<small>WE HAVE NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT</small>; we are ruled by Englishmen, and the servants of Englishmen, whose object is the interest of another co… - Wolfe Tone

What miserable slaves are the gentry of Ireland! The only accusation brought against the United Irishmen by their enemies is that they wish to break the connection with England, or in other words to establish the independence of their country, an object in which surely the men of property are most interested. Yet the very sound of independence seems to have terrified them out of all sense, spirit, or honesty. If they had one drop of Irish blood in their veins, one grain of true courage or genuine patriotism in their hearts, they should have been the first to support this great object; the people would have supported them. The English government would never have dared to attempt the measures they have since triumphantly pursued and continue to pursue; our revolution would have been accomplished without a shock, or perhaps one drop of blood spilled, which now will succeed, if it does succeed, only by all the calumities of a most furious and sanguinary contest, for the war in Ireland, whenever it takes place, will not be an ordinary one, the armies will regard each other not as soldiers but as deadly enemies.

The Revolution of ’82 (1782) was a revolution which enabled Irishmen to sell at a much higher price their honour, their integrity, and the interests of their country; it was a revolution which while at one stroke it doubled the value of every borough monger in the Kingdom, left three-fourths of our countrymen [Catholics] slaves as it found them, and the Government of Ireland in the base, wicked and contemptible hands who had spent their lives plundering and degrading her … Who of the veteran enemies of the country lost his place, or his pension? Not one. The power remained in the hands of our enemies, again to be exerted for our ruin, with this difference, that, formerly, we had our distresses gratis at the hands of England, but now we pay very dearly to receive the same with aggravations at the hands of Irishmen—yet this we boast of and call a Revolution.

[T]hey and the Catholics had but one common interest and one common enemy; that the depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them; and that consequently to assert the independence of their country, and their own individual liberties it was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire strength of the whole nation, and form for the first time but one people.