Excerpt from Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents Nobody, I believe, will confider it merely as the language of fpleen or difappointment, ifi fay, that there is fomething particularly alarm ing in the prefent conjuneture. There is hardly a man in or out of power who holds any other language. That Government is at once dreaded and contemned; that the laws are defpoiled of all their refpeeted and falutary terrors; that their inaction is a {object of ridicule, and their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office, and title, and all the folemn plaufibilities of the world, have loft their reverence and effeet; that our foreign politicks are as much deranged as our domeflic oeconomy; that our dependencies are flackened in their affeetion, and loofened from their obedience; that we know neither how to yield nor how to inforce; that hardly any thing above or below, abroad or at home, is found and entire; but that difconnexion and confufion, in offices, in parties, in families, in Parliament, in the nation, prevail beyond the diforders of any former time: thefe are facts univerfally admitted and lamented. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.