Page:An address to the thinking independent part of the community.djvu/13

( 13 ) disaffected are widely different. I do not deny that there may be in the country some hot-headed speculators, who probably set little value on temperate, constitutional reform; but I am fully convinced that such a reform would leave them very few adherents, and reduce them to a party, weak, insignificant, and incapable of any dangerous enterprize. Look to the sentiments of administration themselves, as given in the report of the Secret Committee. They allow that Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary Reform were the ostensible objects held forth by the authors of the society of United Irishmen, at its original formation, to avoid alarming: the feelings of those who were not prepared to go to the full extent of their dangerous and traitorous deigns. They further admit a belief that the degrees of criminality in the individuals who compose the conspiracy, are very different, as it appears to be a principle with the authors of this institution to cloak their real design under false colours. Can we desire a stronger proof of the warm attachment of the people to these measures, than that the leaders of a wicked conspiracy, such as that disclosed in the report, have been enabled by holding them forth as their ostensible objects, to organize a force so formidable, as almost to brave the strength of the established government? And when we are informed likewise, that the leaders of this conspiracy cloak