cauſe the powers within them are not ſufficiently balanced. He might have recollected, that a pointed rod, a machine as ſimple as a waggoner, or a monarch, or a governor, would be ſufficient at any time, ſilently and innocently, to diſarm thoſe aſſemblies of all their terrors, by reſtoring between them the balance of the powerful fluid, and thus prevent the danger and deſtruction to the properties and lives of men, which often happen for the want of it.
However, alluſions and illuſtrations drawn from paſtural and rural life are never diſagreeable, and in this caſe might be as appoſite as if they had been taken from the ſciences and the ſkies.—Harrington, if he had been preſent in convention, would have exclaimed, as he did when he mentioned his two girls dividing and chooſing a cake, "Oh! the depth of the wiſdom of God, which in the ſimple invention of a carter, has revealed to mankind the whole myſtery of a commonwealth; which conſiſts as much in dividing and equalizing; forces; in controuling the weight of the load and the activity of one part, by the ſtrength of another, as it does in dividing and chooſing." Harrington too, inſtead of his children dividing and chooſing their cake, might have alluded to thoſe attractions and repulſions, by which the balance of nature is preſerved: or to thoſe centripetal and centrifugal forces, by which the heavenly bodies are continued in their orbits, inſtead of ruſhing to the ſun, or flying off in tangents among comets and fixed ſtars: impelled, or drawn by different forces in different directions, they are bleſſings to their own inhabitants and the neighbouring ſyſtems; but if they were drawn only by one, they would introduce anarchy wherever they ſhould go. There is no objection to ſuch allu-
