' Some
allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately acted at Dublin, produced
thunders of applause from the pit and the galleries; and _a
politician should not be inattentive to the public feelings expressed
in theatres_. Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish. He has
no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his own
public emoluments. An Irish peasant fills the barrel of his gun full
of tow dipped in oil, butters the lock, buries it in a bog, and allows
the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at pleasure. Be just and
kind to the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them; rescue them from
the degraded servitude in which they are held by an handful of their
own countrymen; and you will add four millions of brave and
affectionate men to your strength."
But instead of these wise remedies, Mr. Secretary Canning only offers the
Irish people his incessant, unseasonable, and sometimes indecent jokes.--
"He jokes upon neutral flags and frauds, jokes upon Irish rebels,
jokes upon northern and western and southern foes, and gives himself
no trouble upon any subject.... And this is the Secretary whose
genius, in the estimation of brother Abraham, is to extinguish the
genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was killed by a slave, Goliath smitten by
a stripling; Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman.
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