GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND, WITH STRICTURES ON AN ANONYMOUS PAMPHLET, IN FAVOUR OF THE MEASURE, SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY A GENTLEMAN THE PROBABILITY, CAUSES, AND CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNION, &c. A MIDST the disgrace and ruin brought upon us by the late unfortunate events; by the intolerant pride and avarice of short-fighted monopoly on one hand, holding in its greedy grafp the exclufive management of a mutilated conftitution, as an engine of exclufive dominion and spoil; and the intemperate zeal and ambition of those who forght reform, and through reform looked for equal freedom, union, national government, and the general profperity of all, without diftinction of fect; tainable, as they supposed, through the medievra of a virtuous independent legislature, reprefenting the entire nation. Amidst the general mourning and defolation that fadden our plains, the cries of deftitute widows and orphans, the bleeding recolicetion of the most horrible culties and atrocious crimes, plunder, massacre, torture, fanaticifin, and all the furies recorded in fable or hiftory; amid the grief, terror, and anxiety that benun.b the A at heart, and palfy the intellectual powers; the def pondency of the good, the dreadful licence of the wicked; the heart-burnings and deadly animofity that rankle in the breasts of men fmarting from recent injurics, and breathing nothing but revenge, even to extermination; while all freedom of enquiry, whether by fpeech or writing, is treated as trealon, and struk dumb by the terrors of martial law and military execution; it may be deemed rash to come forward with any political opinion, at a period fo inaufpicious to truth and justice. It may be deemed an hopclefs task to awaken the public mind to national concerns. Amid the general difimay that affumes the appearance of apathy, I for one am ready to acknowledge, that I do not defpife exilence, deftitute as it is of most those circumstances that render it defirable, and beguile the burthen of life. The alluring profpeces that fafcinate youthful ambition, the gay, the charining delufions that give an intereft to the most trivial objects of defire, that enliven the fpirits, and fire the fancy, on our entrance in the carcer of human affairs, are fled indeed. I can no longer cherish life for the fake of any felfish plan of individual happiness; one strong motive furvives, the define of promoting the happinefs of my kind, and of doing something useful in my day. Have I performed my task? or is my death likely to prove more beneficial to mankind, than my further continuance in existence? I truft, in that cafe, the trying hour shall find me chearfully refigned to the stroke. I was not made to cringe and fawn to ruffian power, for the wretched purpose of obtaining a permit to live at the expence of truth, and the duty I owe my countr and man 1 |