politicians to touch, more likely to smite what's called the Public, and gain them that degree of confidence which they know how to carry afterwards to market. What question so safe and sure?
"Government are of themselves obliged to come to Parliament for a new system of Police. Does it require any great degree of foresight to see that the real causes of all the outrages must very shortly point themselves out, and that the truth will bolt itself out, where there is nothing to impede it. However unenlightened we are, we have certainly got the length of knowing that Agriculture and morals are the only true foundations of Free Trade or Police. Establish these better than any country in Europe, and your situation will make you masters of everything else. Every blessing will naturally follow, independent of treaties or negotiations at home or abroad. Ludlow says somewhere in his Memoirs, that Cromwell, speaking of Ireland, said that Ireland was clean paper in many particulars, where such laws might be enacted and justice so impartially administered, as to be a good precedent even to England itself.[1] He said that when they once observed property preserved and improved at an easy and cheap rate, they would never suffer themselves to be so cheated and abused, and yet it was not Cromwell's object to disunite England and Ireland.
"Will any reasonable and impartial friend of the Church pretend, that the clergy in their present state assist progress one hundredth part as much as they impede it. I earnestly wish that my Lords the Bishops and other wise men among the clergy would reflect before it is too late. Let them but consider for a moment the strength of the several works which they have to defend,
- ↑ "Said he, 'the sons of Zeruiah are yet too strong for us; and we cannot mention the reformation of the law, but they presently cry out, We design to destroy property, whereas the law, as it is now constituted, serves only to maintain the lawyers, and to encourage the rich to oppress the poor;' affirming that Mr. Coke, then justice in Ireland, by proceeding in a summary and expeditious way, determined more causes in a week than Westminster Hall in a year; saying further, that Ireland was as clean paper in that particular, and capable of being governed by such laws as should be found most agreeable to justice; which may be so impartially administered as to be a good precedent even to England itself; where when they once perceive property preserved at an easy and cheap rate in Ireland, they will never permit themselves to be so cheated and abused as now they are."—Ludlow's Memoirs, i. 319, ed. 1698. See also Vol. I. p. 18.
