contrive our ruin. What if the Jews should multiply, and become a formidable party among us? Would the dissenters join in alliance with them likewise, because they agree already insome general principles, and because the Jews are allowed to be a stiffnecked and rebellious people?
It is the part of wise men to conceal their passions, when they are not in circumstances of exerting them to purpose: the arts of getting power, and preserving indulgence, are very different. For the former, the reasonable hopes of the dissenters seem to be at an end; their comrades, the whigs and freethinkers, are just in a condition proper to be forsaken; and the parliament, as well as the body of the people, will be deluded no longer. Besides, it sometimes happens for a cause to be exhausted[1] and worn out, as that of the whigs in general seems at present to be: the nation had felt enough of it. It is as vain to hope restoring that decayed interest, as for a man of sixty to talk of entering on a new scene of life, that is only proper for youth and vigour. New circumstances and new men must arise, as well as new occasions, which are not likely to happen in our time. So that the dissenters have no game left at present, but to secure their indulgence: in order to which, I will be so bold as to offer them some advice.
First, That until some late proceedings are a little forgot, they would take care not to provoke, by any violence of tongue or pen, so great a majority as there is now against them; nor keep up any longer
- ↑ 'It sometimes happens for a cause to be exhausted,' &c. A vulgar ungrammatical idiom; it should be 'it sometimes happens that a cause is exhausted,' &c.
