Against the possible they provided as against the probable; against the least of probabilities as against the greatest.  The very outside and remote extremities of what might be looked for in a civil war, seem to have been assumed as a basis in the calculations.  And under that spirit of vista-searching prudence it was, that the Duke of Wellington saw what we have insisted on, and practically redressed it—­viz. the defective military net-work by which England has ever spread her power over Ireland.  “This must not be,” the Duke said; “never again shall the blood of brave men be shed in superfluous struggles, nor the ground be strewed with supernumerary corpses—­as happened in the rebellion of 1798—­because forts were wanting and loopholed barracks to secure what had been won; because retreats were wanting to overawe what, for the moment, had been lost.  Henceforth, and before there is a blushing in the dawn of that new rebellion which Mr O’Connell disowns, but to which his frenzy may rouse others having less to lose than himself, we will have true technical possession, in the military sense, of Ireland.”  Such has been the recent policy of the Duke of Wellington:  and for this, in so far as it is a violence done to Ireland, or a badge of her subjection, she has to thank Mr O’Connell:  for this, in so far as it is a merciful arrangement, diminishing bloodshed by discouraging resistance, she has to thank the British Government.  Mr O’Connell it is, that, by making rebellion probable, has forced on this reaction of perfect preparation which, in such a case, became the duty of the Government.  The Duke of Wellington it is, that, by using the occasion advantageously for the perfecting of the military organization in Ireland, has made police do the work of war; and by making resistance maniacal, in making it hopeless, has eventually consulted even for the feelings of the rebellious, sparing to them the penalties of insurrection in defeating its earliest symptoms; and for the land itself, has been the chief of benefactors, by removing systematically that inheritance of desolation attached to all civil wars, in cutting away from below the feet of conspirators the very ground on which they could take their earliest stand.  Finally, it is Mr O’Connell who has raised an anarchy in many Irish minds, in the minds of all whom he influences, by placing their national feelings in collision with their duty it is the Duke of Wellington who has reconciled the bravest and most erroneous of Irish patriots to his place in a federal system, by taking away all dishonour from submission under circumstances where resistance has at length become notoriously as frantic as would be a war with gravitation.