therefore for the People, not personating but representing them, not holding forth the constitution merely as an object to provoke doubts or excite terrors, speaking always in clouds, or by thunder but writing the law in the tablet of our hearts, riveting the constitution into the common sense of the community, the basis from which it has shifted, and extinguished all discontent and disaffection by diffusing rational loyalty and the allegiance of convinced understanding.

b. We will never cease to dwell on this theme, for we wish to make the times conform to us, rather than to make our principles conform to the times. For the present, we lie just in the track of the pestilential wind of calumny, which pur posely confounds the reformer, the republican, and the regi eide; which preserves and propagates a panic of innovation and a distrust between man and man, in order to keep back internal union, at the dreadful sacrifice of commercial credit, of public revenue, and of national character. Even, at this moment, perhaps, a provident jealousy may be contriving means for our dispersion, naturally fearful that wherever two or three honest inen are assembled together, their conversation must, at this time, turn on the oppressions of the subject, and the misery of this country.

Friday, November 228, 1793.

TRE SOCIETY OF

UNITED IRISHMEN IN DUBLIN,

TO MR. THOMAS MUIR.

WE who so lately heard you, in the centre of our circle pour out, with a fervor of rational declamation, the earnest prayer of an honest heart, for the freedom, peace, and happi, ness of the human race, have felt, as men ought to feel, (for y you are now every man's countryman) on hearing an account, from eye-witnesses, of your present, rigorous imprisonment preparatory to fourteen years, not of banishment, but of trans--

portation from your native land.-For what For conspir ing against the corruptions of the constitution, and zealously striving to give a representation to two millions and a half of people. We address you in no strain of ideot ceremony, but as men sympathising with man suffering; the language alive and the heart affected.

Let the few lawyers who can look down on their profes sion from the height of their mature, expatiate with a noble indignation on the consequence of "politics entering into the courts of justice and seating herself on the bench," sharpening the severity of sentence which the snappishness of office, and the acrimony of personal vengeance, seizing with greediness the advantage of unascertained and uncertain punishment, rioting upon discretion, and without weighing the intrinsic nature of the offence or the inadequacy of the penalty, really punishing public opinion, and accumulating all the exasperation felt against the prevailing sense of the community, on the head of an unhappy individual. Let those singular lawyers detail with energy the terrible defects of judicial procedure in Scotland, through all its stages from accusation to conviction. Let them instance those particular irregularities in form which have vitiated your trial, in the opinion of the best lawyers, as it has already been deemed vitiated by its vindictive spirit, in the minds of the best men. Let this be done-but this is too' technical a task for our feelings, nor does it indeed correspond to the dignity, we will venture to call it, the proud importance of your present station. We speak to you as citizens to a friend and brother, citizens condensed together in affection, perhaps the more from the frozen indifference, which, for the present, we feel around us.

You ought then, dear associate! you ought to extract comfort from your present situation. Pleasure often sickens, but there is sublime and permanent delight in struggling with unbrited misfortune. The cabinet contains its sufferings,

is daults, and its despondence; the cell has its enjoyments, its hopes, and the nightly visitation of self-approving conscience... Has it not already shown you, austerely but truely, the distinction between what is lasting and what is perishable ? Has it not winnowed the world for your use, and separated the chaff of mankind from the grain? Do you not now feel the value of that friendship which clings to the forsaken, the value of that simple and sincere prayer which the poor of Scotland are daily offering up for the advente of the people, expelled from his profession, because his principles were not those of a Craft, and Lanished from his country for having thought as Blackstone, as Locke, and as Sidney? Is it not sweet to think that every hour you now live is productive, that your life is not wasted, but burns away an offering on the altar of humanity; that your example serves to inspirit others in the same situation; that your solid virtue may have been the means of averting from others, the sufferings you yourself experience; and, that many who now enjoy their fire-sides,

their wives, and their children may be indebted to your prompt interposition, your steady zeal and your patient mags nanimity? Is it not sweet to think that your confinement or exile may, in any way, tend to the liberty of others

If that can be called liberty where the public soul is imprisoned, where suspicion clouds the open, candid front of man; where the amiable ingenuousness that keeps no guard, and in the simplicity of the heart forgets to place a seal on the lip, is, at every hour, and in every place, exposed to calumny that lies in silent watch, with all the venom of the snake, and without its rattle. If that can be called public liberty, where two men meet, and after eying each other askance, both ask "what news?" because neither dare answer the question; where the morality of a man may be spotless and yet his per son be proscribed and his principles accounted pestilential. If that can be called public liberty, where at the once social,

table, we see feast without fellowship, company without cordiality, and the jingle of frigid glasses without a free interchange of sentiment, and a mixture of mind,-where, at the still dearer domestic board, the wife shudders, when her husband drops a word on the strange impressive scenes that are passing before men's eyes, and in a panic, sends off the attendants for fear they have glided into the family as spies, and removes her very children lest they should hear their honest parent give vent to the bitterness of his heart, and call down a curse on the men who have been curses to their country.

Alas for that country! alas for that constitution, set in such hideous forms before the eyes of those who wish to love it, and guard it and save it from a conflagration that threatens to involve every thing human and divine?-That our rulers would or could think at large !-That they would not fit their minds merely to the dimensions of their closets, and their plans to the expedients of an hour?-That they would go abroad and ascend to such a mental elevation, as not only to contemplate the murmuring multitude below, but with a prescience derived from recollection, to command a prospect into futurity, to trace the progress of mind through the lapse of ages, till lost in eternal truth, still flowing onward, still enlarging, rising over every obstacle, and sometimes smooth, deep, and silent, just before it breaks down into a cataract, followed by a tide wild, broken, and innavigable. Would to God, that, instead of punishing a worthy man for mixing with the commonalty, our rulers would not merely connive at, but encourage such an approximation and intimacy between higher and lower society as would cure the vices incident to each, bring the one down and the other up to their nature, humanizing the great, ennobling the vulgar, and tempering the ferocity of both, in short, as would by turning useless pyramids of power into humble and cheerful habitations, make man relish his situation and deprecate all change as the worst of misfortunes !

In whatever part of the world, Dear Sir, it may be your destiny to dwell, believe us, you will bear along with you our respect, our affection, our admiration. There is an electricity that at present pervades the universal mind, and were you placed at the extremity of the globe, the heart of every patriot will always feel the touch of your condition; we feel much at present on hearing of your illness; we hope there are many years before you; but if otherwise, be satisfied, for you have not lived in vain. If death be, as we believe it, but a pause in existence, your happiness is yet to come; and if death be, as we trust in God it is not, an eternal sleep, are not the dreams of such an honest man infinitely preferable to the perpetual incubus of a guilty conscience?

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS,

We now close our account of those political papers which issued from the Society of United Irishmen, and which had for their object the constitutional and peaceable vindication of the rights of Ireland.-A reform of the Irish Parliament was the ultimate wish and ambition of those celebrated persons who composed and issued the productions which we have endeavoured to save from oblivion: eloquent and convincing, they succeeded in winning all hearts and heads to the support of a cause grounded on truth, justice, and good policy. The Irish Parliament found itself insulated in the nation- the battle was to be fought by Corruption and its retainers-against the People and their pure and unbought advocates. The English minister, Mr. Pitt, ever watchful of the progress of public feeling in Ireland, and alarmed at the union of sentiment which prevailed, had no alternative but an immediate concession to the claims of the Catholics, who had almost in