Page:An Ulsterman for Ireland.djvu/46

AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND fig-tree, would consume the fruits of the earth in peace, with none to make them afraid. It was an agreeable delusion, and the fabulous glories of "Eighty-Two" shed a glow over it for a while. But it was a dream: "Irish noblemen and gentlemen" no longer acknowledge Ireland for their country—they are "Britons;" their education, their feelings, and what is more important to them, their interests, are all British. British "laws" eject and distrain for them, British troops preserve "life and property," and chase their surplus tenants. For them judges charge—for them hangmen strangle. Without British government they are nothing; and they have instinct enough (albeit thick-headed) to perceive that Irish landlordism has grown so rotten and hideous a thing, that only its strict alliance, offensive and defensive, with British oligarchy saves it from going down to sudden perdition. So soon as this became clear to my mind, I, for one, desisted from the vain attempt at seducing the English landlord garrison in Ireland to fraternise with Irishmen, and turned upon the garrison itself. I determined to try how many men in Ireland would help me to lay the axe to the root of this rotten and hideous Irish landlordism; that we might see how much would come down along with it.

Well, then, I established this newspaper, ";" and the programme of it, which appeared about four months ago, was universally reputed one of the most seditious, felonious, treasonable, and burglarious productions that ever appalled society. And so it was; for, do you know what I said in it?—Why, 36