Page:The genuine remains in verse and prose of Mr. Samuel Butler (1759), volume 1.djvu/323

But alas! we need not trouble our selves with these Matters; for they are not the Business, for which we are call'd hither, but directly contrary to it; and if we be so vain to think otherwise, and shall but offer to settle any Government, wherein the common. Right and Freedom of the Nation may be secured against the licentious Interests of the Army, we shall quickly find ourselves mistaken to our own Cost, and be baffled and hectored, as we have formerly been for the same Reason in this very Place. For no Man can be so ignorant as not to know, that, from the Treaty at the Isle of Wight to the last Parliament, there has never any Settlement of the Nation been attempted, wherein Regard has been had to the antient Laws and Rights of the People, but they have presently pronounced it a Backsliding from the good old Cause, and most barbarously by Violence put an end to it; nor will they ever do otherwise, or suffer any Thing to be established, but the Distractions, which they intend to make their own Freehold, that the Nation may be kept under the Power of the Sword, and that in their own Hands.