MR. O'CONNOR'S

ADDRESS TO THE IRISH NATION.

Countrymen,

SINCE the conviction and sentence passed on the printer of THE PRESS, a clause has been pointed out by the commissioners of stamps, which lay lurking in one of the late parliament's acts, unknown to the lawyers: whereby, a printer convicted of a libel shall be deprived of his property in the paper in which it had been inserted. By this law, in conformity with all the other acts of parliament, which, in the words of a great and good man, "has taken more from the liberties, and added more to the burdens, of the people," and I may say, stained the statute book with more penal laws, than any parliament that ever yet existed; it has become necessary, that on the spur of the instant, from this unforeseen clause, another proprietor should come forward to save the IRISH PRESS from being put down. To perform that sacred office to this best benefactor of mankind, has devolved upon me; and rest assured, I will discharge it with fidelity to you and our country, until some one more versed in the business can be procured.

Every engine of force and corruption has been employed by those ministers, into whose hands, unfortunately for the present peace and future repose of the nation, unlimited power has been invested, to discover whether I was proprietor of the press. Had they sent to me, instead of lavishing your money amongst perjurers, spies, and informers, I would have told them, what I now tell you, that I did set up THE PRESS, though, in a legal sense, I was not the proprietor; nor did I look to any remuneration; and I did so, because from the

time that, in violation of property, in subversion of even the appearance of respect for the laws, and to destroy not only the freedom of the press itself, the present ministers demolished the Northern Star; no paper in Ireland, either from being bought up, or from the dread and horror of being destroyed, would publish an account of the enormities which these very ministers had been committing; where they not only suffered a lawless banditti of sworn extirpators to destroy the property, to raze the habitations, and to drive thousands of ruined families to the most distant parts of the country, for want of protection; but where the strongest suspicions rested, that they had given encouragement to such diabolical acts, under the name of loyalty, and the mask of religion; where they let loose an excited soldiery, to commit acts of outrage which no invading army of any country in Europe would have practised, without violating those laws established among civilized nations; where the torch had consumed their houses and property in entire districts, and summary murders had been wantonly perpetrated; where thousands have been hurried into those multiplied dungeons, and hundreds sent to the gallows "on suspicion of being suspected"* of reform and union; and above all, where TORTURE has been applied in numerous instances to extort confession, of what, by the insurrection act, has been judged worthy of death, but as I read it, by the strictest rules and injunctions of christian morality, has been enforced as a paramount duty. That torture which our ancestors held in such inveterate abhorrence, that its utter exclusion was esteemed so fundamental a part of our constitutional code, that neither that Stuart, nor his ministers, whose heads paid the forfeit of the crimes they committed, nor the ministers of that Stuart who was expelled, durst introduce it.

I could cite hundreds of facts to substantiate the suppression

* This phrase originated with Robespierre and his bloody associates during the days of terror in Paris.

of the publication of these enormous atrocities; but I will confine myself to the mention of one, which has come within my own knowledge. Whilst I was confined in the tower, the soldiers who were stationed all around it, fired up at the prison; and on being asked why they had fired, without having challenged, or any pretext for so doing, they answered, "that they had acted according to the orders they had got." As I was the only person confined in the prison, no doubt could remain that these orders were issued for the purpose of assassination. A gentleman who had been an eyewitness of the attempt, took a statement of facts to the Evening Post, which was at that time esteemed the least corrupted paper in Dublin; but the editor told him that fearing that his house and his press might experience the fate of the Northern Star, he would not insert it; although the next day, not only that print, but every other paper in town, contained an account of the transaction, in which there was not one word of truth, except the admission that the shots had been fired!

From the moment I was enlarged from the tower, I determined to free the press from this dastardly thraldom; that the conduct of those ministers might be faithfully published; and whilst a beloved brother is confined in a cell nine feet square,* against every form of law, and the plighted faith of this administration, I take this opportunity to call on Lord Camden, to tell you and the world, what inquiry has been made, or what punishment has been inflicted on the perpetrators of an act, which, if brought home to his administration, must affix a greater stain on his name, than the ever memorable days of September have indelibly left on Robespierre and his gang of assassins; whose government was supported by burning of houses, destruction of property, massacreing the people, and crowding the galleys and dungeons, but for which he, even Robespierre, disdained to

VOL. I.

* See Roger O'Connor's letter.

Ii

employ torture to extort confessions of patriotism, which this sanguinary usurper punished as treason. Whenever it shall happen, that one or a few base usurpers shall have seized on a nation's civil and political rights; and that they shall have sold them to a neighbouring country, in the rankest and foulest corruption and treason; whenever it shall happen, that to heal reiigious dissension, to promote universal philanthropy, true christian charity, and national union, and to establish the imprescriptible right of being represented, which no people can forfeit, shall be punished by legalized murder; trust me, the most drowsy conscience, stung by public exposure, will make every effort by bribery, by violence, and by persecution and robbery, to put down the press. But regarding it as the great luminary which has dispelled the darkness in which mankind lay brutalized in ignorance, superstition, and slavery-regarding it as that bright constellation, which, by its diffusion of light, will at length restore the nations to knowledge and freedom-whilst, therefore, I can find one single plank of the scattered rights of my country to stand on, I will fix my eyes on THE PRESS, as the polar-star which is to direct us to the haven of FREEDOM.

With these sentiments engraven on my heart; alive to the honest ambition of serving my country; regardless whether I am doomed to fall by the lingering torture of a solitary dungeon, or the blow of the assassin; if the freedom of the press is to be destroyed, I shall esteem it a proud destiny to be buried under its ruins. But, if there be any man so base or so stupid as to imagine that they can usurp or withhold your civil and political rights; that they can convert truth into sedition, or patriotism into treason; if they imagine that this is a period favourable for abridging the freedom of mankind, or establishing despotic power on the ruins of liberty, let them look round them, and they will find, that amongst the old and inveterate despotisms in Europe, some have been destroyed, and the rest are on the brink of destruction. They may make martyrs, and liberty's roots will be fertilized by

the blood of the murdered; but if their deeds and their blunders have not made reflection a horror, let them look back on the five years that are passed, and they will see that they have been the most destructively rapid revolutionists that ever yet existed; they will see that Great Britain and Ireland, from the portion of rights they enjoyed, which were the nations of Europe where revolution was least necessary, and where it might have been most easily saved, are now nearest the danger. But let them reflect ere it is too late, and it is never too late to abandon a ruinous course, that if they could establish lettres de cachet in place of habeas corpus and trial by jury; if the galleys and bastiles of despotism could be erected in place of the prisons of law; if they could abolish every idea of representation, and establish chambers of registering their requisitions and edicts; if instead of the press of the nation, they could set up the gazette of the court; if they could abolish that great constitutional principle, that no man could be forced to his own crimination, and establish the torture to extort confession; they should recollect, that, like France, instead of preventing a revolution, they would but create so many powerful causes to excite the people to make one;-and whilst tyrannic despots talk so much of supporting the constitution they have done so much to destroy, let them remember, that if it owes much to obedience, it owes more to resistance; and that the feelings of a people must determine where crimes and sufferings shall end the one and begin the other.

ARTHUR O'CONNOR.