“In plain English, my Lord Earl, the deep and irreconcilable disaffection of this people to all British laws, lawgivers, and law administrators shall find a voice.  That holy Hatred of foreign dominion which nerved our noble predecessors fifty years ago for the dungeon, the field, or the gallows (though of late years it has worn a vile nisi prius gown, and snivelled somewhat in courts of law and on spouting platforms) still lives, thank God! and glows as fierce and hot as ever.  To educate that holy Hatred, to make it know itself, and avow itself, and, at last, fill itself full, I hereby devote the columns of the United Irishman.”

After this address to the Lord Lieutenant, Mr. Mitchel took to addressing the farming classes, and it is really a study to observe the exquisite precision, the clearness, and the force of the language he employed to convey his ideas to them.  In his second letter he supposes the case of a farmer who has the entire produce of his land in his haggard, in the shape of six stacks of corn; he shows that three of these ought, in all honour and conscience, be sufficient for the landlord and the government to seize upon, leaving the other three to support the family of the man whose labour had produced them.  But what are the facts?—­the landlord and the government sweep all away, and the peasant and his family starve by the ditch sides.  As an illustration of this condition of things, he quotes from a southern paper an account of an inquest held on the body of a man named Boland, and on the bodies of his two daughters, who, as the verdict declared, had “died of cold and starvation,” although occupants of a farm of over twenty acres in extent.  On this melancholy case the comment of the editor of the United Irishman was as follows:—­

“Now what became of poor Boland’s twenty acres of crop?  Part of it went to Gibraltar, to victual the garrison; part to South Africa, to provision the robber army; part went to Spain, to pay for the landlord’s wine; part to London, to pay the interest of his honour’s mortgage to the Jews.  The English ate some of it; the Chinese had their share; the Jews and the Gentiles divided it amongst them—­and there was none for Boland.”

As to the manner in which the condition and fate of poor Boland were to be avoided, abundant instructions were given in every number.  The anti-tithe movement was quoted as a model to begin with; but, of course, that was to be improved upon.  The idea that the people would not venture on such desperate movements, and had grown enamoured of the Peace policy and of “Patience and Perseverance,” Mr. Mitchel refused to entertain for a moment:—­