offices of antagonist muscles. An impaired or an overgrown force in any one of these powers must of course tend to the dislocation and derangement of the rest. This position is self-evident; but the injunction it involves of preserving the balance of the Constitution, in a very imperfect observance, will task all the resources of public resolution and accumulated experience.

To assist in the attainment and stablishing of this momentous object, it is necessary to ascertain with precision on which side the scale preponderates. The investigation of the quantum of unjust preponderance, will inseparably involve the best suggestions how to rectify the disarrangement, and repair whatever injury it may have originated.

Further to fortify my declaration, that popular encroachment is the crying evil. of the day, it will be serviceable to

superadd to the assertion, that the power of the Crown was reduced within proper limits in the last reign, an explanation how that result was ultimately consummated. The gratuitous and noble sacrifice made by the late King, of that pernicious portion of the prerogative which could interfere with the Judges; the successful vindication of the right of Juries to return a general verdict in cases of political libel; together with the constitutional concession, that expulsion from the House of Commons cannot of itself disqualify for being re-elected to a seat in Parliament, (as otherwise the power which can alone belong to the whole Legislature would, in every case of ejection, be usurped by a single branch of it) these three important achievements in behalf of rational freedom and social security, I conceive to have pruned the power of the Crown, as available, either through influence or prerogative, of all extraordinary means of

endangering the commonweal, and there by, on its own part, shaking the foun-.. dation of its own security.

Since ·

Having shewn on which side encroachment is at work, and laid down the reasons why its offensive operations should be -now solely directed against that quarter, it remains to develope the end and aim, as well as the mode of its attack. the symptoms of this evil partake rather of the chronic than the acute nature, by thus tracing its progress, I hope to warn you with success from suffering your selves to become so far familiarized with a state of disease, as shall expose you to the peril of only appreciating its ravages in its sudden and ultimate fatality. Nothing is easier than to raise a clamour or congregate a mob : but is merit to be measured by hireling suffrage, or questions of national importance to be decided by the yells of designing men, or the vociferations of deluded ones?

The grand prompter of popular inroads upon the Constitution is the licentious Press; the true friends, therefore, of the liberty of the Press are the most inveterate enemies of its licentiousness. They know that this liberty and licentiousness cannot long co-exist, but must the one, infallibly, exterminate the other. The advocates of popular encroachment have, for some time past, been indefatigable in their endeavours to destroy, root and branch, this invaluable liberty. They have promoted a licentiousness of writing which it makes the heart ache to behold; they have committed sacrilege on all that is sacred; instilled contempt for all that is venerable; enjoined disobedience to all that are in authority; preached up every theory that is visionary, and applauded every practice that is innovating.---In fact, they have spared no pains to rend asunder all the bonds without which the social state cannot one moment endure.

For want of being vigorously and constantly kept in check, they have been enabled to give the labours of the Press a suicidal impulse---to inoculate their victim with the slow poison which kills by inches. The workings of this poison they persevere in representing as the soundest symptoms of health; and have so far perverted the common sense of their dupes, as to make them consider disease health, and health disease. The Press is diseased, and the crisis of its complaint will be fatally accelerated, if we any longer trifle with the malady, or scruple to administer the cure. The reasoning which would persuade us that the conflict of writing elicits, truth, to its universal dissemination, is utterly erroneous: lamentable experience teaches that the mischievous, direction of the Press has created a vast body of exclu sive readers, who may be said, morally speaking, to have lived on poisons till the very sight of wholesome food has become intolerable in their eyes.