ever so much
a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a
rascal and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime
to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete
charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ
principally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient....
Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise
and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, he
condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open and you will be
terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT
must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts,
which Shelley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of
private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the masses
whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one mass of
animated filth."

The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory
demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he
based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden
ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in
them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays
the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without
appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided
Shelley at a still later period. When he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy",
he bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in the
truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to
force.

While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin,
Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the subject of
Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled "Proposals for an Association",
and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast
society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the
recovery of their rights. In estimating Shelley's political sagacity, it
must be remembered that Catholic emancipation has since his day been
brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions
he foresaw. Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used
these simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will be
mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the
Irish." These sentences wer