His course in England was in a higher region, and he escaped the mosquitoes which infest the swamps of Irish political life. Among the leaders of English party he had to contend with men of honour, and on the Continent his task was to sustain the cause of Europe. There, mingling with monarchs in the simplicity of a British gentleman, he carried with him all the influence of a great British minister, and entitled himself to that influence by the value of his services. Yet, among the highest distinctions of his statesmanship, we have but slight hesitation in naming the rapid overthrow of the rebellion. The scene was new, the struggle singularly perplexing. Political artifice was mingled with brute violence. If the spirit of revolt raged in the superstition, the fears, and the rude memories of peasant life, it was still more hazardously spread among the professional ranks, whose ambition was frenzied by the prospect of a republic, or whose guilt was to be screened by its establishment. He has been charged with tyranny and torture in its suppression; his correspondence in these volumes shows the manly view which he took of the true condition of Ireland. The question of the safety of Ireland has now come before the legislature once again, in all its breadth. Is Ireland to be a perpetual seat of rebellion? is every ruffian to find there only an armoury? is every faction to find there only a parade-ground? Is its soil to be a perpetual fount of waters, that can flow only to poison the healthful channels of society? Is the power of government to be employed only in the hideous duties of the gaoler and the executioner? Is the noblest constitution that man has ever seen to be utterly paralysed, from the moment when it touches a soil containing millions of our fellow subjects?--and to be paralysed by the act of these millions? These are the questions which well may disturb the pillow of the statesmen of England. We have no hesitation in answering them. As the ruin of Ireland has been the act of a false religion, its renovation must be the act of the true. This is no time for tardiness in this experiment. Revolt has thrown aside its arms, but its antipathy remains. We shall have revolt upon revolt, until the country is turned into a field of battle or a sepulchre. If the rude, vulgar, and cowardly conspirators of the present hour have found followers, what might not be the national hazard if some valorous hand and vivid intellect--some one of those mighty men who are born to take the lead of nations, should marshal the willing multitudes at a time when England was once again struggling for the liberties of Europe? Are we to leave Ireland, with all its natural advantages, to the unchecked progress of superstition, until, like the Roman Campagna, under the same auspices, it exhibits nothing but a desert, where man by daylight should put on his swiftest speed, and where he should not sleep by night, unless he had already taken measure of his grave?