which once spread consternation over ages
of ignorance, are now the recreations of inquisitive security. The sun
is no more lamented when it is eclipsed, than when it sets; and meteors
play their coruscations without prognostick or prediction.

The advancement of political knowledge may be expected to produce, in
time, the like effects. Causeless discontent, and seditious violence,
will grow less frequent and less 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 should meet with equal acceptance, or gain ground upon the world
with equal facility. The notions of the naturalist find mankind in a
state of neutrality, or, at worst, have nothing to encounter but
prejudice and vanity; prejudice without malignity, and vanity without
interest. But the politician's improvements are opposed by every passion
that can exclude conviction or suppress it; by ambition, by avarice, by
hope, and by terrour, by publick faction, and private animosity.

It is evident, whatever be the cause, that this nation, with all its
renown for speculation and for learning, has yet made little proficiency
in civil wisdom. We are still so much unacquainted with our own state,
and so unskilful in the pursuit of happiness, that we shudder without
danger, complain without grievances, and suffer our quiet to be
disturbed, and our commerce to be interrupted, by an opposition to the
government, raised only by interest, and supported only by clamour,
which yet has so 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 so industrious to spread suspicion,
and incite fury, from one end of the kingdom to the other, may be known,
by perusing the papers which have been, at once, presented as petitions
to the king, and exhibited in print as remonstrances to the people. It
may, therefore, not be improper to lay before the publick the
reflections of a man, who cannot favour the opposition, for he thinks it
wicked, and cannot fear it, for he thinks it weak.

The grievance which has produced all this tempest of outrage, the
oppression in which all other oppressions are included, the invasion
which has left us no property, the alarm that suffers no patriot to
sleep in quiet, is comprised in a vote of the house of commons, by which
the freeholders of M