I have wondered to hear gentlemen, and even clergymen, in Ireland
wishing that the people would rise in rebellion so that there might be
an opportunity of laying the cold steel to them and putting them down
effectually. I have also wondered at the refusal of the authorities to
have the riots in Limerick investigated; surely that does not look like
impartial justice. I have wondered again over the openly avowed purpose
of rooting the people out of the country.
I have looked with great concern and astonishment at the lands already
wasted and almost without inhabitants. I have read with great pain the
Lord Lieutenant's speech at Belfast, aspersing the country as disloyal
and threatening them with greater tyranny. The people are disloyal, to a
system of oppression and absolutism which neither they nor their fathers
were able to bear; but I believe from my heart that they are more loyal
to Her Majesty than their oppressors are, for the system has made them
oppressors. Only notice, from Mr. Smith's evidence at the Land Court
recently, concerning the Enniskillen estate, for which he is agent, it
is proven that even in Protestant Ulster a landlord can abolish the
Ulster custom--the root of Ulster's exceptional prosperity--at the
motion of his own will.
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