Page:An address to the thinking independent part of the community.djvu/9

( 9 ) or congresses, were held to procure parliamentary Reform. The Catholic body, labouring under peculiar restrictions, alike injurious and disgraceful to them and the whole nation, adopted similar means to procure their emancipation. Though these meetings were in general attended with but little success, yet that little was sufficient to alarm the monopolizers of the constitution, who foresaw in the union and co-operation of the whole people, the inevitable, though perhaps flow, decay of their power and influence. Terrified into severity, but not warned into Reform, administration seemed to place their chief security in the prevention of national union. They had, with this view, tampered and played successively with the feelings and passions of the various religious sects in the country; and when this could no longer be practised with any success—finally appeared the convention bill, that famous project for dividing the popular strength, when it was no longer possible to divide the popular sentiment. Alas! how miserably has the expedient disappointed its projectors! Union was not dissolved by it, but spread and cemented in a form ten-fold more dangerous. The people, prevented from combining openly, have conspired secretly, and have organized a system in the dark, which they had never imagined, had they been allowed to concert their measures in the open light