Is not this, my dainty Abraham, the very nonsense and the very insult which is talked to and practised upon the Catholics?  You are surprised that men who have tasted of partial justice should ask for perfect justice; that he who has been robbed of coat and cloak will not be contented with the restitution of one of his garments.  He would be a very lazy blockhead if he were content, and I (who, though an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, thank God, some sense of justice) most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to persevere in their just demands, till they are admitted to a more complete share of a dinner for which they pay as much as the others; and if they see a little attenuated lawyer squabbling at the head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding which he has filched from the public feast, to carry home to his wife and children.

You parade a great deal upon the vast concessions made by this country to the Irish before the Union.  I deny that any voluntary concession was ever made by England to Ireland.  What did Ireland ever ask that was granted?  What did she ever demand that was not refused?  How did she get her Mutiny Bill—­a limited Parliament—­a repeal of Poyning’s Law—­a constitution?  Not by the concessions of England, but by her fears.  When Ireland asked for all these things upon her knees, her petitions were rejected with Percevalism and contempt; when she demanded them with the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were granted with every mark of consternation and dismay.  Ask of Lord Auckland the fatal consequences of trifling with such a people as the Irish.  He himself was the organ of these refusals.  As secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, the insolence and the tyranny of this country passed through his hands.  Ask him if he remembers the consequences.  Ask him if he has forgotten that memorable evening when he came down booted and mantled to the House of Commons, when he told the House he was about to set off for Ireland that night, and declared before God, if he did not carry with him a compliance with all their demands, Ireland was for ever lost to this country.  The present generation have forgotten this; but I have not forgotten it; and I know, hasty and undignified as the submission of England then was, that Lord Auckland was right, that the delay of a single day might very probably have separated the two peoples for ever.  The terms submission and fear are galling terms when applied from the lesser nation to the greater; but it is the plain historical truth, it is the natural consequence of injustice, it is the predicament in which every country places itself which leaves such a mass of hatred and discontent by its side.  No empire is powerful enough to endure it; it would exhaust the strength of China, and sink it with all its mandarins and tea-kettles to the bottom of the deep.  By refusing them justice now when you are strong enough