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