nter eos aequa
libertas, eadem nobilitas, par dignitas, similisque potestas._"

Here is displayed at once the whole of the grand _arcanum_ pretended to
be found out by the National Assembly, for securing future happiness,
peace, and tranquillity. There seems, however, to be some doubt whether
this venerable protomartyr of philosophy was inclined to carry his own
declaration of the rights of men more rigidly into practice than the
National Assembly themselves. He was, like them, only preaching
licentiousness to the populace to obtain power for himself, if we may
believe what is subjoined by the historian.

"Cumque haec et _plura alia deliramenta_" (think of this old fool's
calling all the wise maxims of the French Academy _deliramenta_!)
"praedicasset, commune vulgus cum tanto favore prosequitur, ut
_exclamarent eum archiepiscopum futurum, et regni cancellarium_."
Whether he would have taken these situations under these names, or would
have changed the whole nomenclature of the State and Church, to be
understood in the sense of the Revolution, is not so certain. It is
probable that he would have changed the names and kept the substance of
power.

We find, too, that they had in those days their _society for
constitutional information_, of which the Reverend John Ball was a
conspicuous member, sometimes under his own name, sometimes under the
feigned name of John Schep. Besides him it consisted (as Knyghton tells
us) of persons who went by the real or fictitious names of Jack Mylner,
Tom Baker, Jack Straw, Jack Trewman, Jack Carter, and probably of many
more. Some of the choicest flowers of the publications charitably
written and circulated by them gratis are upon record in Walsingham and
Knyghton: and I am inclined to prefer the pithy and sententious brevity
of these _bulletins_ of ancient rebellion before the loose and confused
prolixity of the modern advertisements of constitutional information.
They contain more good morality and less bad politics, they had much
more foundation in real oppression, and they have the recommendation of
being much better adapted to the capacities of those for whose
instruction they were intended. Whatever laudable pains the teachers of
the present day appear to take, I cannot compliment them so far as to
allow that they have succeeded in writing down to the level of their
pupils, _the members of the sovereign_, with half the ability of Jack
Carter and the Reverend John Ball. That my rea