Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/407



I have now been a week in Dublin, during which time I have endeavoured to make myself more accurately acquainted with the state of the public mind, on those great topics of grievances which induced me to select Ireland as a theatre, the widest and fairest, for the operations of the determined friend of religious and political freedom.

The result of my observations has determined me to propose, an association for the purposes of restoring Ireland to the prosperity which she possessed before the Union Act; and the religious freedom, which the involuntariness of faith, ought to have taught all monopolists of Heaven, long, long ago, that every one had a right to possess.

For the purpose of obtaining the Emancipation of the Catholics, from the penal laws that aggrieve them, and a Repeal of the Legislative Union act: and grounding upon the remission of the church-craft and oppression, which caused these grievances; a plan of amendment and regeneration in the moral and political state of society, on a comprehensive and systematic philanthropy, which shall be sure, though slow in its projects; and as it is without the rapidity and danger of revolution,