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If any well-difpofed and enlightened Irishman, of either religion, is averse to the Union, I think it is incumbent upon him to fhew, either that the prefent order of things is good and defirable in itfelf, or elfe that it is capable of modification and amendBut thefe are talks. I am confident no fuch perfon will undertake; the firft, because the direct converfe is palpable and confeffed; and the fecond, because the confpirators themselves have declared upon oath, and in contemplation of death, that no modification or change, no reform or I emancipation, will fatisfy or appease them. Their fanaticism is of a higher order; they will accept of nothing but this very catholic republic, under the protection of the atheist republic; and to be a free and imperial part of a christian empire, neither meets their devotion, nor gratifies their ambition.

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Another reason why fuch a person will not support the argument of modification, is this because he knows the unhappy victims of the refined malice of republican atheism are led away, not by the hope or wish of reform or emancipation, but by suggestions that their religion is in danger; because he knows the cruel power of artifice and defign upon the devout and agitated bofom of poor and honest ignorance, sacrificing all things, fuffering all things, and daring all things in the cause fuppofed of religion.

I am not often tempted to use hard words; but if ever there was a devilish artifice on the earth; if ever there were any wickedness more near and natural to hell itselfthan other crimes and atrocities, it is this foul, unrelenting, common mockery of both perfua fions, this cruel facrifice of christian blood, by the instigation and malice of infidelity.

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It is the arming of religious fects at the bidding of impiety; it is the maflacre of christians by the practice of atheists.

That this order therefore can never stand is made certain, by the hatreds it engenders, by the factions that attack it, by the conviction itself of its approaching fall. But that the precarious and partial connexion between the two islands cannot laft upon the prefent footing, is not fo clearly deducible, from the experience of the paft, from the debates in Ireland upon war and peace, and the feparating policy of its parliament in the regency bills; as from the nature of the thing itself, and the real, neceffary, and indefeafible dependance of Ireland, in spite of the legal and formal independence. The prefent order is at war with the order of nature, and the law of neceffity; and whether it shall be overthrown or not by a separate regency, or by contradictory votes upon peace and war,

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it only exists at all by being conftantly evaded, and in exact proportion to the violence it receives. In times of tranquillity, (if one might dream of those) it must be tamed by corruption into the control and obedience of England: in war it must either partake of force in the dangers of England, or be fubdued by her as her first and most dangerous enemy. It is uspended altogether by the prefent divided ftate, and the colonists having thrown themselves into the arms of their parent country, for protection against France, and against the nation where they have fettled, have fully proved how impoffible is the reality of independence, and how dangerous the illufion.

That the prefent order cannot laft, and ought not to be re-established, arises also out of the state, dangers, and neceffities of England herself. It is impoffible for her to adopt as any part of a fettled and permanent policy, the protection of her colony under the

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prefent circumftances, and to affect to hold her up in every danger, commotion, and general infurrection, to which this fatal fyftem expofes her. It were better for England that her colony, and the whole island of Ireland were precipitated to the bottom of the ocean, than that they should remain to her the charge, the danger, and the distraction they have been, in a war in which the poffeffed no hope of escape or victory, no chance of falvation, but Unanimity. It were better Ireland were blotted from the map, and expunged from the lift of nations, than that fhe fhould remain this diverfion of our power and force, this arsenal of attack and injury, this fource of danger and annoyance, and this devouring gulph of our blood and refources.

It refults clearly, and beyond the power of equivocation to contradict or evade, that if the fettlement of 1782 were final; if it were meant and defigned not only, as I think it

was,

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