session of Government. What
good consequences followed from it, we have all seen; whether with regard
to virtue, public or private; to the ease and happiness of the Sovereign;
or to the real strength of Government. But as so much stress was then
laid on the necessity of this new project, it will not be amiss to take a
view of the effects of this Royal servitude and vile durance, which was
so deplored in the reign of the late Monarch, and was so carefully to be
avoided in the reign of his successor. The effects were these.

In times full of doubt and danger to his person and family, George the
Second maintained the dignity of his Crown connected with the liberty of
his people, not only unimpaired, but improved, for the space of thirty-
three years. He overcame a dangerous rebellion, abetted by foreign
force, and raging in the heart of his kingdoms; and thereby destroyed the
seeds of all future rebellion that could arise upon the same principle.
He carried the glory, the power, the commerce of England, to a height
unknown even to this renowned nation in the times of its greatest
prosperity: and he left his succession resting on the true and only true
foundation of all national and all regal greatness; affection at home,
reputation abroad, trust in allies, terror in rival nations. The most
ardent lover of his country cannot wish for Great Britain a happier fate
than to continue as she was then left. A people emulous as we are in
affection to our present Sovereign, know not how to form a prayer to
Heaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues, or a higher state of
felicity and glory, than that he should live, and should reign, and, when
Providence ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustrious
predecessor.

A great Prince may be obliged (though such a thing cannot happen very
often) to sacrifice his private inclination to his public interest. A
wise Prince will not think that such a restraint implies a condition of
servility; and truly, if such was the condition of the last reign, and
the effects were also such as we have described, we ought, no less for
the sake of the Sovereign whom we love, than for our own, to hear
arguments convincing indeed, before we depart from the maxims of that
reign, or fly in the face of this great body of strong and recent
experience.

One of the principal topics which was then, and has been since, much
employed by that political school, is an effectual terror of the growth
of