bearing the impressed stamp of the Customs—­a sign to all men that the proprietor was bound in heavy sureties to the government against the publication of “libel, blasphemy, or sedition"!—­couched, moreover, in a style of language possessing such grace and force, such delicacy of finish, and yet such marvellous strength, rich with so much of quiet humour, and bristling with such rasping sarcasm and penetrating invective, that they were read as an intellectual luxury even by men who regarded as utterly wild and wicked the sentiments they conveyed.  The first editorial utterance in this journal consisted of a letter from Mr. Mitchel to the Viceroy, in which that functionary was addressed as “The Right Hon. the Earl of Clarendon, Englishman, calling himself her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant-General and General Governor of Ireland.”  The purport of the document was to declare, above board, the aims and objects of the United Irishman, a journal with which, wrote Mr. Mitchel, “your lordship and your lordship’s masters and servants are to have more to do than may be agreeable either to you or me.”  That that purpose was to resume the struggle which had been waged by Tone and Emmet, or, as Mr. Mitchel put it, “the Holy War, to sweep this island clear of the English name and nation.”  “We differ,” he said, “from the illustrious conspirators of ’98, not in principle—­no, not an iota—­but, as I shall presently show you, materially as to the mode of action.”  And the difference was to consist in this—­that whereas the revolutionary organization in Ninety-Eight was a secret one, which was ruined by spies and informers, that of Forty-Eight was to be an open one, concerning which informers could tell nothing that its promoters would not willingly proclaim from the house-tops.  “If you desire,” he wrote, “to have a Castle detective employed about the United Irishman office in Trinity-street, I shall make no objection, provided the man be sober and honest.  If Sir George Grey or Sir William Somerville would like to read our correspondence, we make him welcome for the present—­only let the letters be forwarded without losing a post.”  Of the fact that he would speedily be called to account for his conduct in one of her Majesty’s courts of law, the writer of this defiant language was perfectly cognizant; but he declared that the inevitable prosecution would be his opportunity of achieving a victory over the government.  “For be it known to you,” he wrote, “that in such a case you shall either publicly, boldly, notoriously pack a jury, or else see the accused rebel walk a free man out of the court of Queen’s Bench—­which will be a victory only less than the rout of your lordship’s red-coats in the open field.”  In case of his defeat, other men would take up the cause, and maintain it until at last England would have to fall back on her old system of courts-martial, and triangles, and free quarters, and Irishmen would find that there was no help for them “in franchises, in votings, in spoutings, in shoutings, and toasts drank with enthusiasm—­nor in anything in this world, save the extensor and contractor muscles of their right arms, in these and in the goodness of God above.”  The conclusion of this extraordinary address to her Majesty’s representative was in the following terms:—­