to cloud,
with imaginary woes, the enjoyments of those whom others deem happy and
prosperous; faction, discontent, a querulous appetite for freedom, and
an inordinate ambition to acquire sudden pre-eminence, disturb public
tranquillity, when a country has long enjoyed the blessings of plenty
and repose. Previous to the commencement of that great rebellion, which
tore the crown and mitre from the degraded shield of Britain, our
forefathers, as we are informed by the noble historian of his country's
woes and shames[1], experienced an unusual share of prosperity. During
the early part of the reign of King Charles the First, he tells us,
"this nation enjoyed the greatest calm, and the fullest measure of
felicity that any people of any age for so long a time together had been
blessed with, to the envy and wonder of all the other parts of
Christendom." The portrait he draws is so striking, that I must exhibit
it in its native colours. "A happiness invidiously set off by this
distinction, that every other kingdom, every other state, were entangled
and almost destroyed by the fury of arms. The court was in great plenty,
or rather (which is the discredit of plenty) excess and luxury, the
country rich, and what is more, fully enjoying the pleasure of its own
wealth, and so the more easily corrupted with the pride and wantonness
of it. The church flourishing with learned and extraordinary men; trade
increased to that degree, that we were the exchange of Christendom;
foreign merchants looking upon nothing so much their own, as what they
had laid up in the warehouses of this kingdom; the royal navy in number
and equipage, very formidable at sea; lastly, for a complement of all
these blessings, they were enjoyed under the protection of a King of the
most harmless disposition; the most exemplary piety; the greatest
sobriety, chastity, and mercy, that ever Prince had been endowed with:
But all these blessings could but enable, not compel, us to be happy. We
wanted that sense, acknowledgement, and value of our own happiness,
which all but we had; and we took pains to make, when we could not find
ourselves miserable. There was in truth a strange absence of
understanding in most, and a strange perverseness of understanding in
the rest. The court full of excess, idleness, and luxury; the country
full of pride, mutiny, and discontent. Every man more troubled and
perplexed at what they called the violation of one law, than delighted
or pleas