Deplorable are the times when open barefaced villany is protected and
encouraged, when innocence is obnoxious, honesty contemptible, and it is
reckoned criminal to espouse the cause of virtue. Men originally entered
into covenants and civil compacts with each other for the promotion of
their happiness and well-being, for the establishment of justice and
public peace. How comes it then that they look stupidly on, and tamely
acquiesce, when wicked men pervert this end, and establish an arbitrary
tyranny of their own upon the foundation of fraud and oppression? Among
beasts, who are incapable of being civilized by social laws, it is no
strange thing to see innocent helpless Sheep fall a prey to Dogs,
Wolves, and Kites: but it is amazing how mankind could ever sink down to
such a low degree of base cowardice, as to suffer some of the worst of
their species to usurp a power over them, to supersede the righteous
laws of good government, and to exercise all kinds of injustice and
hardship, in gratifying their own vicious lusts. Wherever such
enormities are practised, it is when a few rapacious statesmen combine
together to get and secure the power in their own hands, and agree to
divide the spoil among themselves. For as long as the cause is to be
tried only among themselves, no question but they will always vouch for
each other. But, at the same time, it is hard to determine which
resemble brutes most, they in acting, or the people in suffering them to
act, their vile selfish schemes.