The Court party resolve the whole into faction. Having said
something before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that,
when they give this account of the prevalence of faction, they
present no very favourable aspect of the confidence of the people in
their own Government. They may be assured, that however they amuse
themselves with a variety of projects for substituting something
else in the place of that great and only foundation of Government,
the confidence of the people, every attempt will but make their
condition worse. When men imagine that their food is only a cover
for poison, and when they neither love nor trust the hand that
serves it, it is not the name of the roast beef of Old England that
will persuade them to sit down to the table that is spread for them.
When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals, and even popular
assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution, they
find in those names of degenerated establishments only new motives
to discontent. Those bodies, which, when full of life and beauty,
lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort; when dead and
putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former
endearments.
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