AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND
Ulster," a property that ought at this moment to be worth ten millions, is as good as gone. There never were so many ejectments in Ulster counties at once as have been brought this very spring. Extermination is creeping northward; and there is not in, all the nine counties a single small tenant-right farmer who can say with confidence that his house is his own.
Now in such a state of things what ought you, the small farmers of Ulster, to do? "Why meet legally and constitutionally, I suppose, appoint a chairman, hurl defiance at the Pope of Rome, express the utmost confidence in Lord Clarendon, and demand a revocation of the Maynooth grant.
Or meet, still legally and constitutionally, and demand a Parliament of Peers and Nominees of Peers in Dublin so that instead of being robbed in St. Stephen's you may be robbed in "College Green!"
For government in this country is simply a machinery for grinding out the earnings of the industrious to bestow upon the idle. You, the small farmers of Ulster, are the men at this moment most exposed to robbery, of all the industrious inhabitants of Ireland, simply because you have most to lose.
But now I address the Protestant labourers and artizans. You, it is said, have the utmost confidence in Lord Clarendon, and are so happy and contented, sitting everyone of you under his own vine and fig tree, that you are ready to rise in arms (so I have read in certain addresses) full of burning zeal to chastise those "rebellious" persons who would change so happy a state of
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