“The game is up.”  Such were the words uttered with a somewhat different intonation, which last month, in speaking of Mr O’Connell’s crusade against the peace of Ireland, we used tentatively, almost doubtfully, but still in the spirit of hope, in reference to the crisis then apparently impending, that the agitation might prolong itself by transmigrating into some other shape, for that case we allowed.  But in any result, foremost amongst the auguries of hope was this—­that the evil example of Mr O’ Connell’s sedition would soon redress itself by a catastrophe not less exemplary.  And no consummation could satisfy us as a proper euthanasy of this memorable conspiracy, which should not fasten itself as a moral to the long malice of the agitation growing out of it, as a natural warning, and saying audibly to all future agitators—­try not this scheme again, or look for a similar humiliation.  Those auguries are, in one sense, accomplished; that consummation substantially is realized.  Sedition has, at last, countermined itself, and conspiracy we have seen in effect perishing by its own excesses.  Yet still, ingenuously speaking, we cannot claim the merit of a felicitous foresight.  That result has come round which we foreboded; but not in that sense which we intended to authorize, nor exactly by those steps which we wished to see.  We looked for the extinction of this national scourge by its own inevitable decays:  through its own organization we had hoped that the Repeal Association should be confounded:  we trusted that an enthusiasm, founded in ignorance, and which, in no one stage, could be said to have prospered, must finally droop spontaneously, and that once having drooped, through mere defect of actions that bore any meaning, or tendencies that offered any promise, by no felicities of intrigue could it ever be revived.  Whether we erred in the philosophy of our anticipations, cannot now be known; for, whether wrong or right in theory, in practice our expectation has been abruptly cut short. A deus ex machina has descended amongst us abruptly, and intercepted the natural evolution of the plot:  the executive Government has summarily effected the peripetteia by means of a coup d’etat; and the end, such as we augured, has been brought about by means essentially different.

Yet, if thus far we were found in error, would not that argue a corresponding error in the Government?  If we, relying on the self-consistency of the executive, and because we relied on that self-consistency, predicted a particular solution for the nodus of Repeal, which solution has now become impossible; presuming a perseverance in the original policy of ministers, now that its natural fruits were rapidly ripening—­whereas, after all, at the eleventh hour we find them adopting that course which, with stronger temptation, they had refused to adopt in the first hour—­were this the true portrait of the case, would it be ourselves that erred, or Government?—­ourselves in counting on steadiness, or Government in acting with caprice?  Meantime, is this the portrait of the case?