POLITICAL

TRA C T S.

Fallitur, egregio quifquis fub principe credit

Servitium, nunquam Libertas gratior extat

Quam fub Rege pio.

CLAUDIANUS,

T

THE

FALSE ALARM.

[1770.]

ONE

NE of the chief advantages derived by the pre-" fent generation from the improvement and diffusion of philosophy, is deliverance from unneceffary terrours, and exemption from falfe alarms. The unufual appearances, whether regular or accidental, which once spread confternation over ages of ignorance, are now the recreations of inquifitive fecurity. The fun is no more lamented when it is eclipsed, than when it fets; and meteors play their corufcations without prognoftick or prediction.

The advancement of political knowledge may be expected to produce in time the like effects. Caufelefs difcontent and feditious violence will grow lefs frequent, and lefs formidable, as the science of government is better ascertained, by a diligent study of the theory of man.

It is not indeed to be expected, that physical and political truth fhould meet with equal acceptance, or gain ground upon the world with equal facility. The notions of the naturalift find mankind in a state of neutrality, or at worst have nothing to encounter but prejudice and vanity; prejudice without malignity, VOL. VIII.

F

and

and vanity without interest. But the politician's improvements are oppofed by every paffion that can exclude conviction or fupprefs it; by ambition, by avarice, by hope, and by terrour, by publick faction, and private animofity.

It is evident, whatever be the cause, that this nation, with all its renown for fpeculation and for learning, has yet made little proficiency in civil wisdom. We are still so much unacquainted with our own ftate, and fo unskilful in the pursuit of happiness, that we fhudder without danger, complain without grievances, and fuffer our quiet to be disturbed, and our commerce to be interrupted, by an oppofition to the government, raised only by intereft, and supported only by clamour, which yet has fo far prevailed upon ignorance and timidity, that many favour it as reasonable, and many dread it as powerful.

What is urged by those who have been fo induftrious to fpread fufpicion, and incite fury from one end of the kingdom to the other, may be known by perufing the papers which have been at once presented as petitions to the king, and exhibited in print as remonftrances to the people. It may therefore not be improper to lay before the Publick the reflections of a man who cannot favour the oppofition, for he thinks it wicked, and cannot fear it, for he thinks it weak.

The grievance which has produced all this tempeft of outrage, the oppreffion in which all other oppreffions are included, the invafion which has left us no property, the alarm that fuffers no patriot to fleep in quiet, is comprifed in a vote of the House

of

of Commons, by which the freeholders of Middlefex are deprived of a Briton's birth-right, representation in parliament.

They have indeed received the ufual writ of election, but that writ, alas! was malicious mockery; they were infulted with the form, but denied the reality, for there was one man excepted from their choice.

Non de vi, neque cæde, nec veneno,

Sed lis eft mihi de tribus capellis.

The character of the man thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would difdain to speak ill of him of whom no man speaks well. It is fufficient that he is expelled the House of Commons, and confined in jail as being legally convicted of fedition and impiety.

That this man cannot be appointed one of the guardians and counfellors of the church and ftate, is a grievance not to be endured. Every lover of liberty flands doubtful of the fate of posterity, because the chief county in England cannot take its reprefentative from a jail.

Whence Middlesex should obtain the right of being denominated the chief county, cannot eafily be difcovered; it is indeed the county where the chief city happens to ftand, but how that city treated the favourite of Middlefex, is not yet forgotten. The county, as diftinguished from the city, has no claim to particular confideration.

That a man was in jail for fedition and impiety, would, I believe, have been within memory a fufficient reason why he should not come out of jail a legiflator.

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