Page:An address to the thinking independent part of the community.djvu/28

( 28 ) then the idea that this is an improper season for reform:—and it you are convinced that it is a measure intrinsically good, think how much better still it must be when effects so important are depending on it—when it is called for to compose the distractions, and heal the wounds of the country.

Carry then your petitions to your sovereign. Entreat him to recommend to his parliament to pursue the advice of those few faithful representatives, who have hitherto struggled ineffectually to check the rashness of his ministers. Should you be disturbed in the exercise of this undoubted right, which from some recent acts may possibly be apprehended, then indeed it is hard to say what resource you have left. If the government, under pretence of putting down a secret conspiracy, should violate your lawful, open, peaceable societies;—if you are to be told, you shall not calmly deliberate on the means of saving yourselves from the evils which surround you;—if a military force is to scatter you like some lawless rabble—then is the state of the country fallen and low indeed. But if you be firm and temperate, surely a proceeding so outrageous cannot be attempted. It is difficult to suppose, that the mod sacred rights of society should be thus sacrilegiously trampled on, by the persons of all others mod bound to protect them. But