sufficient cause; not so, however, the Persons who had the best means of ascertaining the state of the Country; for they could have been induced to have recourse to a measure, at all times so obnoxious, by nothing less than a persuasion of its expediency.  ’But persuasion (an Objector will say) is produced in many ways; and even that degree of it which in these matters passes for conviction, depends less upon external testimony than on the habits and feelings of those by whom the testimony is to be weighed and decided upon.  A council for the administration of affairs is far from being as favourably circumstanced as a tribunal of law; for the Party, which is to pronounce upon the case, has had to procure the evidence, the sum and quality of which must needs have been affected by previously existing prejudices, and by any bias received in the process of collecting it.—­The privileges of the subject, one might think, would never be unjustifiably infringed, if it were only from considerations of self-interest; but power is apt to resort to unnecessary rigour in order to supply the deficiencies of authority forfeited by remissness; it is also not unfrequently exerted merely to shew that it is possessed; to shew this to others while power is a novelty, and when it has long ceased to be so, to prove it to ourselves.  Impatience of mind, moreover, puts men upon the use of strong and coarse tools, when those of lighter make and finer edge, with due care, might execute the work much better.  Above all, timidity flies to extremes;—­if the elements were at our command, how often would an inundation be called for, when a fire-engine would have proved equal to the service!—­Much more might be urged in this strain, and similar suggestions are all that the question will admit of; for to suppose a gross appetite of tyranny in Government, would be an insult to the reader’s understanding.  Happily for the Inhabitants of Westmoreland, as no dispositions existing among them could furnish a motive for this restrictive measure, so they will not be sorry that their remoteness from scenes of public confusion, has placed them where they will be slow to give an unqualified opinion upon its merits.  Yet it will not escape their discernment, that, if doubts might have been entertained whether the ignorant and distressed multitude, in other parts of the Island, were actually brought to a state that justified the suspension of this law, such doubts must have been weakened, if not wholly removed, by the subsequent behaviour of those in the upper ranks of society, who, in order to arraign the Government, and denounce the laws, have seized every opportunity of palliating sedition, if not of exculpating treason.  O far better to employ bad men in the detection of foul conspiracies, than to excuse and shelter—­(would that I were allowed to confine myself to these words)—­than to reward and honour—­every one that can contrive to make himself conspicuous by courses which, wherever they are not branded with infamy, find the national character in a state of degradation, ominous (if it should spread) for the existence of all that ought to be dear to Englishmen.