Page:Conciones ad populum. Or, Addresses to the people (IA concionesadpopul00cole).pdf/60

 that they may be faithful to the Constitution—Enemies of human nature, that they may prove themselves the Adorers of the God of Peace—they hide from themselves the sense of their crime by the merit of their motive. Thus every man begins to suspect his neighbour, the warm ebullience of our hearts is stagnating: and I dread, lest by long stifling the expressions of Patriotism, we may at last lose the Feeling. "Society is in every state a blessing; Government even in its best state but a necessary evil." We are subverting this Blessing in order to support this Evil—or rather to support the desperate Quacks who are administering it with a Life-or-Death Temerity.

This causeless Panic prepared us to endure the further suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—endure it, after three successive Verdicts of impartial Juries had proved, that a Conspiracy against the Constitution had existed only in the foul imagination of the Accusers. "In the first of these Trials, (Mr. Sheridan observes,) one Pike was produced, which was afterwards withdrawn from mere shame—a formidable Instrument was talked of, to be employed against the Cavalry:—it appeared upon evidence to be no other than