It is Machiavel’s observation, that the people when left to their own judgment, do seldom mistake their true interests; and indeed they naturally love the constitution they are born under, never desiring to change but under great oppressions.  However, they are to be deceived by several means.  It has often happened in Greece, and sometimes in Rome, that those very men who have contributed to shake off a former tyranny, have, instead of restoring the old constitution, deluded the People into a worse and more ignominious slavery.  Besides, all great changes have the same effect upon commonwealths that thunder has upon liquors, making the dregs fly up to the top:  the lowest plebeians rise to the head of affairs, and there preserve themselves by representing the nobles and other friends to the old government, as enemies to the public.  The encouraging of new mysteries and new deities, with the pretences of further purity in religion, hath likewise been a frequent topic to mislead the people.  And, not to mention more, the promoting false reports of dangers from abroad, hath often served to prevent them from fencing against real dangers at home.  By these and the like arts, in conjunction with a great depravity of manners, and a weak or corrupt administration, the madness of the people hath risen to such a height as to break in pieces the whole frame of the best instituted governments.  But however, such great frenzies being artificially raised, are a perfect force and constraint upon human nature, and under a wise steady prince, will certainly decline of themselves, settling like the sea after a storm, and then the true bent and genius of the people will appear.  Ancient and modern story are full of instances to illustrate what I say.  In our own island we had a great example of a long madness in the people, kept up by a thousand artifices like intoxicating medicines, till the constitution was destroyed; yet the malignity being spent, and the humour exhausted that served to foment it; before the usurpers could fix upon a new scheme, the people suddenly recovered, and peaceably restored the old constitution.

From what I have offered, it will be easy to decide, whether this late change in the dispositions of the people were a new madness, or a recovery from an old one.  Neither do I see how it can be proved that such a change had in any circumstance the least symptoms of madness, whether my description of it be right or no.  It is agreed, that the truest way of judging the dispositions of the people in the choice of their representatives, is by computing the county-elections; and in these, it is manifest that five in six are entirely for the present measures; although the court was so far from interposing its credit, that there was no change in the admiralty, not above one or two in the lieutenancy, nor any other methods used to influence elections.[4] The free unextorted addresses[5] sent some time before from every part of the kingdom,