text:  We looked for the extinction of this national scourge by its own inevitable decays: through its own organization we had hoped that the Repeal Association should be confounded: we trusted that an enthusiasm founded in ignorance and which in no one stage could be said to have prospered must finally droop _spontaneously_ and that once _having_ drooped through mere defect of actions that bore any meaning or tendencies that offered any promise by no felicities of intrigue could it ever be revived