necessary for the security of the Church and State at a time when
the memory of the ruin of both, and of the hands by which that ruin
had been wrought, was fresh in the minds of men.

The Bank, the East India Company, and in general the moneyed
interest, had certainly nothing to apprehend like what they feared,
or affected to fear, from the Tories--an entire subversion of their
property. Multitudes of our own party would have been wounded by
such a blow. The intention of those who were the warmest seemed to
me to go no farther than restraining their influence on the
Legislature, and on matters of State; and finding at a proper season
means to make them contribute to the support and ease of a
government under which they enjoyed advantages so much greater than
the rest of their fellow-subjects. The mischievous consequence
which had been foreseen and foretold too, at the establishment of
those corporations, appeared visibly. The country gentlemen were
vexed, put to great expenses and even baffled by them in their
elections; and among the members of every parliament numbers were
immediately or indirectly under their influence. The Bank had been
extravagant enough to pull off the mask; and, when the Queen seemed
to intend a change in her ministry, they had deputed some of their
members to represent against it. But that which touched sensibly
even those who were but little affected by other considerations, was
the prodigious inequality between the condition of the moneyed men
and of the rest of the nation. The proprietor of the land, and the
merchant who brought riches home by the returns of foreign trade,
had during two wars borne the whole immense load of the national
expenses; whilst the lender of money, who added nothing to the
common stock, throve by the public calamity, and contributed not a
mite to the public charge.