In conclusion, let us, as is meet and proper, cease not to offer up fervent prayers to God, through the intercession of St. Patrick, for the welfare of the land of our fathers. She has suffered enough; she has been tried enough. “How long, O Lord, how long!” Already through the many rents made by the stormy indignation of the civilized world in the wretched patchwork of this last of Irish Coercion Acts which is now weighing heavily upon her, we can catch most certain glimpses of those happier days, long sighed for, long deferred; and I am confident that when the noon-day of her temporal glory shall arrive, Ireland will remain, as she has hitherto remained, true to her mission, “true to the faith.” But of this I am sure, that if, as we earnestly desire, peace with its abundance and liberty with her manifold blessings return to nestle among her green hills, she will ever look back with an honest pride upon the ages of her sorrows; she will “rejoice for the days in which she was humbled, for the days when her eyes saw evils.”
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.