the taxes will be lightened; or,
though they have been so often taught to hope it, that soap and candles
will be cheaper; they expect no redress of grievances, for of no
grievances, but taxes, do they complain; they wish not the extension of
liberty, for they do not feel any restraint; about the security of
privilege or property they are totally careless, for they see no
property invaded, nor know, till they are told, that any privilege has
suffered violation.

Least of all do they expect, that any future parliament will lessen its
own powers, or communicate to the people that authority which it has
once obtained.

Yet a new parliament is sufficiently desirable. The year of election is
a year of jollity; and, what is still more delightful, a year of
equality: the glutton now eats the delicacies for which he longed when
he could not purchase them, and the drunkard has the pleasure of wine,
without the cost: the drone lives awhile without work, and the
shopkeeper, in the flow of money, raises his price: the mechanick, that
trembled at the presence of sir Joseph, now bids him come again for an
answer: and the poacher, whose gun has been seized, now finds an
opportunity to reclaim it. Even the honest man is not displeased to see
himself important, and willingly resumes, in two years, that power which
he had resigned for seven. Few love their friends so well as not to
desire superiority by unexpensive benefaction.

Yet, notwithstanding all these motives to compliance, the promoters of
petitions have not been successful. Few could be persuaded to lament
evils which they did not suffer, or to solicit for redress which they do
not want. The petition has been, in some places, rejected; and, perhaps,
in all but one, signed only by the meanest and grossest of the people.

Since this expedient, now invented or revived, to distress the
government, and equally practicable, at all times, by all who shall be
excluded from power and from profit, has produced so little effect, let
us consider the opposition as no longer formidable. The great engine has
recoiled upon them. They thought, that _the terms_, they _sent, were
terms of weight_, which would have _amazed all, and stumbled many_; but
the consternation is now over, and their foes _stand upright_, as
before.

With great propriety and dignity the king has, in his speech, neglected
or forgotten them. He might easily know, that what was presented, as the
sense of the people, is t