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218 extravagances: especially as these important purposes are served by it, without bearing hard in the least upon any.

And the concurrent course of things, which brought on the ruin of our civil constitution, and what followed upon it, are no less instructive. The opposition, by legal and parliamentary methods, to prerogatives unknown to the constitution, was doubtless formed upon the justest fears in behalf of it. But new distrusts arose: new causes were given for them; these were most unreasonably aggravated. The better part gradually gave way to the more violent; and the better part themselves seem to have insisted upon impracticable securities against that one danger to liberty of which they had too great cause to be apprehensive; and wonderfully overlooked all other dangers to it, which yet were and ever will be many and great. Thus they joined in the current measures, till they were utterly unable to stop the mischiefs to which, with too much distrust on one side, and too little on the other, they had contributed. Never was a more remarkable example of the wise man's observation, that "the beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water," Prov. xvii. 14. For this opposition, thus began, surely without intent of proceeding to violence; yet, as it went on like an overflowing stream in its progress, it collects all sorts of impurities, and grew more outrageous as it grew more corrupted, till at length it bore down everything good before it. This naturally brought an arbitrary power in one shape, which was odious to everybody, and which could not be accommodated to the forms of our constitution, and put us in the utmost danger of having it entailed upon us under another, which might. For at the king's return, such was the just indignation of the public at what it had seen, and fear of feeling again what it had felt from the popular side : such the depression and compliance, not only of the more guilty, but also of those who, with with bitter meaning, had gone on with them; (and a great deal too for many of this character had