Guy Fawkes, a spanish officer, employed for the purpose, lay at
the door, on the 5th of November, 1605, with the matches, or _means_, in
his pocket, which should set in operation the prodigious dormant
_power_, which would hurl to destruction James I., the royal family, and
the protestant parliament, give the ascendancy to the Catholics, and
change the whole political condition of the nation. The _project_ was
discovered, the _means_ were removed, the _cause_ taken away, and the
threatened _effects_ were prevented.

The =cause= of action is the immediate subject which precedes or tends
to produce the action, without which it would not take place. It may
result from volition, inherent tendency, or communicated impulse; and is
known to exist from the effects produced by it, in the altered or new
condition of the thing on which it operates; which change would not have
been effected without it.

Causes are to be sought for by tracing back thro the effects which are
produced by them. The factory is put in operation, and the cloth is
manufactured. The careless observer would enter the building and see the
spindles, looms, and wheels operated by the hands, and go away satisfied
that he has seen enough, seen all. But the more careful will look
farther. He will trace each band and wheel, each cog and shaft, down by
the balance power, to the water race and floom; or thro the complicated
machinery of the steam engine to the piston, condenser, water, wood, and
fire; marking a new, more secret, and yet more efficient cause at each
advancing step. But all this curiously wrought machinery is not the
product of chance, operated without care. A superior cause must be
sought in human skill, in the deep and active ingenuity of man. Every
contrivance presupposes a contriver. Hence there must have been a power
and means sufficient to combine and regulate the power of the water, or
generate and direct the steam. That power is vested in man; and hence,
man stands as the cause, in relation to the whole process operated by
wheels, bands, spindles, and looms. Yet we may say, with propriety, that
the water, or the steam; the water-wheel, or the piston; the shafts,
bands, cogs, pullies, spindles, springs, treddles, harnesses, reeds,
shuttles, an almost endless concatenation of instruments, are alike the
_causes_, which tend to produce the final result; for let one of these
intermediate causes be removed, and the whole power will be diverted,
and