But violence can never longer fleep
Than human paffions pleafe. In ev'ry heart Are fown the sparks that kindle fiery war; Occafion needs but fan them, and they blaze. Cain had already shed a brother's blood; The deluge wafh'd it out; but left unquench'd The feeds of murder in the breaft of man. Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his defcending progeny was found The firft artificer of death; the fhrewd Contriver who first sweated at the forge, And forc'd the blunt and yet unbloodied steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war. Him, Tubal nam'd, the Vulcan of old times, The fword and faulchion their inventor claim, And the first fmith was the firft murd'rer's fon. His art furviv'd the waters; and ere long, When man was multiplied and fpread abroad In tribes and clans, and had begun to call' These meadows and that range of hills his own, The tasted sweets of property begat
Defire of more; and industry in fome T'improve and cultivate their just demefne, Made others covet what they faw fo fair. Thus war began on earth: And thofe in felf-defence.
these fought for fpoil, Savage at first,
The onfet, and irregular.
One eminent above the reft, for ftrength,
For ftratagem, or courage, or for all, Was chofen leader: kim they ferv'd in war,
And him in peace, for fake of warlike deeds
'Rev'renc'd no lefs. Who could with him com
Or who so worthy to controul themselves As he whose prowefs had fubdu'd their foes? Thus war affording field for the display
Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace, Which have their exigencies too, and call
For skill in government, at length made king. King was a name too proud for man to wear With modesty and meekness; and the crown, So dazzling in their eyes who set it on, Was fure t'intoxicate the brows it bound. It is the abject property of most,
That being parcel of the common mass, And destitute of means to raise themselves, They fink and fettle lower than they need. They know not what it is to feel within, A comprehensive faculty, that grafps
Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields,
Almoft without an effort, plans too vaft For their conception, which they cannot move. Confcious of impotence, they foon grow drunk With gazing, when they see an able man Step forth to notice; and befotted thus,
Build him a pedestal, and fay, ftand there, And be our admiration and our praise. They roll themselves before him in the dust, Then most deserving in their own account When most extravagant in his applause, As if exalting him they rais'd themselves. Thus by degrees, felf-cheated of their found And fober judgment, that he is but man, They demi-deify and fume him fo, That in due season he forgets it too. Inflated and aftrut with felf-conceit, He gulps the windy diet, and ere long, Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks The world was made in vain if not for him : Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born To bear his burdens; drawing in his gears, And fweating in his fervice, his caprice Becomes the foul that animates them all. He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives, Spent in the purchase of renown for him, An eafy reck'ning, and they think the fame. Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings Were burnish'd into heroes, and became The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp,
Storks among frogs, that have but croak'd and
Strange that fuch folly as lifts bloated man
To eminence fit only for a God,
Should ever drivel out of human lips
Ev'n in the cradled weakness of the world!
Still ftranger much, that when at length mankind Had reach'd the finewy firmness of their youth, And could difcriminate and argue well
On fubjects more myfterious, they were yet Babes in the caufe of freedom, and fhould fear And quake before the Gods themfelves had made. But above measure strange, that neither proof Of fad experience, nor examples fet
By fome whofe patriot virtue had prevail'd, Can even now, when they are grown mature In wifdom, and with philofophic deeps Familiar, ferve t'emancipate the reft! Such dupes are men to cuftom, and so prone To rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead A courfe of long obfervance for its use, That even fervitude, the worst of ills, Because deliver'd down from fire to son, Is kept and guarded as a facred thing. But is it fit, or can it bear the shock Of rational difcuffion, that a man, Compounded and made up like other nien Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust And folly in as ample measure meet As in the bofom of the flaves he rules, Should be a defpot abfolute, and boast Himself the only freeman of his land?
Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will Wage war, with any or with no pretence Of provocation giv'n or wrong fustain❜d, And force the beggarly laft doit, by means That his own humour dictates from the clutch Of poverty, that thus he may procure
His thousands, weary of penurious life, A fplendid opportunity to die?
Say ye, who, (with less prudence than of old; Jotham afcrib'd to his affembled trees In politic convention) put your truft I' th' fhadow of a bramble, and reclin'd In fancied peace beneath his dang'rous branch, Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway, Where find ye paffive fortitude? Whence springs Your felf-denying zeal, that holds it good To ftroke the prickly grievance, and to hang His thorns with ftreamers of continual praise? We too are friends to loyalty. We love The king who loves the law; refpects his bounds, And reigns content within them: him we ferve Freely and with delight, who leave us free ;- But récollecting ftill that he is man,
We truft him not too far. King though he be, And king in England too, he may be weak, And vain enough to be ambitious ftill; May exercise amifs his proper pow'rs,
Or covet more than freemen chuse to grant :
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