laws, when it does not directly touch themselves, and care not what injustice is practised upon a man, whose moral character they piously think themselves obliged to condemn. In any other circumstances, the house of commons must have forfeited all credit and dignity, if, after such gross provocation, they had permitted those five gentlemen to sit any longer among them. We should then have seen and felt the operation of a precedent, which is represented to be perfectly barren and harmless. But there is a set of men in this country, whose understandings measure the violation of law, by the magnitude of the instance, not by the important consequences which flow directly from the principle, and the minister, I presume, did not think it safe to quicken their apprehensions too soon. Had Mr. Hampden reasoned and acted like the moderate men of these days, instead of hazarding his whole fortune in a lawsuit with the crown, he would have quietly paid the twenty shillings demanded of him,—the Stuart family would probably have continued upon the throne; and at this moment, the imposition of ship-money would
