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 ment, and might have a tendency in it to cause us to grow into one. All the dispensations of God—his terrible ones, when he met us in the way of His judgment in a ten-years' civil war, and his merciful ones: they did not, they did not work upon us! No. But we had our humors and interests; and indeed I fear our humors went for more with us than even our interests. Certainly, as it falls out in such cases, our passions were more than our judgments. "Was not everything almost grown arbitrary? Who of us knew where or how to have right done him, without some obstruction or other intervening? Indeed we were almost grown arbitrary in everything.

What was the face that was upon our affairs as to the interest of the nation; as to the authority in the nation; to the magistracy; to the ranks and orders of men,—whereby England hath been known for hundreds of years? A nobleman, a gentleman, a yeoman; the distinction of these: that is a good interest of the nation, and a great one! The natural magistracy of the nation, was it not almost trampled under foot, under despite and contempt, by men of leveling principles? I beseech you, for the orders of men and ranks of men, did not that leveling principle tend to the reducing of all to an equality? Did it consciously think to do so; or did it only unconsciously practise toward that for property and interest? At all events, what was the purport of it but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as