This was the second thing I proposed to consider; and it is a thing that ought frequently and seriously to be considered, though it is so evident that it needs not to be proved. It ought, I say, as evident as it is, frequently to be considered, and sometimes to be inculcated upon us; because the blessings that are constant and familiar, and those which therefore we enjoy the most, such is our ingratitude, we are apt to think of and value least. And of this kind is the blessing of a well-established government; we who have the happiness of being under it, and reap the fruits of a regular administration of wisely enacted laws, can but with difficulty conceive how miserable the condition of mankind would be, were there no such laws to keep them within bounds, and are therefore generally less sensible than we ought to be, of the many great advantages resulting from them. But that we may form in some sort an idea of the wretched effects of such a want of government, the behaviour of some dissolute and abandoned persons which we have lately seen, and that too in a country where they could not but have acted under some awe of civil justice, may serve as a kind of specimen, to teach us what savage creatures they would be without it; what havock and devastation they would make upon the earth were they set wholly free from the restraint of laws, and left to follow the imaginations of their own evil hearts without hindrance or control. And would we but sometimes consider what manifold inconvenience all societies must feel, where there is either no government at all, or, which is next to none, an ill-established or an ill-administered one; the consideration would certainly be useful, to give us a proper sense and relish of the blessings we ourselves enjoy under one of the best regulated governments in the world: a government adorned with all the advantages which human frailty will allow us to expect, and which the very meanest of its subjects enjoy in common with those who are in the highest stations. We are all in our proportion partakers of these benefits, and therefore all have reason to thank God, the bountiful Giver of them, and to pay with due submission what I proposed as the