“Do not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a Heathen, but if he be a virtuous man, if he love liberty and truth, if he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much ‘a believer,’ and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite and a knave.... It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime to be intolerant.... Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient.... Think, and talk, and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but _first be wise and good_.... Habits of sobriety, regularity, and thought must be entered into and firmly resolved upon.” Truer in his perception of the radical causes and cure of national evils than most party politicians, he urged the essential need of ethical and social change, without which mere political change of parties, or increase in material wealth of some sections in the community, must be valueless in any true estimate of a nation’s prosperity. Shelley also issued, in pamphlet form, _Proposals for an Association_--a plan for the formation of a vast society of Irish Catholics, to enforce their “emancipation”--a measure which was not brought about until twenty years later after long and vehement opposition. Two months were devoted to this generous but futile work; the people of Ireland did not move, and the young reformer returned to England, but without abandoning his _propaganda_ of the principles of liberty and justice. While residing in Somersetshire he published a paper entitled a _Declaration of Rights_, to circulate which recourse was had to ingenious methods. Four years later, in 1817, he published _A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom_. “He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the country; and acting upon his principle that Government is the servant of the Governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective opinions of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was that a large network of committees should be formed, and that by their means every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same method of advancing reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland.” At the same time, in presence of the incalculable amount of ignorance, destitution, and consequent venality of the great mass of the community--the necessary outcome of long ages of bad and selfish legislation--Universal Suffrage for the present appeared to him to be not a safe experiment. Evidence of controversial power, is his “grave and lofty” Letter to Lord Ellenborough, who had recently sentenced to imprisonment the printers of the _Age of Reason_, “an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny, which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophical if impassioned, seriousness.”[236]