The National Register.
London, England, 1808-06-19 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL REGISTER.

herself for the freedom of her children : she has undergone
the sacrifice, but her children have not been freed ! We
nave no doubt that Ireland; as well as England, will at
some future period derive advantages from the measure of
union : but we hale also no doubt that her immediate suf-
ferings have been great and heavy. An immediate price
ought therefore to have been paid to her : the price which
England stipulated to pay. The country of Ireland is now
before our eyes, a painful and dangerous /11 emoria 1 of
Ministerial ambition and British fallacy. Her noble
lies, once the sources of her wealth, as they were the sup-
ports of her grandeur, have emigrated to England, in the
train of their delegated Parliament. They have been
obliged to abandon the city of Dublin, the capital that was
endeared to them by early habits, by associations which
have grown with their growth, and strengthened with their
strength, by the influence and respect which they com-
manded, by the benefits and opulence which they diffused,
and by the grandeur of hereditary nobility. These sor-
rows may seem but imaginary—it matters not : call them
imagination—prejudice, if you will but while human hap-
piness depends upon imagination, or even prejudice, a real
CS is inflicted upon us in the deprivation of ideal good.
And now the only vestiges remaining of that legislature,
which once directed the Government of districts, and gave
life and motion to the interests of millions, must be traced
in—a hundred members ! who are sent to the United Par-
liament in England, and who surviving their country's
existence, sit, as Mr. Grattan has forcibly expressed him-
self, the images of degradation, and the representatives
of nothing !"
The Irish Opposition have been compared to the sea in
a storm. Unhappily, the orb of liberty, which dawned
from their bosom, was fated to sink amid their waves :
and it went down with a mighty sound, as the ancients have
fabled, that in the western seas the sun is heard to extin-
cr e,uish his fires, and hiss to the bottom of the ocean ! Long
mill that sound reverberate in the ears of Irishmen : long
will the recollection of it continue to remind them that
they once were free : and may its warnings at length in-
duce this country to pay the stipulated price of all the
sacrifices that have been made by her sister nation ! In
the mean time let not the defenders of their country be
aspersed as the breeders of sedition, when they arc only
demanding- justice. Let them persevere in their manly
course, and even though they fail in their immediate
object, they must receive the reward of immortality. If
those heroes who have lived or died in the cause of their
country, be ever remembered by grateful posterity.
the names of Charlemont and Grattan, of Leinster and ;if
Curran, must always be recorded with the loftiest en-
thusiasm, in the pages of historians who shall celebratc
their greatness, and in the traditionary tales of a people
whom they could not preserve !

REVIEW OF POLITICAL PAMPIILETEERS.

No. XX V.

TOE EA OF SELKIRK'S PAmyJILET ON TUE NECESSITY OF
A MODE EFFECTUAL SYSTEM OF NATIONAL DEEENcE.
AND THE MEANS OF EsTAILLISIIING Tilt PEI:MANI:NT
SECURITY OF TILE KINGDOM.
(Continued from our last.)

Lord Selkirk, in this pamphlet, proposes to call into military
life every young man between the ages of 18 and 25. Each in-
idual, from the 18th to the 19th year of his age, Alan he
liable to three months service : buPfrem the age of 19 upwards,
only three w eeks, at a fixed period of the year, will be re-
quired annually till the age of :15, after w hich no one w ill I e
alum to any demands of military service. Every youth may,
enrol his name in any district that lie prefers, and the period of
his three months service may be left to the dett.rininat ion ot the
magistracy of the district. The mere itacritice of so :-liort a time
as this scheme requires, cannot occasion any serious detriment
to any individual's pans of life; the lower orders will cot be