Page:Letters, speeches and tracts on Irish affairs.djvu/15

 full of mournful apprehensions for the future; in 1798 came the Irish Rebellion. But with the Rebellion we pass beyond the life of Burke, and beyond the period of Irish history covered by this volume.

The rapid summary just given of that history, from 1760 to 1797, will afford a sufficient clue to the writings and speeches which follow. Burke,- let me observe in passing, greatly needs to be re-edited; indeed, he has never yet been properly edited at all. But all that I have attempted to do in the present volume is to arrange chronologically the writings and speeches on Irish affairs, which, in Burke's collected works, are now scattered promiscuously; and to subjoin the most important of his private letters on the same subject, taken from the correspondence published in 1844 by the late Lord Fitzwiliiam, the son of Burke's friend, the Irish Viceroy. In my opinion, the importance of Burke's thoughts on the policy pursued in Ireland is as great now as when he uttered them, and when they were received, as he himself tells us, with contempt. "You do not suppose," said Mr. Bright the other day in the City,—"you do not suppose that the fourteen members of the Government spend days and weeks in the consideration of a measure such as the Irish Land Bill without ascertaining in connexion with it everything everybody else can know." Alas! how many English Governments have been confident