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 were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to be even more so.

With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley’s position as a practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the title of “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 opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers.  The plan proposed was that a huge 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.  How moderated were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved by the following sentence:—­“With respect to Universal Suffrage, I confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril.  I think that none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in direct taxes ought at present to send members to Parliament.”  As in the case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown that Shelley’s hopes were not exaggerated.