system, it is
needless to explain. It is the perpetual subject of their own
complaints.

The Court party resolve the whole into faction. Having said something
before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that, when they give
this account of the prevalence of faction, they present no very
favourable aspect of the confidence of the people in their own
Government. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with
a variety of projects for substituting something else in the place of
that great and only foundation of Government, the confidence of the
people, every attempt will but make their condition worse. When men
imagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they neither
love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roast
beef of Old England that will persuade them to sit down to the table that
is spread for them. When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals,
and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their
institution, they find in those names of degenerated establishments only
new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when full of life and
beauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort; when dead and
putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former
endearments. A sullen gloom, and furious disorder, prevail by fits: the
nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in that
season of fulness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the
First. A species of men to whom a state of order would become a sentence
of obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of
intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinister
piety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders which are the parents
of all their consequence. Superficial observers consider such persons as
the cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they are nothing more
than the effect of it. Good men look upon this distracted scene with
sorrow and indignation. Their hands are tied behind them. They are
despoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile the
strength of Government with the rights of the people. They stand in a
most distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hope
better things from temporary confusion, than from established servitude.
In the mean time, the voice of law is not to be heard. Fierce
licentiousness begets violent restraints. Th