country to
a few proud aristocrats, which excludes three-fourths of the people
from its benefits, which allows eight hundred thousand Northerns to be
insulted and trampled on because they speak of emancipation, which uses
forced oaths, overflowing Bastilles and foreign troops for extorting the
loyalty of the Irish people."

"I will not argue these things with you now," said Lord Dunseveric, "my
time is short. I would rather pray you to consider what the end of
your conspiracy must be. If you succeed, and I do not believe you can
succeed, you will deluge the country in blood. If your best hopes are
realised, and you receive the help you hope for from abroad, you
will make Ireland the cockpit of a European war. Our commerce and
manufactures, reviving under the fostering care of our own Irish
Parliament, will be destroyed. Our fields, which none will dare to till,
will be fouled with the dead bodies of our sons and daughters. But why
should I complete the picture? If you fail--and you must fail--you
will fling the country into the arms of England. Our gentry will be
terrified, our commons will be cowed. Designing Englishmen will make an
easy prey of us. They will take from us even the hard-earned measure of
independence we already possess. We shall become, and we shall remain,
a contemptible province of their Empire instead of a sovereign and
independent nation. The English are wise enough to see this, though you
cannot see it. Man, _they want you to rebel_."

"Is that all you have to say?" said Micah.

"That is all."

"Then I bid you farewell, Eustace St. Clair, Lord of Dunseveric. You
have spoken well and pleaded speciously for yourself and your class. I
might listen to you if I had not seen your armed ruffians break into
our meeting-houses; if I had not in memory stories of burnt homesteads,
outraged women, tortured men; you might persuade me if I did not know
that to-night you have taken my friends, that you will drag them before
unjust judges, and condemn them on the evidence of perjured informers,
as you condemned William Orr. Human endurance can bear no more. Patience
is a virtue of the Gospel, but it becomes cowardice in the face of
certain wrongs. Go, I have done with you. Go, torture, burn, shed
innocent blood, and then, like the adulterous woman, eat and wipe your
mouth, and say 'I have done no wickedness.'"

"I came into your house on a mission of friendliness and mercy," said
Lord Dunseveric. "I have bee