditions, to the actual state of representation, to the prostituted sale of the right to legislate in one house, by the still more prostituted sale of the right to legislate in the other, to the jobbing and perjury of grand juries,

to tithes, tithe-proctors and land-pirates, to the annual exportation of two millions worth of the produce of Ireland, to pay absentees without any return, to the immoderate high rents and the low rate of wages, or to the enormous expense by which these corruptions are moved and maintained, I will answer for it, that the people of Leinster, of Munster and Connaught are as sensible of the misery and poverty these grievances have caused, and that they will go as far as the people of Ulster to get them redressed. I know the means, which have been used to persuade the Catholics in the South that the persecutions of the Catholics in the North, which have been so diabolically fomented and protected in Armagh, were the acts of the Presbyterians of the North; but I stake whatever credit I possess with my Catholic and Presbyterian countrymen, on the assurance I give to the Presbyterians that the Catholics of the South have buried in eternal oblivion all religious distinction, and in the assurance I give to the Catholics that the crimes with which their Presbyterian countrymen stand charged, and for which so many are dungeoned at this instant, is their zeal for the union of Irishmen amongst one another without distinction of sect or religion; it is the essence of Christianity, it is the essence of all morality, and cannot by human laws be abolished. Trust me, my fellow citizens, that as the minister of England perceives the dying convulsions of a country on the destruction of whose liberty he has so long supported his power, he will be obliged to change his system in Ireland of tyranny and force, into concession and conciliation; you will then see his minions exchanging the saucy flippancy with which they now insult and traduce you, into humiliation and meanness with which they will endeavour to sooth you; the insolence of the coward, the sport of the droll and the petulance of the puppy will soon evaporate into the insignificance, from whence they have risen, but let no wretched palliative induce you to ally your cause with corruption: let nothing short of a perfect representation satisfy you. With this admonition I leave you; but that I may not be suspected of seeking your confidence by any other means than the fullest disclosure of my political sentiments, I promise you, as soon as time will permit, that I will lay before you the best account of the state of our country my poor abilities will allow me to furnish. The best assurance I can give of my fidelity to you and your cause, is, that I believe in a better order of things; that those who violate the property and rights of others will forfeit their own, whilst those who respect the rights and property of others will be certain to have their's respected in turn. With these sentiments, knowing that you had wisely determined never to interfere any more in elections, under the system of corruption and undue influence, I

have offered my services to use every means in my power to effect its destruction, and finding that from the monopoly of one aristocratic faction or other yours was the only place of popular election I could hope to succeed in.

Think it not presumptuous, my countrymen, that one who loves liberty should seek her in the only asylum she has left; think it not presumptuous, my fellow-citizens, that one who will never outlive the threatened liberties of his country, should seek an advanced post where he may triumph in her cause, or fall in her defence. In contempt of calumny, united with you in brotherly love and affection and in the glorious cause of reform, I will ever re main your faithful friend and fellow-citizen.

Belfast, Jan. 20, 1797.

ARTHUR O'CONNOR.

No. CI.

BY THE LORD LIEUTENANT AND COUNCIL OF IRELAND,→

CAMDEN,

A PROCLAMATION....PAGE 243.

WHEREAS by an act of parliament passed in this kingdom in the thirty-sixth year of his majesty's reign, entitled "An act for more effectually suppressing insurrection, and "preventing the disturbance of the public peace," it is enacted, that it shall be lawful, for the justices of the peace of any county assembled at a special session in manner by the said act directed, not being fewer than seven or the major part of them, one of whom to be of the quorum, if they see fit upon due consideration of the state of the county, to signify by memorial, by them signed to the lord lieutenant or other chief governor or governors in this kingdom, that they consider their county or any part thereof to be in a state of disturbance or in immediate danger of becoming so, and praying, that the lord lieutenant and council may proclaim such county or part thereof to be in a state of disturbance, thereupon it shall be lawful for the lord lieutenant or other chief governor or governors of this kingdom by and with the advice of his majesty's privy council, by proclamation to declare such county or any part of such county, to be in a state of disturbance or in immediate danger of be

coming so, and also, such parts of any adjoining county or counties as such chief governor or governors shall think fit, in order to prevent the continuance or extension of such disturbance.

And whereas, nineteen justices of the peace of the county of Londonderry, several of them being of the quorum, being the major part of the justices of the peace duly assembled, pursuant to the said act, at a special session of the peace holden at Dunguien, in the said county, on Wednesday the fourth day of this instant January, have by a memorial, by them signed, signified to his excellency the lord lieutenant, that certain parts of the said county are in a state of disturbance or in imminent danger of becoming so, and have thereby prayed, that the lord lieutenant and council may proclaim the parish of Banagher, situate in the barony of Kenaght, and half Barony of Tirkceran, the parish of Beneagh, the parish of Dunguien, and the parish of Baeleagh situate in the barony of Kenaght, all which parishes are of said county, to be in a state of disturbance or in imminent danger of becoming so.

Now we, the lord lieutenant do by and with the advice of his majesty's privy council in pursuance of and by the authority to us given by the said act of parliament, by this our proclamation, declare the said parish of Banagher, situate in the half barony of Kenaght, and half barony of Tirkceran, the parish of Beveagh, the parish of Dunguien, and the parish of Baeleagh, situate in the barony of Keenaght, being part of the said county of Londonderry, to be in a state of disturbance or in immediate danger of becoming so, of which all justices of the peace and other magistrates and peace officers of the said county of Londonderry, and all others whom it may concern, are to take notice.

Given at the council chamber in Dublin, the 7th day of January, 1797.