NUMB. 25.[1]

FROM THURSDAY JANUARY 11, TO THURSDAY JANUARY 18, 1710.[2]

  Parva momenta in spem metumque impellunt animos.[3]

Hopes are natural to most men, especially to sanguine complexions, and among the various changes that happen in the course of public affairs, they are seldom without some grounds:  Even in desperate cases, where it is impossible they should have any foundation, they are often affected, to keep a countenance, and make an enemy think we have some resource which they know nothing of.  This appears to have been for some months past the condition of those people, whom I am forced, for want of other phrases, to called the ruined party.  They have taken up since their fall, some real, and some pretended hopes.  When the E. of S[underlan]d was discarded, they hoped her M[ajesty] would proceed no farther in the change of her ministry, and had the insolence to misrepresent her words to foreign states.  They hoped, nobody durst advise the dissolution of the Parliament.  When this was done, and further alterations made at Court, they hoped and endeavoured to ruin the credit of the nation.  They likewise hoped that we should have some terrible loss abroad, which would force us to unravel all, and begin again upon their bottom.  But, of all their hopes, whether real or assumed, there is none more extraordinary than that which they now would seem to place their whole confidence in:  that this great turn of affairs was only occasioned by a short madness of the people, from which they will recover in a little time, when their eyes are open, and they grow cool and sober enough to consider the truth of things, and how much they have been deceived.  It is not improbable, that some few of the deepest sighted among these reasoners, are well enough convinced how vain all such hopes must be:  but for the rest, the wisest of them seem to have been very ill judges of the people’s dispositions, the want of which knowledge was a principal occasion to hasten their ruin; for surely had they suspected which way the popular current inclined, they never would have run against it by that impeachment.  I therefore conclude, they generally are so blind, as to imagine some comfort from this fantastical opinion, that the people of England are at present distracted, but will shortly come to their senses again.

For the service therefore of our adversaries and friends, I shall briefly examine this point, by shewing what are the causes and symptoms of a people’s madness, and how it differs from their natural bent and inclination.