There is nothing in the condition of Ireland itself to
prevent their beginning that great work tomorrow. The people are for the most part in a state bordering on destitution, if not starvation : they are habitually prone to little rebellions against the law ; for they fly to arms on pretexts the most frivolous or the most flagrant. They have no "stake in the country," not even that of their labour, for their labour finds no employment. They have no in- terest in the preservation of order. War could scarcely entail worse horrors than that condition which, to use a cant phrase of the day, is the "normal state" of Tipperary or Cavan—where the farmer goes armed to his work, the household watches for the midnight assault, and the hunger of a devastated land reigns all round—terror, blood, and famine unceasing. Skirmishing even is some relief against the dreary monotony of despair. Actual war could have few additional terrors for people in such a state ; it might hold out some hopes : its blanks could not be more ruinous, but it would have some prizes for the bold and fortunate —some plunder, some ransacking of a convoy pith food ; for soldiers must be fed with provisions, though the mere Irish people need not be, as they can make shift with sea-weed and such things. It must therefore be nothing but sheer want of determination and self-reliance that keeps the leaders among the Irish from consummating their rebellion—nothing to arrest them but dread of the retributive power of England. That reflection might be to the Irish an instructive commentary on the character of those leaders who are idolized by one party or the other ; to the British Government, who suffer the mass of the Irish people to remain in helpless and unhelped misery, a most instructive memento of such a dangerous state.
