of liberty burning strongly in the nation at this period. It gave a rallying point to that indefinite discontent, which is excited by an ill opinion of rulers, and to that disinterested, though ignorant patriotism which boils up in youthful minds. The government in possession was hated, not as usurped, but as corrupt; the banished line was demanded, not so much because it was legitimate, but because it was the fancied means of redressing grievances and regenerating the constitution. Such notions were doubtless absurd; but it is undeniable that they were common, and had been so almost from the revolution. I speak only, it will be observed, of the English jacobites; in Scotland the sentiments of loyalty and national pride had a vital energy, and the Highland chieftains gave their blood, as freely as their southern allies did their wine, for the cause of their ancient kings. No one can have looked in the most cursory manner at the political writings of these two reigns, or at the debates of parliament, without being struck by the continual predictions that our liberties were on the point of extinguishment, or at least by apprehensions of their being endangered. It might seem that little or nothing had been gained by the revolution, and by the substitution of an elective dynasty. This doubtless it was the interest of the Stuart party to maintain or insinuate; and, in the conflict of factions, those who, with far opposite views, had separated from the court, seemed to lend them aid. The declamatory exaggerations of that able and ambitious body of men who co-operated against the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole have long been rejected; and perhaps in the usual reflux of popular opinion, his domestic administration (for in foreign policy his views, so far as he was permitted to act upon them, appear to have been uniformly judicious) has obtained of late rather an undue degree of favour. I have already observed that, for the sake of his own ascendancy in the cabinet, he kept up unnecessarily the distinctions of the whig and tory parties, and thus impaired the stability of the royal house, which it was his chief care to support. And, though his government was so far from anything oppressive or arbitrary that, considered either relatively to any former times, or to the extensive disaffection known to subsist, it was uncommonly moderate; yet, feeling or feigning alarm at the jacobite intrigues on the one hand, at the democratic tone of public sentiment and of popular writings on the other, he laboured to preserve a more narrow and oligarchical spirit than was congenial to so great and brave a people, and trusted not enough, as indeed is the general fault of ministers, to the sway of good sense and honesty over disinterested minds. But, as he never had a complete influence over his master, and knew that those who opposed him had little else in view than to seize the reins of power and manage them worse, his