From The United Irishman, April 8, 1848.
We are well pleased that M. Lamartine has let us know distinctly we must rely on ourselves. We are to have no French aid—not a man, not a gun—till we are able to declare war against the English government, to hold our own in the open field or street.
It is well. We are glad that delusion is dispelled. But M. Lamartine had no right to insult the Irish nation. Ireland is not ‘a part of Great Britain.’ Our quarrel with that power is not ‘an internal dispute.’ Englishmen are not our ‘fellow-countrymen.’ We have not been advancing, and we do not want to advance, ‘in the path of constitutional equality with the other parts of the United Kingdom.’
We begin to fear that this M. Lamartine is but a silly old poet, and romantic eastern-traveller; and predict that he will soon be sent once more upon his travels.
Well, we trust the idea of foreign aid, until after we have begun to do our own business, is at an end. We were sorry to see the Irish Confederates the other night caught in a mere clap-trap. We are not going to get 50,000 Frenchmen, nor one Frenchman; and Mr. Smith O’Brien, to do him justice, never said we were. We fear much that ‘King Rigmarol’ is not yet dead, as our poet sings. But surely if ever it behoved men to look facts in the face, and neglect words which have no facts under them, it behoves us now.