It is not for me now to defend the convention of that day from the imputation of false policy and imprudence, in preferring the character of soldiers to that of citizens in their deliberative capacity, but I cannot help observing--First, that the Irish administration have never manifested any dislike of military bodies--real, mercenary, foreign soldiers,--expressing publicly _their_ sentiments on great public questions, when those sentiments coincided with the politics of the Castle--witness the manifestoes with which the Irish newspapers have for the last year or two been crouded, from Scotch and English mercenary troops, in which these zealous advocates for religion and liberty declare themselves friends to this 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.