convenience, and
serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and
practice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full
feast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxon
constitution, and discharging all the splendid bile of his virtuous
indignation on King John and King James, sits down perfectly satisfied to
the coarsest work and homeliest job of the day he lives in. I believe
there was no professed admirer of Henry the Eighth among the instruments
of the last King James; nor in the court of Henry the Eighth was there, I
dare say, to be found a single advocate for the favourites of Richard the
Second.

No complaisance to our Court, or to our age, can make me believe nature
to be so changed but that public liberty will be among us, as among our
ancestors, obnoxious to some person or other, and that opportunities will
be furnished for attempting, at least, some alteration to the prejudice
of our constitution. These attempts will naturally vary in their mode,
according to times and circumstances. For ambition, though it has ever
the same general views, has not at all times the same means, nor the same
particular objects. A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is
worn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion. Besides, there are
few statesmen so very clumsy and awkward in their business as to fall
into 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.

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
H