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POLITICAL

TRA C T S.

Fallitur, egregio quifquis fub principe credit

Servitium, nunquam Libertas gratior extat

Quam fub Rege pio.

CLAUDIANUS.

THE

FALSE ALARM.

[1770.]

NE of the chief advantages derived by the pre

ONE

fent generation from the improvement and diffufion of philofophy, is deliverance from unneceffary terrours, and exemption from falfe alarms. The unufual appearances, whether regular or accidental, which once spread confternation over ages of ignorance, are now the recreations of inquifitive fecurity. The fun is no more lamented when it is eclipfed, than when it fets; and meteors play their corufcations without prognoftick or prediction.

The advancement of political knowledge may be expected to produce in time the like effects. Caufeless discontent and feditious violence will grow lefs frequent, and lefs formidable, as the science of government is better ascertained, by a diligent ftudy of the theory of man.

It is not indeed to be expected, that phyfical and political truth should meet with equal acceptance, or gain ground upon the world with equal facility. The notions of the naturalist find mankind in a state of neutrality, or at worst have nothing to encounter but prejudice and vanity; prejudice without malignity, VOL. VIII.

F

and

and vanity without intereft. But the politician's improvements are opposed by every paffion that can exclude conviction or suppress it; by ambition, by avarice, by hope, and by terrour, by publick faction, and private animofity.

It is evident, whatever be the cause, that this nation, with all its renown for fpeculation and for learning, has yet made little proficiency in civil wisdom. We are still so much unacquainted with our own ftate, and fo unfkilful in the pursuit of happiness, that we fhudder without danger, complain without grievances, and fuffer our quiet to be difturbed, and our commerce to be interrupted, by an oppofition to the government, raised only by intereft, and fupported only by clamour, which yet has fo far prevailed upon ignorance and timidity, that many favour it as reasonable, and many dread it as powerful.

What is urged by those who have been fo induftrious to spread fufpicion, and incite fury from one end of the kingdom to the other, may be known by perufing the papers which have been at once presented as petitions to the king, and exhibited in print as remonftrances to the people. It may therefore not be improper to lay before the Publick the reflections of a man who cannot favour the oppofition, for he thinks it wicked, and cannot fear it, for he thinks it weak.

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The grievance which has produced all this tempeft of outrage, the oppreffion in which all other op preffions are included, the invafion which has left us no property, the alarm that fuffers no patriot to fleep in quiet, is comprifed in a vote of the House

of

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