upon this moft defirable measure, I truff, thro' our joint endeavours, we shall be able to open the eyes of our abfurd countrymen, fo far as to fhew them their true interests. You will, I am fure, excufe me for following the example of all my fellow-patriots to a man, who have written at the fide of this question I have taken, by not putting my real name to my affertions of the manifeft benefits we are about to receive. Not that I would

TO THE

EDITORS of the ANTI-UNION.

GENTLEMEN,

have you fuppofe, that either they or I feel in the least I HAVE read FITZPATRICK, in your Paper, with

afhamed, at the thought of avowing ourselves, but the
truth is, that it is juft as well, quietly to pocket the re-
ward of our exertions, without encountering the odium
and hatred, the people in their prefent fwinifh difpofition,
are inclined to heap on their best friends, as unneceffarily
to rifque the effect of our faid affertions by an avowal that
might give rife to mifconftructions of our motives, as
well as procure us ufelefs ill-will and difgrace. You I know that vento is wind, but what is the reft?
need not mind printing this last period. Believe me to
be, &c. &c.

great pleasure, but being no Latin fcholar, request to
know the meaning of the paffage in which it is said,
that the Castle Gentleman, who wrote the great pamph-
let for the UNION, was wafted here

QUO PRUNA ET COCTONA VENTO..

Your refpectful Reader,

1

GABRIEL HOMEBRED.

FORCEABLE ABDUCTION

AND

REWARD.

THE agreeable Widow IRELAND, having been

forceably carried off by fome villains, with intent to marry or defile her-Thefe are to give notice, that by the Statutes in that cafe made and provided, the attempt is a capital felony, even though the horrid crime fhould not be compleated.-We are much pained to add, that a young boy, a fon of her own, has been concerned in this wicked enterprize. Any perfon who fhall apprehend, and profecute him to conviction, fhall receive an ample reward. He may be eafily known, being a flender ftripling, not yet arrived at years of difcretion. His breeches fit loofely on him, owing to a premature application to bufinefs. He is the fame lad who at a late election in a Northern County, pledged himself to Parliamentary Reform, and declared himfelf devoted to the independence of his country; on which occafion a large fubfcription was raised for him. His voice has in it, Arong tendencies to pfalmody..

IN compliance with the request of Mr. Home-
BRED, and other friends who may require tranflations,
we inform the public that the line in queftion means,
THE ILL-WIND THAT BLEW NOBODY GOOD..

EPIGRAM.

How kind 'tis in England to force us to take,

That favor, an UNION, and all for our fake?
Juft fo we treat turkeys; we cram them with food
To make them grow fat :-but 'tis all for their good..

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1799

of arguments tending to re-kindle the flames of party difcord; and thereby clearly evincing the policy that has for years back been preparing the nation for fuch arguments-whilst our great men are clandeftinely drawn over one by one, through the fecret fuggeftions of the British minifter;-thus with terror as the argument to the people, and fomething lefs oftenfible, but not lefs. forcible, addreffed to the parliamentary leaders, aided by divifions ftudiously kept up to prevent the different claffes of the community from conferring for the benefit of the whole, is a measure involving every thing that

THE day is faft approaching, which is to decide your can be dear to a free people, propofed and forwarded,

