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ADDRESSED TO COUNTRY GENTLEMEN,

AND OTHER PERSONS OF PROPERTY··

IN

THE NORTH OF IRELAND.

December 12, 1796.

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GENTLEMEN! what are you doing? Your country demands your ftrenuous and united exertions. A plan for preferving it, alike from invasion and insurrection, by affociating and arming the loyal Yeomanry, has been proposed, and has received the approbation of every honest and fenfible man. Are you, in your several diftricts, using your best skill and influence to carry this scheme into immediate and effectual execution?

Gentlemen, if you are not active your enemies are. The men who wish to overturn the conftitution, the defperate few who hope, by means of the mifled many, to fhare amongst themfelves the power and the property of the kingdom, are indefatigable, muftering their forces by night, diffeminating their principles by day, at fairs and markets, on the high road and in the hedge alehouse, in the tradesman's shop and

the

the peafant's cottage. No expedient efcapes them that fubtlety can fuggeft. To infpire awe and fecure fecrecy they have fealed their combination with the abufed religion of an OATH. To excite vulgar curiofity they affect profound myfteriousness, and affume fignificant words and figns, understood only by their fworn affociates. That they may pervert the timid as well as the vicious, they have recourfe equally to threatenings and promifes. And, to attach the idle and the indigent, they hold out the profpect, that if their defign was once accomplished, the wealth and comfort which they reprefent as now unjuftly monopolized by a few, would flow down, even amongst the lowest of the people, in rich and ceafelefs abundance.

Could any thing be contrived with more villainous ingenuity, both to attract the ignorant multitude in the first instance, and to insure their aid in every defperate measure, to which their leaders might wish to direct them? An enthufiafm fo congenial to every profligate and every foolish propenfity could not fail to fpread amongst the lower claffes; and a populace, actuated by fuch a fpirit, and combined by fuch principles, if once strong enough to burst forth, would, as certainly, deftroy all fafety, and make a wreck of all property, as a flood of Lava iffying from a burning

a burning mountain would be sure to defolate the furrounding country. Form to yourselves the idea of fuch an event; and then ask your own understandings whether, in these circumftances, your most valuable acquifitions, the deareft comforts of your life, or even your life itfelf, would be worth a day's purchase?

Already has the mischief fpread from an inconfiderable fociety to an unfummed multitude; it has gone on from parish to parish, and from county to counry, like "the peftilence that walketh in darknefs;" and fresh numbers of the peasantry are every day catching the contagion. If no effectual check be provided, is it not felf-evident that it will advance incalculably; forming ftill a wider and wider circle, until the malignant principle fhall have diffused itself through all the lower ranks of the community?

Gentlemen, is it poffible that any individual amongst you should look with unconcern on fo alarming a profpect? Believe me, on you alone it depends to realize or defeat it. There is but one infallible expedient for coming at the root of the evil; and that is, by plainly proving to them, and to all whom they are labouring to feduce, that the people are against them as well as the government and the laws, that all that is ra

tional,

tional, virtuous, or refpectable in the community are agreed in detefting their principles, and are refolved to counteract and crush their projects by a union and co-operation as firm for the prefervation, as theirs for the deftruction, of property, of liberty, and of life.

For fuch a union and co-operation the plan of the affociated Yeomanry furnishes the fairest and moft promifing opportunity. And in the conduct of fuch as have exerted themselves to give it effect, as well as in the fignal fuccefs which has attended their endeavours, I discover a cheering pledge of re-eftablished order, of reanimated credit, of annihilated rebellion.

Till now, those who called themfelves United Irifbmen had but too much room to perfuade their followers that placemen, and penfioners, and writers for Government newspapers were the only perfons in the country who were decidedly against them. " If the independent men," they might fay" and the refpectable Yeoman"ry of Ireland, were difpofed to refift us, they "would learn, from our example, to unite with "one another to counteract our plans; they do "no fuch thing; they fuffer us to proceed with"out almoft the fhadow of efficient oppofition.

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They, of courfe, with us fuccefs, or they are

ི "neutral,

"neutral, or they think oppofition fruitlefs. In "either cafe we have little to fear; the Military "or Militia may march against us because they 66 are commanded; but if the reft of the com

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munity be our friends, or, at worst, mere look"ers on, the conflict will be short, and our victory certain." Such, affuredly, have been their statements, and when the peasant and daylabourer, on whom they were urged, neither faw nor heard any thing to contradict them, could they hefitate to become partners in fo promifing an undertaking, fo irresistible an enterprize?

But in proportion as the yeomanry affociations extend, the deception will vanish. The demagogues will fee, that the conftitutional spirit of the country was not dead, as they had fondly deemed; but that it only flumbered, and that their infolence hath awoke it. Bodies of gentry and yeomanry voluntarily formed for the defence of the Conftitution and the Laws, as well against factious infurgents as foreign invaders, will speak a language which the dulleft muft comprehend, and the moft obftinate be unable to refute, Already they have fhewn how fully they feel its force by the threats and execrations with which their publications teem. And on their own principles they are right. In the re-invigorated circulation of constitutional fen

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