They sink, and settle lower than they need.

They know not what it is to feel within

A comprehensive faculty, that

grasps

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Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields,
Almost without an effort, plans too vast

For their conception, which they cannot move.
Conscious of impotence they soon grow drunk
With gazing, when they see an able man

Step forth to notice: and besotted thus

Build him a pedestal, and "Stand there,

say,

"And be our admiration and our praise."
They roll themselves before him in the dust,
Then most deserving in their own account,
When most extravagant in his applause,
As if exalting him they rais'd themselves.
Thus by degrees, self-cheated of their sound
And sober judgment, that he is but man,
They demideify and fume him so,
That in due season he forgets it too.
Inflated and astrut with self-conceit,

200

He gulps the windy diet; and ere long,

Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks
The World was made in vain, if not for him.
Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born
To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears,
And sweating in his service, his caprice
Becomes the soul that animates them all.

He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives,
Spent in the purchase of renown for him,
An easy reck'ning; and they think the same.
Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings

Were burnish'd into heroes, and became

The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp;

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280

Storks among frogs, that have but croak'd and died. Strange, that such folly, as lifts bloated man

To eminence fit only for a god,

Should ever drivel out of human lips,

Even in the cradled weakness of the world!

Still stranger much, that when at length mankind Had reach'd the sinewy firmness of their youth,

And could discriminate and argue well

On subjects more mysterious, they were yet
Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear

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And quake before the gods themselves had made:
But above measure strange, that neither proof
Of sad experience, nor examples set

By some whose patriot virtue has prevail'd,
Can even now, when they are grown mature
In wisdom, and with philosophic deeds
Familiar, serve t' emancipate the rest!
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for it's use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because deliver'd down from sire to son,

Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational discussion, that a man,

Compounded and made up like other men

Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust

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And folly in as ample measure meet,

As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules,
Should be a despot absolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land?
Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will,
Wage war, with any or with no pretence

Of provocation giv'n, or wrong sustain❜d,

And force the beggarly last doit by means,

That his own humour dictates, from the clutch
Of Poverty, that thus he may procure

His thousands, weary of penurious life,
A splendid opportunity to die?

Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old
Jotham ascrib'd to his assembled trees
In politic convention) put your trust

I' th' shadow of a bramble, and reclin'd

In fancied peace beneath his dangʼrous branch, Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway,

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320

Where find ye passive fortitude? Whence springs Your self-denying zeal, that holds it good,

To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang

His thorns with streamers of continual praise? 330
We too are friends to loyalty. We love

The king, who loves the law, respects his bounds,
And reigns content within them: him we serve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free:
But, recollecting still, that he is man,

We trust him not too far. King though he be,
And king in England too, he may be weak,
And vain enough to be ambitious still;

May exercise amiss his proper pow'rs,

Or covet more than freemen choose to grant!
He is ours,

Beyond that mark is treason.

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T'administer, to guard, t' adorn, the state,
But not to warp or change it. We are his,
To serve him nobly in the common cause,
True to the death, but not to be his slaves.
Mark now the diff'rence, ye that boast your love

Of kings, between your loyalty and ours.

We love the man, the paltry pageant you: