In this critical moment, the best and wisest men in Ireland, gentlemen possessed of the most extensive property in the country, and at the same time of character above the slightest imputation of disaffection or loyalty, urged on administration the necessity of changing that system which had been found to produce such horrible effects. They urged, that the great body of the nation was loyal--that even of the United Irishmen the greater part wished only for the admission of the Catholics and reform--and that to concede these would throw such a weight into the scale of government as would effectually tranquillize the country. Administration, however, took up the contrary opinion, and decided on a continuation of coercive measures. They pretended, that the people of Ireland were rebels, and that with rebels conciliation should not be tried. They assumed, in the first place, that all the United Irishmen were traitors--in the second, that that society comprehended the great body of the people, or that those who were not of that body approved heartily of all the measures which had been carried on for some years back by the Irish Cabinet. No account was made of that great and respectable class of men who, while they looked with detestation on those acts of insubordination, of assassination, and treason, which had followed the adoption of the present system, contemplated with the most unqualified reprobation that system itself. Determined, therefore, to scourge the nation out of that ill temper into which the scourge had driven it, what step did administration fix on? They send a military force under General Lake to the province of Ulster, and enjoin him to act at his discretion for disarming the freemen of the North, and enforcing content and tranquillity at the point of the bayonet!