It is now, sir, no longer considered as an instance of disaffection to the government, to represent the miseries and declare the opinions of the people; to propose their interest as the great basis of government, the general end of society, and the parent of law. It is now no longer criminal to affirm, that they have a right to complain when they are, in their own opinion, injured, and to be heard when they complain. It may now be with safety asserted, that those who swell with the pride of office, and glitter with the magnificence of a court, however they may display their affluence, or boast their titles; with whatever contempt they may have learned of late to look upon their fellow-subjects, who have no possessions but what they have obtained by their industry, nor any honours but what are voluntarily paid to their understanding and their virtue; with whatever authority they may dictate to their dependants, or whatever reverence they may exact from a long subordination of hirelings, are, amidst all their pomp and influence, only the servants of the people, intrusted by them with the administration of their affairs, and accountable to them for the abuse of trust. That trusts of the highest importance have been long abused, that the servants of the people, having long thought themselves out of the reach of justice, and above examination, have very ill discharged the offices in which they have been engaged, that the publick advantage has been wholly disregarded, that treaties have been concluded without any regard to the interest of Britain, and that our foreign and domestick affairs have been managed with equal ignorance, negligence, or wickedness, the present state of Europe, and the calamities of this country, will sufficiently inform us. If we survey the condition of foreign nations, we shall find, that the power and dominions of the family of Bourbon, a family which has never had any other designs than the extirpation of true religion, and the universal slavery of mankind, have been daily increased. We shall find that they have increased by the declension of the house of Austria, which treaties and our interest engage us to support. But had their acquisitions been made only by the force of arms, had they grown stronger only by victories, and more wealthy only by plunder, our ministers might, with some appearance of reason, have imputed their success to accident, and informed us, that we gained, in the mean time, a sufficient counterbalance to those advantages, by an uninterrupted commerce, and by the felicity of peace; peace, which, in every nation, has been found to produce affluence, and of which the wisest men have thought that it could scarcely be too dearly purchased.