Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/10

 martyrdom would not have been raised in Ireland. Such laxity is much to be lamented.

While, however, every precaution ought to be taken, and persons convicted of crime ought to bear the full penalty of their offences, it behoves us neither to exaggerate the danger, nor to mistake the proper remedies to be applied.

I cannot but see with some alarm the tendency to inflame national animosity against the Irish, and to involve the whole of that nation in the charge not only of disaffection, but of conspiracy and treason. Thus, one correspondent to the Times calling himself 'A Briton,' calls attention to 'unspoken words,' and these words are 'Martial Law;' another correspondent, 'Aliquis,' wants to colonise Ireland with Englishmen, and to make enemies and outlaws of the whole Irish race.

Before we give way to these wild passions of fear and hatred, ought we not to ask ourselves whether anything of the kind has ever taken place in England?

In my time, though not in that of most of my readers, disaffection prevailed in many parts of England. Wild schemes were afloat: one set of men planned taking the Tower of London with a stocking filled with gunpowder; another set conspired to murder the Cabinet Ministers while they were dining together at Lord Harrowby's; and were actually arming for that horrid purpose, when they were arrested by a detachment of the Guards. Nothing more atrocious than this Cato Street conspiracy can well be imagined.