ontributions to sedition, sometimes apply to a man of higher rank and
more enlightened mind, who, instead of lending them his name, calmly
reproves them for being seducers of the people.

You who are here, says he, complaining of venality, are yourselves the
agents of those who having estimated themselves at too high a price, are
only angry that they are not bought. You are appealing from the
parliament to the rabble, and inviting those who, scarcely, in the most
common affairs, distinguish right from wrong, to judge of a question
complicated with law written and unwritten, with the general principles
of government, and the particular customs of the house of commons; you
are showing them a grievance, so distant that they cannot see it, and so
light that they cannot feel it; for how, but by unnecessary intelligence
and artificial provocation, should the farmers and shopkeepers of
Yorkshire and Cumberland know or care how Middlesex is represented?
Instead of wandering thus round the county to exasperate the rage of
party, and darken the suspicions of ignorance, it is the duty of men
like you, who have leisure for inquiry, to lead back the people to their
honest labour; to tell them, that submission is the duty of the
ignorant, and content the virtue of the poor; that they have no skill in
the art of government, nor any interest in the dissensions of the great;
and when you meet with any, as some there are, whose understandings are
capable of conviction, it will become you to allay this foaming
ebullition, by showing them, that they have as much happiness as the
condition of life will easily receive; and that a government, of which
an erroneous or unjust representation of Middlesex is the greatest crime
that interest can discover, or malice can upbraid, is government
approaching nearer to perfection, than any that experience has known, or
history related.

The drudges of sedition wish to change their ground; they hear him with
sullen silence, feel conviction without repentance, and are confounded,
but not abashed; they go forward to another door, and find a kinder
reception from a man enraged against the government, because he has just
been paying the tax upon his windows.

That a petition for a dissolution of the parliament will, at all times,
have its favourers, may be easily imagined. The people, indeed, do not
expect that one house of commons will be much honester or much wiser
than another; they do not suppose that