the identical snare which has proved fatal to
their predecessors. When an arbitrary imposition is attempted upon the
subject, undoubtedly it will not bear on its forehead the name of
_Ship-money_. There is no danger that an extension of the _Forest laws_
should be the chosen mode of oppression in this age. And when we hear
any instance of ministerial rapacity, to the prejudice of the rights of
private life, it will certainly not be the exaction of two hundred
pullets, from a woman of fashion, for leave to lie with her own
husband.[103]

Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent upon them;
and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully
formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to
resist its growth during its infancy.

Against the being of Parliament, I am satisfied, no designs have ever
been entertained since the revolution. Every one must perceive, that it
is strongly the interest of the court, to have some second cause
interposed between the ministers and the people. The gentlemen of the
House of Commons have an interest equally strong in sustaining the part
of that intermediate cause. However they may hire out the _usufruct_ of
their voices, they never will part with the _fee and inheritance_.
Accordingly those who have been of the most known devotion to the will
and pleasure of a court have, at the same time, been most forward in
asserting a high authority in the House of Commons. When they knew who
were to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thought
it never could be carried too far. It must be always the wish of an
unconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons, who are entirely
dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely
dependent upon their pleasure. It was soon discovered, that the forms of
a free, and the ends of an arbitrary government, were things not
altogether incompatible.

The power of the crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown
up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of
Influence. An influence, which operated without noise and without
violence; an influence, which converted the very antagonist into the
instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of
growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of
the country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a
prerogative, that, being only the of