ame in the body
national as in the body natural, where the blood and spirits were
driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways down;--a
stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was death in both cases.

There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by
French politicks or French invasions;--nor was he so much in pain of a
consumption from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in
our constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined;--but
he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off, all at
once, in a state-apoplexy;--and then he would say, The Lord have mercy
upon us all.

My father was never able to give the history of this distemper,--without
the remedy along with it.

'Was I an absolute prince,' he would say, pulling up his breeches with
both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, 'I would appoint able
judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of
every fool's business who came there;--and if, upon a fair and candid
hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home, and
come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer's sons,
&c. &c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from constable
to constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of their legal
settlements. By this means I shall take care, that my metropolis
totter'd not thro' its own weight;--that the head be no longer too big
for the body;--that the extremes, now wasted and pinn'd in, be restored
to their due share of nourishment, and regain with it their natural
strength and beauty:--I would effectually provide, That the meadows and
corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and sing;--that good chear and
hospitality flourish once more;--and that such weight and influence be
put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of my kingdom, as should
counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility are now taking from them.

'Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen's seats,' he would ask,
with some emotion, as he walked across the room, 'throughout so many
delicious provinces in France? Whence is it that the few remaining
Chateaus amongst them are so dismantled,--so unfurnished, and in so
ruinous and desolate a condition?--Because, Sir' (he would say) 'in that
kingdom no man has any country-interest to support;--the little interest
of any kind which any man has any where in it, is concentrated in the
court, and the look