The Government sustained a positive loss of popularity by re-
viving this prosecution. Having, however, determined to persevere in bringing the defendant to trial, it was certainly of great im- portance to them to procure a conviction. They are in a worse position than they would have been had they allowed the matter to drop ; but have escaped from the risk they incurred of being rendered contemptible as well as odious, by the success of their prosecution.
It is not, however, by such means as this that the Government of Ireland can succeed in conciliating the good-will of the governed. The sympathy of the people was with the accused; who appears to them in the light of a man persecuted for the sake of liberty and old Ireland. The Government has, not ainavoidably, incurred an additional amount of unpopularity, just at the time when it was above all things desirable to pacify a turbulent population, on the eve of a winter of suffering, and prompt to attribute- that suffering to the want of a native Parliament in College Green. The agitators have been furnished by this trial with a fresh engine of annoyance ; their chief with a capital opportunity of uttering a quantity of declamation on the Repeal question, and speaking as many libels as he chooses to an inflamed audience with impunity
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