votes which had always been allowed, and which, therefore, had the authority by which all votes are given, that of custom uninterrupted.  When the commons determine who shall be constituents, they may, with some propriety, be said to make law, because those determinations have, hitherto, for the sake of quiet, been adopted by succeeding parliaments.  A vote, therefore, of the house, when it operates as a law, is to individuals a law only temporary, but to communities perpetual.

Yet, though all this has been done, and though, at every new parliament, much of this is expected to be done again, it has never produced, in any former time, such an alarming crisis.  We have found, by experience, that though a squire has given ale and venison in vain, and a borough has been compelled to see its dearest interest in the hands of him whom it did not trust, yet the general state of the nation has continued the same.  The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and, whatever talk has been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field commonly reaped it; and he that built a house was master of the door; the vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be suffered, by any private man, or single community, was local and temporary, it neither spread far, nor lasted long.

The nation looked on with little care, because there did not seem to be much danger.  The consequence of small irregularities was not felt, and we had not yet learned to be terrified by very distant enemies.

But quiet and security are now at an end.  Our vigilance is quickened, and our comprehension is enlarged.  We not only see events in their causes, but before their causes; we hear the thunder while the sky is clear, and see the mine sprung before it is dug.  Political wisdom has, by the force of English genius, been improved, at last, not only to political intuition, but to political prescience.

But it cannot, I am afraid, be said, that as we are grown wise, we are made happy.  It is said of those who have the wonderful power called second sight, that they seldom see any thing but evil:  political second sight has the same effect; we hear of nothing but of an alarming crisis, of violated rights, and expiring liberties.  The morning rises upon new wrongs, and the dreamer passes the night in imaginary shackles.

The sphere of anxiety is now enlarged; he that hitherto cared only for himself, now cares for the publick; for he has learned, that the happiness of individuals is comprised in the prosperity of the whole; and that his country never suffers, but he suffers with it, however it happens that he feels no pain.

Fired with this fever of epidemick patriotism, the tailor slips his thimble, the draper drops his yard, and the blacksmith lays down his hammer; they meet at an honest ale-house, consider the state of the nation, read or hear the last petition, lament the miseries of the time, are alarmed at the dreadful crisis, and subscribe to the support of the bill of rights.