Page:An address to the thinking independent part of the community.djvu/12

( 12 ) who while they are bent on the pursuit of their own desperate purposes, would sacrifice you in their deadly strife? Or will you interpose with that manly spirit which becomes you, and that weight which your situation gives you, to check them in their intemperate and blind career, and save yourselves, and save your country?

I would ask all you whom I am addressing, whether you are not convinced that the calamities which seem fast approaching, might yet be averted, and the disorders of the country healed, without any very violent remedy, if our government, moderating that tone of obstinate haughtiness, which will hear of no compromise, would condescend to make those concessions to the people, which the acknowledged abuses of the confutation justify them in demanding? Can any unbiassed man, acquainted with the general sentiments of the nation, entertain a doubt, that the immediate adoption of a wife, temperate and liberal plan of reform, together with the entire repeal of the laws affecting the Roman Catholics, would not occasion almost universal contentment, and attach the great mass of the community to the defence of the government and constitution? In vain it is urged by men, who, because they hate these measures, would willingly lessen their importance, that they would produce but little satisfaction, and that the objects of the disaffected