For some time the administration boasted that they had at length found the way to quiet the country. In fact, the operations of the military in Ulster did reduce that province to a state of peace, and no disturbance existed but what the army itself created. Less violent and unconstitutional measures would have prevented acts of outrage--but neither this, nor any measure of coercion, could have eradicated discontent. As the infliction of the military system produced a gloomy quiet in one part of the island, the disturbances broke out with much encreased enormity in other parts of the country.--The South, hitherto tranquil, and which at the moment of danger, when the enemy appeared on the coast a few months before, exhibited the most enthusiastic spirit of zeal and loyalty, now became convulsed by partial risings to an alarming degree. The interior of the country, the King's and Queen's County, the County of Kildare, and even the vicinity of the metropolis, the Counties of Wicklow and of Dublin, were now in as bad a state as the pacified North had ever been. Every reasonable man, who believes that nothing can be produced without a producing cause, must attribute this change of temper in the South and other parts of the country to some circumstance which did not exist at the time of the invasion; and that circumstance could only be the introduction of the military system--of the efficacy of which administration had so much vaunted. But powerful as they supposed that system to be, they were not inclined to depend on its efficacy, such as they had tried it. They therefore now resorted to a measure which has hitherto been used only by irritated victors over perfidious and vanquish'd enemies--they sent them troops, not to disarm the inhabitants of a district, or to act with discretionary powers for, what was now a general pretext for violence of every species, the preservation of the public peace; but permanently to live at free quarters on all the inhabitants of those counties which were in what was called a disturbed state. Under this measure, excesses were committed which Ireland, much as she had suffered, had not yet witnessed. It was not the burning of a peasant's house, or the strangulation of one or two individuals in a village, which struck the eye of a spectator--but the houses of the most respectable farmers in the country, nay, houses of gentlemen of large fortune, and, in many instances, of the most approved loyalty, converted into barracks by the soldiery--the females of the family flying from the insults of these new guests, who rioted on the provision, emptied the cellars of their unwilling hosts, and when they had exhausted the house which they occupied sent their mandate to the neighbourhood to bring in a fresh stock!