ffect her redemption. Some
doubted the capacity, and perhaps the sincerity, of the chiefs. Some
were schooled in duplicity, and under the ermine, or under the privy
councillor's robe, carried fierce hearts, benumbed by mendicancy and
seared by shame. But the first flash of their country's liberty would
see them ranged at that country's side, repaying with the fiercest hate
the beggar crumbs which England had flung from the fragments of her
overloaded table. It is true enough that a long course of corruption,
beginning with the perjured peer and ending with the tidewaiter, had
created a class of conditional loyalists, with nine-tenths of which the
condition is always unfulfilled; while, in its very fulfilment, the
other one-tenth has found but bitterness, the "sauce piquante" of their
daily bread. But as a general rule, such a thing as a pure Irish
loyalist does not exist. Its possible existence presupposes an absurdity
in nature. An Irishman cannot become loyal to English domination,
without divesting himself of the last attribute of his nature, not as an
Irishman, but as a man.

The knowledge of this fact was my "base of operations." Ten thousand
armed men successful against a garrison of five hundred would produce a
more abundant crop of avenging warriors than the fabled dragon's teeth,
and that simultaneously through every square mile of the island. In ten
days there would be two millions of Irishmen in arms. It may well be
asked, what arms? But even instinct will reply, what arms would be
needed? England had in Ireland less than forty thousand men, and,
without hazarding the question, how many of them could she rely on, it
requires no consummate military genius to suggest how they could be
dealt with by a simultaneous rising of the country. The arms of her
enemies would then be hers. She would have time to form a regular army
to aid her undisciplined strength. England's position at home, where she
had not a soldier to spare; her condition abroad, where she was beaten
to the wall; and her relations with foreign powers would achieve the
rest. To a successful Irish revolution, a _coup-de-main_ is
indispensable; and a _coup-de-main_ would be incompatible with any
organised plan other than existed. It will be seen at once that for this
place details are unfit. The above sketch rather comprehends the bolder
outlines of an insurrection in action, and they suggest nothing to warn
the enemy as to future operations. The prosp