Page:A Few Plain Observations Upon the End and Means of Political Reform.djvu/25

, even in times when they appeared to be most disregarded, they have possessed a prevailing, though a silent interest—and in the most corrupt and servile periods of our history, the terror of this sleeping lion has restrained the temerity that would invade, or the treachery that would surrender, those rights which it is interested to defend.

It is certainly to be expected that men of such a description as I have mentioned, standing forward upon such a question, on which many will differ from motives of conscience but more from those of prejudice, must expect at first to be baffled, calumniated, and insulted.—But is not this the common lot of public virtue in every situation—they must, and I trust they would be prepared to meet and bear with these things, until their plan should be duly