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The O'briens and the O'flahertys (3); A National Tale
The O'briens and the O'flahertys A National Tale - 3 Author:Morgan Volume: 3 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1827 Original Publisher: H. Colburn Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where y... more »ou can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. THE UNITED IRISHMAN. Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, or destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery, under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people ; who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided against force and violence. Locke on Government. Sin va Rinaldo, dove 1'amor 1'invitH. Ariosto. Back-lane, the site where liberty had for the first time raised her fane, in Ireland, after ages had passed over her ruined altars, is one of those narrow, dirty, and close defiles of the old quarter of Dublin, which still represent the great streets of great capitals in those good old rimes, which genius in the pay of despotism has endeavoured to revive. In such thickly populated and ill ventilated " vicoli," the plague was propagated, and fires were kindled, to beextinguished only after an extensive loss of the lives and properties of the inhabitants. The wisdom of our ancestors, who saw no inconvenience in what their fathers had borne, and admitted no remedy that came in the form of innovation, continued to reject, with equal tenacity, wide streets and inoculation : as equally subversive of social order, and opposed to God's providence in the government of the world. The narrowness of streets derives from two source. In the south of Europe, the object sought was shade. In the more northern regions, the necessity for inclosing walls to protect the towns, led to a similar mode of architecture. The taste for fresh air is...« less