If all zealous Protestants had been publicly urged
to join an association for the avowed purpose of singing a hymn or two
occasionally, and hearing some indifferent speeches made, and ultimately
of petitioning Parliament not to pass an act for abolishing the
penal laws against Roman Catholic priests, the penalty of perpetual
imprisonment denounced against those who educated children in that
persuasion, and the disqualification of all members of the Romish church
to inherit real property in the United Kingdom by right of purchase or
descent,--matters so far removed from the business and bosoms of the
mass, might perhaps have called together a hundred people. But when
vague rumours got abroad, that in this Protestant association a secret
power was mustering against the government for undefined and mighty
purposes; when the air was filled with whispers of a confederacy
among the Popish powers to degrade and enslave England, establish an
inquisition in London, and turn the pens of Smithfield market into
stakes and cauldrons; when terrors and alarms which no man understood
were perpetually broached, both in and out of Parliament, by one
enthusiast who did not understand himself, and bygone bugbears which had
lain quietly in their graves for centuries, were raised again to haunt
the ignorant and credulous; when all this was done, as it were, in the
dark, and secret invitations to join the Great Protestant Association in
defence of religion, life, and liberty, were dropped in the public ways,
thrust under the house-doors, tossed in at windows, and pressed into
the hands of those who trod the streets by night; when they glared
from every wall, and shone on every post and pillar, so that stocks and
stones appeared infected with the common fear, urging all men to join
together blindfold in resistance of they knew not what, they knew not
why;--then the mania spread indeed, and the body, still increasing every
day, grew forty thousand strong.
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