That such would be the consequence of this measure, administration were solemnly warned. It was urged on them, but without effect, that in every country where the freedom of remonstrance and complaint was denied, secret conspiracy or open insurrection took the place of angry but harmless petition. Italy was mentioned; and it was said, rather with the spirit of a prophet than a politician, that if this bill passed, Ireland would become more infamous for private assassination than Italy itself. The Society of United Irishmen was not yet become a clandestine or an illegal body--but it was foretold, that this bill would create clandestine and seditious meetings: for it was easy to see, that when discontented people were prevented from uttering their complaints, they would substitute other modes of redress for angry publication. But with the administration of Ireland, or the Irish House of Commons of that day, advice and remonstrance were vain. They boldly ventured on a measure of which these consequences were foreseen, yet now profess to wonder why such consequences have happened. On the folly of their counsels, then, the people of Ireland are justified in charging the assassinations--the sedition--the conspiracy, which have disgraced their country: they are not the native growth of her soil! They have been begotten only by insolence and injury upon the stifled indignation of a volatile and feeling people! But the Convention act was not the only measure to which the party abusing the powers of government in Ireland resorted, to tame or to irritate the Irish people. The Gunpowder Bill, prior in order and time, which deprived the Irish subject in a great measure of the constitutional power of self-defence, prepared the minds of the people for receiving the full impression of the Convention act, which narrowed another of his rights. The attempt to annihilate the independence of the country, by insisting on the right of Britain to choose a regent for Ireland, and the subsequent attempt of the same kind in 1785 to substitute a commercial boon for the right of self-government, had already gone far toward producing a tendency to irritation in the people, which these more vital attacks completed.