then, demand the aid of violent paffions to enforce its decifions of our beft informed merchants e vince with claims? Is intimidation the ufual harbinger of benifi- cqual clearness that its profperity can receive no accefficence? That people furely must be more thanBoeotian, on from what Great Britain can beftow? Does not the that requires to be frightened or forced into a juft fenfe father of Irish trade, that diftinguished commoner, to France indeed has had the whofe opinion the Irish merchant fhould peculiarly look of its obvious interefts. glory of compelling the bleffings of liberty and frater- up with grateful reverence, does he not by his difinthe Union, declare in the strongest nizing incorporation at the point of the bayonet. Can terefted and peremptory rejection of the proffered it be neceffary to the happiness of these countries that benefits of fhe should be disturbed in that pre-eminence? The pa- terms his fenfe of its injury to Ireland? And are you triotic fecretary fays, yes. But ftill we are told, the terms then to be cajoled with the found of commercial gain? will be favourable. Granted, for fake of argument, As little will you be impofed on by the empty promife What then? Against terms the most favourable that of national tranquillity? Should even the measure pafs Britain can offer, I do not fcruple to proteft. Let not without exciting national convulfion; nay more, admit your honefty and good fenfe, my brother electors, be the poffibility that a project, whereby all parties and demade the dupes of Castle chicane; this, I affirm, can- fcriptions are to be degraded, fhould produce a temporary not be confidered a queftion of terms; to reprefent it calm, yet that it will be but the calm that precedes the as fuch, has been the little trick of thofe who, whilft tempeft, and which will ultimately explode in violent they concealed the terms, hoped to cajole you into inac divulfion of the fifter kingdoms-every intelligent and tion, and to keep back that expreffion of your will, which honest man amongst us must fee and deplore! In the they well knew would be ruinous to their caufe. Look difguft of the loyalist, and the exultation of the traitor, to the glaring features of the measure, and judge whe- already too vifible, we may difcern this calamitous issue. ther any terms can correct their hideous and difgufting In the nature of the cafe, if the nation fhall be tricked out deformity: The furrender of our Parliament-the of its independence, he muft difcern it as a neceffary conconfequent abdication, of our national will-the en- fequence; and in this light, peculiarly it is, that as fubcreafed burden of taxation and debt the extinction of jects breathing the warmest fentiments of loyal affection all refponfibility-the certain emigration of our gentry to our gracious Sovereign, and ready, as you have lately the foreign education and confequent eftrangement of proved, to lay down your lives in fupport of the prefent our youth-the influx of a new and overwhelming in- conftitutional connexion with Great Britain, you are fluence, abforbing all the rewards of profeffional ability most powerfully called on to refift the prefent measure as and exertion-our metropolis difpeopled-our univerfity destructive to the intereft of Ireland and the empire. deferted our profeffions difgraced-and our people dif- You fee then that to hold out tranquillity and commerce heartened. Thefe, I fay, are the effential and inherent in exchange for our independence and increasing profcharacters of this tremendous change; and fhall we yet perity, is but a mockery of the nation: It is to offer bear to be told, that this is a queftion of terms? are thefe ef- what is at beft but uncertain and fpeculative and remote, fects that I have enumerated the necessary results of an in place of what iscertain and practical and immediate— Union? If they be, fhall we enquire what may be the It is to offer what, if certain and immediate, would not But prove an equivalent-It is to offer as neceffarily conterms that fhall modify NATIONAL RUIN? nected with an Union, what is but incidental to it, in as ftill we are told, that the extenfion of our commerce, and the establishment of our tranquillity, will operate much as no one expedient can fafely be adopted for the in counteraction, or at least, in compenfation of accomplishment of either object in the event of an But above all, it is to offer, that as the efthefe evils? That fuch evils are beyond the reach of Union, that may not with equal fafety be reforted to compenfation is too plain for proof, and in the predicti- without it. on of their counter-action we will not furely feek an fect of an Union, the very reverfe of which is to be equivalent for the positive and immediate facrifices we dreaded as its natural refult. And is it, after all this, But in what way are com- pretended that you have not fufficient data whereon to are called on to make. merce and tranquillity to flow from the projected mea- ground your decifions? to fuch fophiftry, I have no fure? Do not the confeflions of all who are converfant doubt, it is in a good meafure to be attributed, that those in Irish trade clearly evince that its ftate fince the efta- decifions have been hitherto withheld; but its impofitiblishment of Irish independence has been eminently ons are too manifeft longer to mislead your judgment. profperous and progreffive? Do not the reafonings and You will not difgrace the characteristic fagacity of your county, by allowing men, whofe understandings are inagain in p. 47. fpeaking of the trade of the kingdom, he ftates from official documents" that on a comparitive view of the trade of ireland, experts and imports, during eight years, ending at Lady day 1797, there is an accruing balance in her favour of more than in the fame period; " this is the country," his Lord.hip properly 6,540,0col.; and the encreafe of her tonnage has been 17,872 tons adds, "that is to be reprefented as finking under the weight of miffrom impending ruin, only by a radical parliamentary reform!" government! This is the country which the Sovereign is to rescue

In the Lord Chancellor's fpeech, on the motion made by Lord Moira in the Irish houfe of Lords, it is exprefsly afferted, that during the last twenty years "there is not a nation on the habitable globe, which has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agriculture and in manufactures, with the fame rapidity."-Vide fpeech published by authority, P. 4; again in P. 45, fpeaking of the value of linens exported from Ireland, even under the preffure of the war, he tates it to have been "from 1792 to 1795 inclufive, 11,662,155," that is "2,200,000 over and above the amount of it in the four correfponding years prior to the war ;" and the value of the export in 1796, he ftates to be vafly greater than it ever had amounted to in any one year, fince the linen manufacture was first established in Ireland ;" and

It can be fearcely neceffary to mention that the Speaker is the eminent character here alluded to.

