Though the law is the greatest of those bodies that is of a different interest from the public at large, yet there are some others deserving notice, and requiring reformation.  It is the interest of all those who are connected with government to do away abuses that tend to endanger its security, or diminish its resources.

As the public revenue is all derived from those who labour, and as it can come from no other persons, if the prosperity and happiness of the subject were a mere matter of indifference, which it cannot be supposed to be; still it would be an object for government to preserve his resources undiminished.  It was our lot, in another chapter, to mention the enormous increase of the poor’s rate, which was in part attributed to the general increase of wealth; mal-administration is, however, another cause, and, the public is the more to be pitied, that the parish-officers defend their conduct against their constituents at the expense of their constituents.

In an inquiry after truth, it should be spoken without fear of offending; and, in this case, though the feelings of Englishmen may, perhaps, be hurt, and their pride wounded, it must be allowed, that if it were not for the mock-democratical form of administrating =sic= the funds for the maintenance of the poor, they would never suffer the extortion, and the bare-faced iniquities that are committed. {99} The ship-money, the poll-tax, the taxes on the Americans, and others, that have caused so much bloodshed and strife, never amounted to one-tenth, if all added together, of what the English public pays to be applied to maintain the poor, and administered by rude illiterate men, who render scarcely any account, and certainly, in general, evade all regular control.  Those administrators, though chosen by the people, always, while in office, imbibe l’esprit du corps, and make a common cause.

—–­ {99} In Brabant and Flanders the people were very jealous of their liberties.  They were, however, most terribly oppressed by the churchmen and lawyers. -=-

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The repairs of highways, bridges, streets, and expenses of police in general; whatever falls on parishes, towns, or counties, in the form of a tax or rate, is generally ill-administered, and the wastefulness increases with wealth.  The difficulty of controling or redressing those evils proceeds from the same spirit pervading all the separate administrations.  Government alone can remedy this; and it is both the interest and duty of the government to keep a strict watch over every body of men that has an interest separate from that of the public at large.  Similar to the human body, which becomes stiff and rigid with age, so, as states get older, regulation upon regulation, and encroachment on encroachment, add friction and difficulty to the machine, till its force is overcome, and the motion stops.  In the human body, if no violent disease intervenes, age occasions death.  In the body politic, if no accidental event comes to accelerate the effect, it brings on a revolution; hence, as a nation never dies, it throws off the old grievances, and begins a new career.