Without entering into a more minute detail of the disgusting enormities or the sufferings to which this measure gave birth, I may safely refer it to the judgement of men accustomed to enjoy the uninterrupted blessings of British law and liberty, whether the infliction of this measure on the people of Ireland was not of itself enough to aggravate feelings already irritated into discontent the most alarming. I do not mean surely to justify assassination or treason, but I appeal to men who have the feelings of freemen, whether to see a father, a brother, or a son, fall, perhaps innocently, under the bayonet of a military executioner, or transported for life from his helpless family and nearest connections--it may be without guilt, because the punishment was inflicted without trial--may not in some degree account for, though it cannot justify, the shocking crimes which have, since the introduction of that measure, been committed by individuals in Ireland? A magistrate who exerts himself in carrying this law into effect, and who, in obedience to the will of the legislature, sends numbers of his countrymen from the soil in which they drew breath, and the connections which make life dear to them, merely because he suspects their loyalty, does that which, being legal, ought not to induce on him either odium or punishment; but while human nature shall continue to be composed of its present materials, there will be found men among the people over whom he exerts such authority, whose vindictive passions will be apt to mark him as their victim. In many deplorable instances has this been verified in Ireland. The Insurrection Act was adopted to prevent such enormities; unhappily it but encreased, greatly encreased, the black catalogue.