bly to foster her prosperity during peace. Hers was, alas! a borough-parliament, composed solely of the dominant faction, representing but a small portion of the inhabitants, and having few feelings or wishes in unison with the mass of the people.

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Every one soon perceived that all measures of relief would be insecure, nay, illusory, unless preceded or accompanied by a reform in the parliament. The volunteers saw it, and endeavored to reform; but they excluded the Catholics from their plan, and did not see (unhappy effects of the ignorance of the time!) that this alone would defeat their aim; that they could not erect an edifice of freedom on a foundation of monopoly. Warned by these errors, the United Irishmen altered the system of reform fundamentally. They extended their base, and established their plan upon three simple principles, necessarily dependent upon each other, and containing the disease, the remedy, and the mode of its attainment. The excess of English influence, a reform in parliament the remedy, and the inclusion of the Catholics the mode of its attainment.

THEOBALD WOLFE TONE,* a very distinguished politician of that day, had, of all others, the greatest part in effecting this change of sentiment among the Protestants, to whose communion he belonged. He wrote the original declaration for the Society of United Irishmen of Belfast, and his powerful writings brought the Presbyterians of the North very generally into the 'system.

Emmett often heard him in strains of pure and forcible eloquence expand, inculcate and apply, for the benefit of his beloved country, the political principles of the United Irishmen.

Wherever men have no means of legitimate redress, we have seen them become their own avengers, the worst government being always marked by the greatest commotion. If there be not an impartial administration of justice, the stiletto takes the place of the jury, and for want of a government restricted and accounta

We have embodied in the Appendix to this work, a sketch of the life, trial and condemnation of this distinguished Irish patriot, taken from Mr. Phillips' new work"Curran and his Contemporaries." We should have been pleased to have introduced it into the body of the work, but could not do so without too great a digression. It will be found very in.eresting, and it is hoped that it will not be treated, as matters in an Appendix usually are.-COM.

ble, in Ireland, insurrection and civil war were the only resources of an exasperated people. Left without the protection of a national parliament, Ireland was always tyrannically ruled, the frame of society dislocated and broken, and her numerous insurrections were the throes of agonized nature.

But from the moment the Protestant reformers recognized the principle that no reform was practicable, efficacious, or just, which should not equally include Irishmen of every religious persuasion, the measure was feasible. It received the assent of the whole nation, save only the Established Church, and the other dependants of the British government. Its principle recommended itself to the common sense of mankind; and the authority of mankind proclaimed its benefits. In a short time its way was so prepared by public opinion, that even its interested opponents anticipated its final success. They determined, therefore, upon the desperate expedient of leaving no parliament in Ireland for a reform to better. They hastened to buy from the borough-holders that which a truly Irish parliament would not sell-its own existence. They hoped to extinguish, in the abolition of the parliament, every chance of

peiceable and constitutional improvement.They conspired to transport it for life, mutilated and captive, into the British House; to imprison beyond the seas in the abyss of English supremacy, where its languishing, nerveless remains, doomed to live in a perpetual minority, could never more bring to its ill-fated counthe blessings of liberty, good government

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or commerce.

66 By the measures of a legislative union, Ireland reverts again to the same wretched state as when bound by acts of the British parliament. On the misery of that state, the ablest men who ever advocated her cause, even other than United Irishmen, have exhausted eloquence and invective, and the brightest page in her history is the one which records the extorted renunciation of that usurped power and plenary right of self-government. The pitiful representation of Ireland in a foreign land can but little avail her for her own benefit. She is there in a minority of one to six. The six give the law to the one, and with that one they have nothing in common. They have other constituents, who are a different people, who have clashing interests, who have national antipathies, and who may well feel contempt for the

substitutes of that parliament that traitorously sold its country. Such are the legislators who have bound Ireland in fetters.

"The consequences are the same as heretofore: discontent and remonstrance, and a proclamation to all Europe, showing how easy it would be to dismember the United Kingdom. No loyalty will reconcile rational beings to preserve an evil which they can exchange for a good; so that those who make Ireland poor and enslaved, set before her, above all other men, the advantages of separation. What can create

a desire for this remedy but ill-treatment? and so long as this treatment lasts, how shall that desire discontinue? They stand in the relation of cause and effect, and will for ever go on, or cease together.

"It was the opinion of Emmett, that the legislative union was a measure more suited to facilitate the despotism of the ministry than to strengthen the dominion of England. Since the abuse of power has always followed excess, no less in nations than individuals, a restraint upon human actions is salutary for all parties, and the impediment that shall stop the career of ministerial tyranny, will be found to work best for the stability of the connexion. If this