The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favorite
and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to their native
country. My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in
which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine
was to support with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege,
every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive
country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of
empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language,
and religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and
the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.
His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master and
made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on
his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the
commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom,--in which his
Majesty shows an eminent example, who even in his amusements is a
patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil.
His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by the arts of a
court and the protection of a Wolsey to the eminence of a great and
potent lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to
injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the
sober part of the country, that they might put themselves on their
guard against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent
lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they
should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse
order,--that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, and,
through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny
which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the
manner we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth.
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