Livro Thoughts on Civil Liberty, on Licentiousness, and Faction

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1765 Excerpt: ...public Demagogues.-But the collective Body of the People of Britain are of a Nature and Character lefs uniform, and effentially different. They may properly be divided into two Clafles; " The People of the " Kingdom;" and -- the Populace of its " Cities" The Populace of its Cities refemble Thofe of Athens in moft Things; except only, that they are not poffeffed of the legiflative Power.

For the Populace of Athens were " a Body of Labourers and Mechanics, " who earned their Bread with the Sweat " of their Brows; too generally ignorant " and ill-educated; too generally profligate " in Manners, and void of Principle." But the People of this Kingdom, in their colleft'we Body, are upon the Whole, of a quite different Character.

For under this Title are properly comprehended " all " Thofe who fend Reprefentatives for the - Counties to Parliament." This Catalogue will will include the landed Gentry, the beneficed Country Clergy, many of the more considerable Merchants and Men in Trade, the substantial and industrious Freeholders or Teomen: A collective Body of Men, with all their incidental Failings, as different in Character from the Populace of any great City, as the Air of Richmond Hill from that of Billingsgate or Wapping.

SECT. XL Of the general State of Manners and Principles, about the Time of the Revolution. AT this famed Period, it is evident, that the Manners and Principles of the Nation did, upon the Whole, tend to the Establishment of Liberty, otherwise, Liberty had not been established.

This Revolution was perhaps the noblest public Reform that ever was made in any State: And such a Reform, nothing but the Prevalence -valence of upright Manners and Principles cou...