I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong.  They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this.  But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.  Experience may perhaps justify me in going further.  When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported, that there has been generally something found amiss in the constitution, or in the conduct of government.  The people have no interest in disorder.  When they do wrong, it is their error, and not their crime.  But with the governing part of the state, it is for otherwise.  They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake. “Les revolutions qui arrivent dans les grands etats ne sont point un effect du hazard, ni du caprice des peuples.  Rien ne revolte les grands_ d’un royaume comme un gouvernement foible et derange.  Pour la populace, ce n’est jamais par envie d’attaquer qu’elle se souleve, mais par impatience de souffrir._"[102] These are the words of a great man; of a minister of state; and a zealous assertor of monarchy.  They are applied to the system of favoritism which was adopted by Henry the Third of France, and to the dreadful consequences it produced.  What he says of revolutions, is equally true of all great disturbances.  If this presumption in favor of the subjects against the trustees of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation; because it is more easy to change an administration, than to reform a people.

Upon a supposition, therefore, that, in the opening of the cause, the presumptions stand equally balanced between the parties, there seems sufficient ground to entitle any person to a fair hearing, who attempts some other scheme beside that easy one which is fashionable in some fashionable companies, to account for the present discontents.  It is not to be argued that we endure no grievance, because our grievances are not of the same sort with those under which we labored formerly; not precisely those which we bore from the Tudors, or vindicated on the Stuarts.  A great change has taken place in the affairs of this country.  For in the silent lapse of events as material alterations have been insensibly brought about in the policy and character of governments and nations, as those which have been marked by the tumult of public revolutions.

It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it.  I have constantly observed, that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics.  There are but very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before their eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole into a distinct system.  But in books everything is settled for them, without the exertion