Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/58

50 to which an infinity of pensions and places is necessary, to the great impoverishment of the honest and the laborious part of your Majesty's subjects. And we suspect, fire! that your servants, to whom is intrusted the management of this market, feel less aversion from the horrors of a war from the knowledge, that a war may afford a specious pretext for multiplying such pensions, and doth recessarily [sic] increase their patronage to an extent which may be truly styled enormous.

We observe, fire! a second source of war in that noisy and incessant abuse of your majesty's measures; which it has become a fashion of state for a few men to pour forth in the legislature, and by which they make known their desires to be admitted to a share of your royal bounties. This abuse, springing altogether from their angry disappointment, or their eager hopes, or their impatient necessities, is mixed up with the noblest sentiments borrowed from the works of the enlightened and unluxurious ancients, and falsely and dangerously applied to these times and this nation. For we are convinced, fire! that our vast commerce has made general among us that dependence and selfishness and unmanly love of splendour and pleasure, which necessarily preclude all public spirit. Free-