absolutely impossible to attain. It had also been boldly and
shamelessly asserted by administration, in opposition to the most
general and public declaration of the Catholic body, that the claim of
the elective franchise was only the suggestion of a few turbulent
agitators, and that the great bulk of the Catholics had neither
solicitude nor desire about the matter. To give the lie to this hardy
and absurd assertion, the Catholics resolved upon a measure which would
put the matter beyond doubt, and by collecting into a focus the sense of
their body, and expressing that sense in a simple and explicit manner,
would take from their enemies the two great arguments by which they had
defeated the popular applications for reform. Administration, however,
were too vigilant to suffer the Catholics to get hold of this powerful
weapon. The Convention Bill, by which all representative assemblies were
made illegal, and punishable with the severest penalties, proposed in
haste, and passed with precipitation, deprived them of the only means of
giving to the legislature that simple and indubitable declaration of
the general sense, which, however, the legislature insisted on as a
necessary preliminary to hearing their complaints.

Here certainly was another of those measures which without any crime in
the people of Ireland was levelled at one of their most valuable
privileges. Let the people of England judge, whether under the
circumstances I have mentioned, it was not likely to wound deeply the
feelings of three-fourths of his Majesty's Irish subjects--and, combined
as it was with the insulting rejection of the Catholic petition, and the
subsequent concession, at the instance of the British Cabinet, of that
favour which was refused to Irish supplication--let Englishmen say,
whether it may not fairly be reckoned among the wanton and unprovoked
causes of the present discontents.

The Convention Bill, however mischievous it may have been by aggravating
the discontent which had already spread through the mass of the people,
was yet more mischievous by stopping up that channel through which
popular discontent discharges itself with most safety--that of petition
and remonstrance. So little effect had been found to result from the
petitions of individuals in the legislature on any of the great
questions which in any degree interfered with the system adopted by
administration, and in which they seemed resolved to persevere, that it
was thought