and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of
doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the
declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the
people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a
breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the
government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add
rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the
arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that
stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to
betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is
doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it
contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is
easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once
attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.

Sect. 223. To this perhaps it will be said, that the people being
ignorant, and always discontented, to lay the foundation of government
in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose
it to certain ruin; and no government will be able long to subsist, if
the people may set up a new legislative, whenever they take offence at
the old one. To this I answer, Quite the contrary. People are not so
easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are
hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the
frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original
defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time, or corruption; it is
not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees
there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people
to quit their old constitutions, has, in the many revolutions which have
been seen in this kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to,
or, after some interval of fruitless attempts, still brought us back
again to our old legislative of king, lords and commons: and whatever
provocations have made the crown be taken from some of our princes
heads, they never carried the people so far as to place it in another
line.

Sect. 224. But it will be said, this hypothesis lays a ferment for
frequent rebellion. To which I answer,

First, No more than any other hypothesis: for when the people are made
miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill usage