ferior to your own, to defraud you of your electora terefted in the question than the nation at large? This right by the impudent pretence that the exercife of it is has been infinuated by thofe whofe intereft it is to war too early, until it fhall be too late. No, my fellow elec- with truth on the prefent momentous fubject. The tors, you are as little in danger from the weaknefs that motives of this infinuation it is difficult to mifunderwou'd expofe your deareft privileges to fo barefaced a stand, but the folly of it is not lefs confpicuous than its pilfer, as from the wickednefs that would abdicate them malice. To fuppofe that the great profeffions of the by a deliberate and voluntary furrender. Let me then country fhould decay-that its University should droop entreat you inftantly to fnatch the opportunity of enter that the merchants of the metropolis fhould declineing through the medium of your reprefentatives a nati- and that the metropolis itself, and its vicinity, should onal protest against this ruinous measure. Remember waste away-and that the king jom at large fhould exthat if you do not feize the prefent occafion of commu- perience no fenfible injury from all this, is to fuppofe nicating with your parliament, you thereby as far as in what is directly abfurd. To infinuate that other trading you lies determine that you never shall have another. towns fhall rife upon the downfall of the capital, and Remember alfo, that this is above all questions that can thence to urge to them the advantage of the measure, is be made the fubjects of parliamentary deliberation, pe- an infult, at the fame time, to their understanding and culiarly a queftion of the people. The powers of parlia- their morals. Common fenfe rejects the notion-that ment it is not neceffary to difcufs. To fcrutinize them to impoverish one part of a country will enrich the with theoretical feverity in cafes of ordinary mo- reft; and common honefty rejects the lure, that would ment is unbecoming; in the prefent cafe it would be fet up the feeling of a fordid selfishness against the pubfuperfluous. That they have fome limit is certain. lic weal. Admitting then, even that a regard to their The point beyond which they cannot pafs the plain local interefts could have folely influenced the decificas principles of the conftitution, and the ordinary fug- of the great bodies of the metropolis and its vicinity, geftions of common fenfe manifeftly define. The om- would it be wife, or honourable, on that ground to renipotence of the parliament acting within the great lines ject their example, connected as their interefts must be of the conftitution, every loyal fubject must be refolute with thofe of the nation? But thefe bodies have not to maintain, but the magic of that word cannot change been led by local confiderations on this momentous a truft into a property; cannot transform freemen into queftion; they know full well, that in a general refult flaves; and a parliament, that in a matter affecting its of encreased profperity, (if fuch were to be the confeown existence, and the established rights of a free peo- quence of an Union)they must eventually participate in ple, fhould decide upon their furrender, without, the full proportion. The riches and comforts of a state clear and unbiaffed expreffion of national confent, mult cannot long remain accumulated in one part of a counbe deeply refponfible for the confequences of a violated try; but like the waters which fertilize the foil, will conftitution. On this ground it is peculiarly pro- fall through the lower grounds, until they have found per, as well as neceffary, that the fentiments of their level, by general diffufion. No: the views of the great conftituent body of the nation fhould thofe informed bodies are not to be circumfcribed by be explicitly announced. On other occafions parlia- the narrow limits which the habitual meanness of cafment might deem, or affect to deem, your inter- tle fycophancy fo well used to adjust to its own grovelference obtrusive. If partial, they might plead, that ing purfuits, prefumes to prefcribe to them in the prealthough appointed as local delegates, they become uni- fent inftance;-they have come forward on this, as they verfal trustees; even when general they might con- have done on former occafions, with promptnefs, from tend, that though deriving their powers from you, they the nature of the cafe. At the fource and fountain are constituted not the refponfive organs of your will, head of public intelligence; exercised in habits of rebut the difcretionary guardians of your interefts. Nay, fiection; from numerous concourfe, and frequent colliI admit this to be juft, when they take their ftand upon fion, continually employed in the difcuffion of public conthe ground of the conftitution, and would maintain its cerns; acting in a scene of conftant activity and exerancient bulwarks against the impetus of popular inno- tion; the proceedings of government daily and hourly pafvation; but in the prefent cafe in which our old confti- fing before their eyes, and fubmitted, as it were,to their tution is to be relinquifhed, in which the very effence immediate inspection and animadverfion, it is not wonof the folemn truft repofed in the reprefentative body is derful that the refidents of the capital, and its vicinity, to be annihilated, you not only have a right to fpeak fhould have been the firft to debate and decide on this your determination, but in ftrictnefs, unless you do, important queftion. Let me afk, is this the fingle cafe no conftitutional decifion can be had. Beware, then, in which the metropolis has taken the lead? Look to how your filence fhall be interpreted; it furely, in a the establishment of the never to be forgotten volunteer cafe like the prefent, with good reafon, will be held a army of Ireland; look to other public and great occalanguage expreffive and peremptory. Already have fons. Was it the corrupt and local views of the genfome bodies exercifed their conftitutional rights, and tlemen of the bar, and of the merchants and inhabiothers are proceeding to do fo. In the inftructions of tants of Dublin, and its neighbourhood, that led them the city and county of Dublin, and thofe of the Uni- at the moment of national danger, to fling up all their verfity to their reprefentatives, in the declarations of domeftic enjoyments, and encountering all the hardship that learned and public fpirited body, the Irish Bar, as of military fervice, to fet the example of a yeoman well as of the liberal and enlightened merchants and inftitution, to which alone we are at this moment inbankers of the metropolis, the feelings of national dig debted for our exiftence as a people. Look to every nity and fubftantial patriotism have been powerfully ex- nation, and fee whether the metropolis is not the first preffed. Shall we fay, that thefe bodies are more in- to take the alarm on every public shock. See whether