the taxes will be lightened; or though they have been fo often taught to hope it, that foap and candles will be cheaper; they expect no redrefs of grievances, for of no grievances but taxes do they complain; they wish not the extenfion of liberty, for they do not feel any restraint; about the fecurity of privilege or property they are totally careless, for they fee no property invaded, nor know, till they are told, that any privilege has fuffered violation.

Least of all do they expect, that any future parliament will leffen its own powers, or communicate to the people that authority which it has once obtained.

Yet a new parliament is fufficiently defirable. The year of election is a year of jollity; and what is ftill more delightful, a year of equality. The glutton now eats the delicacies for which he longed when he could not purchase them, and the drunkard has the pleasure of wine without the coft. The drone lives a-while without work, and the fhopkeeper, in the flow of money, raises his price. The mechanick that trembled at the prefence of Sir Jofeph, now bids him come again for an answer; and the poacher whofe gun has been feized, now finds an opportunity to reclaim it. Even the honest man is not difpleafed to fee himself important, and willingly refumes in two years that power which he had refigned for feven. Few love their friends fo well as not to defire fuperiority by unexpensive benefaction.

Yet, notwithstanding all these motives to compliance, the promoters of petitions have not been fuccefsful. Few could be perfuaded to lament evils

which they did not fuffer, or to folicit for redress which they do not want. The petition has been, in fome places, rejected; and perhaps in all but one, figned only by the meaneft and groffeft of the people.

Since this expedient now invented or revived to diftrefs the government, and equally practicable at all times by all who fhall be excluded from power and from profit, has produced fo little effect, let us confider the oppofition as no longer formidable. The great engine has recoiled upon them. They thought that the terms they fent were terms of weight, which would have amazed all and stumbled many; but the confternation is now over, and their foes Stand upright, as before.

With great propriety and dignity the king has, in his fpeech, neglected or forgotten them. He might easily know, that what was prefented as the fenfe of the people, is the fenfe only of the profligate and diffolute; and that whatever parliament fhould be convened, the fame petitioners would be ready, for the fame reafon, to request its diffolution.

As we once had a rebellion of the clowns, we have now an oppofition of the pedlars. The quiet of the nation has been for years difturbed by a faction, against which all factions ought to confpire; for its original principle is the defire of levelling; it is only animated under the name of zeal, by the natural malignity of the mean against the great.

When in the confufion which the English invafions produced in France, the villains, imagining that they had found the golden hour of emancipation,

took arms in their hands, the knights of both nations confidered the cause as common, and, fufpending the general hoftility, united to chaftife them.

The whole conduct of this defpicable faction is distinguished by plebeian groffnefs, and favage indecency. To mifrepresent the actions and the principles of their enemies is common to all parties; but the infolence of inyective, and brutality of reproach, which have lately prevailed, are peculiar to this.

An infallible characteristick of meannefs is cruelty. This is the only faction that has fhouted at the condemnation of a criminal, and that, when his innocence procured his pardon, has clamoured for his blood.

All other parties, however enraged at each other, have agreed to treat the throne with decency; but thefe low-born railers have attacked not only the authority, but the character of their sovereign, and have endeavoured, furely without effect, to alienate the affections of the people from the only king, who, for almoft a century, has much appeared to defire, or much endeavoured to deferve them. They have infulted him with rudeness and with menaces, which were never excited by the gloomy fullennefs of William, even when half the nation denied him their allegiance; nor by the dangerous bigotry of James, unless when he was finally driven from his palace; and with which fcarcely the open hoftilities of rebellion ventured to vilify the unhappy Charles, even in the remarks on the cabinet of Nafeby,

It is furely not unreasonable to hope, that the nation will confult its dignity, if not its fafety, and

difdain

difdain to be protected or enflaved by the declaimers or the plotters of a city-tavern. Had Rome fallen by the Catilinarian confpiracy, she might have confoled her fate by the greatness of her destroyers; but what would have alleviated the difgrace of England, had her government been changed by Tiler or by

Ket?

One part of the nation has never before contended with the other, but for fome weighty and apparent intereft. If the means were violent, the end was great. The civil war was fought for what each army called and believed the best religion, and the. best government. The ftruggle in the reign of Anne, was to exclude or reftore an exile king. We are now difputing, with almoft equal animofity, whether Middlefex fhall be reprefented or not by a criminal from a jail.

The only comfort left in fuch degeneracy is, that a lower state can be no longer poffible.

In this contemptuous cenfure, I mean not to include every single man. In all lead, fays the chemist, there is filver; and in all copper there is gold. But mingled maffes are juftly denominated by the greater quantity, and when the precious particles are not worth extraction, a faction and a pig must be melted down together to the forms and offices that chance allots them.

Fiunt urceoli, pelves, fartago, patellæ.

A few weeks will now fhew whether the government can be fhaken by empty noise, and whether the faction which depends upon its influence, has not deceived alike the Publick and itself. That it

fhould

fhould have continued till now, is fufficiently fhameful. None can indeed wonder that it has been fupported by the fetaries, the natural fomenters of fedition, and confederates of the rabble, of whofe religion little now remains but hatred of establishments, and who are angry to find feparation now only tolerated, which was once rewarded; but every honest man muft lament, that it has been regarded with frigid neutrality by the tories, who, being long accustomed to fignalize their principles by oppofition to the court, do not yet confider that they have at last a king who knows not the name of party, and who wishes to be the common father of all his people.

As a man inebriated only by vapours, foon recovers in the open air; a nation difcontented to madness, without any adequate caufe, will return to its wits and its allegiance when a little paufe has cooled it to reflection. Nothing, therefore, is neceffary, at this alarming crifis, but to confider the alarm as falfe. To make conceffions, is to encourage encroachment. Let the court defpife the faction, and the difappointed people will foon deride it.