d the spirit of prophecy, the
far-stretching vision of sagacity, is analogously conspicuous in the
arts of Government, military or political, when providing for the
contingencies that may commence in pseudo-patriotism, or the
possibilities that may terminate in rebellion. Whether Government saw
those contingencies, whether Government calculated those possibilities
in June last--that is one part of the general question which we have
been discussing; and whether it was to a different estimate of such
chances in summer and in autumn, or to a necessity for time in preparing
against them, that we must ascribe the very different methods of the
Government in dealing with the sedition at different periods--_that_ is
the other part of the question. But this is certain--that whether seeing
and measuring from the first, or suddenly awakened to the danger of
late--in any case, the Government has silently prepared all along;
forestalling evils that possibly never were to arise, and shaping
remedies for disasters which possibly to themselves appeared romantic.
To provide for the worst, is an ordinary phrase, but what _is_ the
worst? Commonly it means the last calamity that experience suggests; but
in the admirable arrangements of Government it meant the very worst that
imagination could conceive--building upon treason at home in alliance
with hostility from abroad. At a time when resistance seemed supremely
improbable, yet, because amongst the headlong desperations of a
confounded faction even this was possible, the ministers determined to
deal with it as a certainty. Against the possible they provided as
against the probable; against the least of probabilities as against the
greatest. The very outside and remote extremities of what might be
looked for in a civil war, seem to have been assumed as a basis in the
calculations. And under that spirit of vista-searching prudence it was,
that the Duke of Wellington saw what we have insisted on, and
practically redressed it--viz. the defective military net-work by which
England has ever spread her power over Ireland. "This must not be," the
Duke said; "never again shall the blood of brave men be shed in
superfluous struggles, nor the ground be strewed with supernumerary
corpses--as happened in the rebellion of 1798--because forts were
wanting and loopholed barracks to secure what had been won; because
retreats were wanting to overawe what, for the moment, had been lost.
Henceforth, and befor