is or that measure, publish their
determination to support them--and sometimes conclude by letting the
Irish public know--_they had not come thither to be trifled
with_.--Secondly, I must remark, that tho' the great objection to the
volunteer convention was its being armed, and consisting of the
representatives of an armed body, yet opposition equally violent has
been since made to other representative bodies _not_ military--instance
the calumny with which the servants of the Irish administration have
blackened the Catholic committee--and, above all, instance the Athlone
convention, the meeting of which administration were so solicitous to
prevent, that they ventured on a law to prevent for ever the meeting of
any representative body--the House of Commons excepted.

By these circumstances it seems sufficiently clear, that the
inconceivable aversion entertained against this body, and the memory of
it, was founded not in its being military, but in its being
representative and popular--not in its constitution, but in its
object.--With respect to its being a representative body, I profess, for
my own part, I cannot conceive why for that reason the Irish government
and the Irish Chancellor have held it so much in abomination. You,
Englishmen, who understand that constitution of which you are properly
so proud, will be surprized to hear that representative bodies are
unconstitutional.--If you heard this asserted with much confidence by a
lawyer, you would say he had studied special pleading rather than the
British constitution.--If you heard this doctrine swallowed implicitly
by an assembly of legislators, you would say they were still unfit to
govern themselves. What is it, you would ask, that forms the general and
pervading principle of the British constitution, if not the
representative one? Every petty corporation, you would observe, elects
representatives to act for them in their Common Council--the council
elect Aldermen, and these again their Mayor--all on the same
principle--that of having the sense of the multitude concentrated, and
their business dispatched at once with ease and order. Nay, every
Freeman is himself but a representative, not indeed of other men--but of
his own property.

But it is impossible that this should have been the real ground of
objection to the Convention, however it might have been urged as the
ostensible one--for it is obvious, that if the principle of
representation be a fair and useful