Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/382

334 wrong and false: and this opinion, when it once gains ground, will prevent government from severity. It will restore those rights which government has taken away. Have nothing to do with force or violence, and things will safely and surely make their way to the right point. The Ministers have now in Parliament a very great majority, and the Ministers are against you. They maintain the falsehood that, were you in power you would prosecute and burn, on the plea that you once did so. They maintain many other things of the same nature.—They command the majority of the House of Commons, or rather the part of that assembly, who receive pensions from Government, or whose relatives receive them. These men of course, are against you, because their employers are. But the sense of the country is not against you, the people of England are not against you—they feel warmly for you—in some respects they feel with you. The sense of the English and of their Governors is opposite—there must be an end of this, the goodness of a Government consists in the happiness of the Governed, if the Governed are wretched and dissatisfied, the Government has failed in its end. It wants altering and mending. It will be mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the Irish—good to all human kind, excepting those whose happiness consists in others' sorrows, and it will be a fit punishment for these to be deprived of their devilish joy. This I consider as an event which is approaching, and which will make the beginning of our hopes for that period which may spread wisdom and virtue so wide, as