s disposition, and of general
disgust contracted against popular privileges To prevent such an evil,
no expedient is more proper than to contain ourselves within the
bounds of moderation, and to consider, that all extremes naturally and
infallibly beget each other. In the same manner as the past usurpations
of the crown, however excusable on account of the necessity or
provocations whence they arose, have excited an immeasurable appetite
for liberty; let us beware, lest our encroachments, by introducing
anarchy, make the people seek shelter under the peaceable and despotic
rule of a monarch. Authority, as well as liberty, is requisite to
government; and is even requisite to the support of liberty itself,
by maintaining the laws, which can alone regulate and protect it. What
madness, while every thing is so happily settled under ancient forms and
institutions, now more exactly poised and adjusted, to try the hazardous
experiment of a new constitution, and renounce the mature wisdom of our
ancestors for the crude whimseys of turbulent innovators! Besides the
certain and inconceivable mischiefs of civil war, are not the perils
apparent, which the delicate frame of liberty must inevitably sustain
amidst the furious shock of arms? Whichever side prevails, she can
scarcely hope to remain inviolate, and may suffer no less, or rather
greater injuries from the boundless pretensions of forces engaged in her
cause, than from the invasion of enraged troops enlisted on the side of
monarchy.

The king, upon his return from Scotland, was received in London with the
shouts and acclamations of the people, and with every demonstration
of regard and affection.[*] Sir Richard Gournay, lord mayor, a man of
moderation and authority, had promoted these favorable dispositions, and
had engaged the populace, who so lately insulted the king, and who so
soon after made furious war upon him, to give him these marks of their
dutiful attachment. But all the pleasure which Charles reaped from this
joyous reception, was soon damped by the remonstrance of the commons,
which was presented him, together with a petition of a like strain. The
bad counsels which he followed are there complained of; his concurrence
in the Irish rebellion plainly insinuated; the scheme laid for the
introduction of Popery and superstition inveighed against; and, as a
remedy for all these evils, he is desired to intrust every office
and command to persons in whom his parliament