AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND
come and help me to abolish the system that gave away the food you raised and the cloth you wove, to be eaten and worn by strangers. I asked you what profit or pride you had in supporting foreign Queens and Princes out of your hard earnings. I asked you whether you liked paying high taxes in order to fit out troops and ships to disseminate British civilisation in India, and diffuse over China the blessings of British "Christianity," which turned out, when the bales were opened, to be nothing but printed cottons. I implored you to give over your terror about the bugbear of Popery, and to join with your countrymen in taking possession of Ireland for the Irish: and you were beginning to hearken to my appeal—when Government flesh and blood could bear it no longer. Suddenly this short paper I spoke of was written out, was read three times, her most gracious "Majesty" gave it her "royal assent," of course; and, behold! it was an Act; and whoso should thereafter write, or print, or openly and advisedly speak, God's truth in this matter, was to be a "felon," and to be sent forthwith to the Antipodes, to labour there in chains for his natural life. And, inasmuch as I still persisted in speaking, writing, printing and publishing the truth, I am now inditing to you this letter—possibly my last—in a cell of Newgate Gaol, where I await what the blessed law and my good or evil destiny may bring me. If 1 escape conviction for the transportable offence next week, then comes my trial in the Queen's Bench on the following Monday; if I escape that, then my second trial in the Queen's Bench on the following Thursday; and if I escape them
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