an act of the whole legislature. It was wonderful to see how a prejudice
in favour of government in general, and an aversion to popular clamour,
could blind and contract such an understanding as Johnson's, in this
particular case; yet the wit, the sarcasm, the eloquent vivacity which
this pamphlet displayed, made it be read with great avidity at the time,
and it will ever be read with pleasure, for the sake of its composition.
That it endeavoured to infuse a narcotick indifference, as to publick
concerns, into the minds of the people, and that it broke out sometimes
into an extreme coarseness of contemptuous abuse, is but too evident.

It must not, however, be omitted, that when the storm of his violence
subsides, he takes a fair opportunity to pay a grateful compliment to
the King, who had rewarded his merit: 'These low-born rulers[328] have
endeavoured, surely without effect, to alienate the affections of the
people from the only King who for almost a century has much appeared to
desire, or much endeavoured to deserve them.' And, 'Every honest man
must lament, that the faction has been regarded with frigid neutrality
by the Tories, who being long accustomed to signalise their principles
by opposition to the Court, do not yet consider, that they have at last
a King who knows not the name of party, and who wishes to be the common
father of all his people.'

To this pamphlet, which was at once discovered to be Johnson's, several
answers came out, in which, care was taken to remind the publick of his
former attacks upon government, and of his now being a pensioner,
without allowing for the honourable terms upon which Johnson's pension
was granted and accepted, or the change of system which the British
court had undergone upon the accession of his present Majesty[329]. He
was, however, soothed[330] in the highest strain of panegyrick, in a poem
called _The Remonstrance_, by the Rev. Mr. Stockdale[331], to whom he was,