In those days, if they were threatened with no invasion from abroad, nor with popery nor arbitrary power at home; if magna charta, the declaration of rights, habeas corpus, and other fundamental laws of the realm, remained unrepealed in full force and exertion, they never gave themselves any farther concern about the public, but minded what they called their own affairs such as their respective trades, arts, callings, professions, thereby to be enabled to feed, clothe, and lodge themselves and their families, and provide for their children. If they could contrive to live in peace and plenty at home, and pass among their customers, their neighbours, and their friends, for honest, industrious, good-humoured folks, they thought themselves at liberty to employ their leisure-hours in what studies they pleased, and looked no further. They had no notion of political refinements, of those delicate and nicer sensations we feel for the public. It never entered into their heads to be perpetually making earnest and anxious enquiries about the state of the nation; if the body politic was, upon the whole, sound and in good health, they were no more alarmed at every little complaint, than at a slight cold, or an accidental head-ach. They had not indeed the same opportunities of hearing complaints: the book of knowledge fair, was but half open to them; the sources of information and instruction were then neither so frequent nor so abundant; every remote corner of the kingdom was not, as it happily is now, plentifully supplied with political, pure, refreshing streams, flowing without intermission, during the whole year, to the great delight and emolument of the whole kingdom. Neither were they rich enough to join in large voluntary contribution for the feeding, clothing, and support of such a numerous body of sturdy penmen as are now in constant pay. Those trusty guardians of our liberties, oraculous as the priestess of Apollo; jealous as Argus of the fair privileges committed to their care; watchful of our golden treasures as the green dragons of the Hesperides; faithful and fierce as the bellua centiceps of Pluto; alarming as the sacred birds that saved the Capitol; zealously attached to our service; equally vigilant in times of security as in danger, in peace as in the midst of war; ready at a moment’s warning, on every alarm, to attack or defend; intrepidly sacrificing to the public every consideration that the timidity of other men calls dear to mankind; like well-disciplined troops, scorning to loiter away their time in rusty idleness, daily exercising their arms, performing all their marches and counter-marches, evolutions, and firings, with the same skill and alertness as if the enemy were upon them.