an should entertain such a
dishonouring doubt. Mercifully, men are so made that, if left to
themselves, they go forward, not backward. A pure Assembly, formed on
the Volunteer plan, stimulated by the enlightened conscience which such
an Assembly invariably develops, by the discovery of the fundamental
identity of interests between the great bulk of Catholics and
Protestants, and by the manly instinct of self-preservation against
undue English encroachment, would have moved rapidly towards tolerance
and equality.

But the Assembly which might have saved Ireland never came into being.
The Volunteers were in weak and incompetent hands. The metamorphosis
they had undergone from a body formed for home defence into a militant
political organization found them at the critical moment unprovided with
the right stamp of leader. Flood, who helped to draft their Bill, was a
brilliant but unscrupulous and discredited Parliamentarian, and a
fanatical advocate of an unimpaired Protestant ascendancy. Lord
Charlemont, one of the most influential founders of the movement, and a
man of the highest integrity, was lukewarm for reform, an aristocrat and
an ascendancy man to the finger-tips, dreading the mysterious forces he
had helped to call into being, and desirous to keep them, as he said,
"respectable." Was it respectable for armed men to dictate to a
Parliament, however just their cause? As often happens in the ferment of
popular movements, the one leader who spoke undiluted truth and sense
spoke it in florid and unmeasured language and was himself of a figure
and behaviour little likely to inspire permanent confidence. This was
the famous Bishop of Derry, called by Charlemont a blasphemous Deist, by
Wesley an exemplary Divine, by Fox a dishonest madman, and by Jeremy
Bentham "a most excellent companion, pleasant, intelligent, well-bred,
and liberal-minded to the last degree." He was certainly vain and
ostentatious, certainly a democratic free-thinker, but a full knowledge
of his character is not of much concern to us. The point is that he was
right about Ireland's needs, though the wrong man at the moment to drive
home her claims. Many finer agitators than he have failed in causes just
as good. Many without half his merits have succeeded. We shall find his
Canadian counterparts later in the figures of Mackenzie and Papineau.

The crisis came on November 29, 1783, when the Reform Bill reached
Parliament, and was introduced by Flood, we