SIR J. MAYNARD.
Is not the settlement then to your mind? Or hath any precaution been neglected, which you think necessary for the more effectual security of our liberties?
MR. SOMERS.
Not that. I think the provision for the people’s right as ample as needs be desired. Or, if any further restrictions on the crown be thought proper, it will now be easy for the people, in a regular parliamentary way, to effect it. What I mean is a consideration of much more importance.
BP. BURNET.
The pretended prince of Wales, you think, will be raising some disturbance, or alarm at least, to the new government. I believe, I may take upon me to give you perfect satisfaction upon that subject[112].
MR. SOMERS.
Still your conjectures fall short or wide of my meaning. Our new Magna Charta, as I love to call the Declaration of Rights, seems a sufficient barrier against any future encroachments of the CROWN. And I think, the pretended prince of Wales, whatever be determined of his birth, a mere phantom, that may amuse, and perhaps disquiet, the weaker sort for a while; but, if left to itself[113], will soon vanish out of the minds of the PEOPLE. Not but I allow that even so thin a pretence as this may, some time or other, be conjured up to disturb the government. But it must be, when a certain set of principles are called in aid to support it. And, to save you the further trouble of guessing, I shall freely tell you, what those principles are.—You will see, in them, the ground of my present fears and apprehensions.
It might be imagined that so necessary a Revolution, as that which hath taken place, would sufficiently approve itself to all reasonable men. And it appears, in fact, to have done so, now that the public injuries are fresh, and the general resentment of them strong and lively. But it too often happens, that when the evil is once removed, it is presently forgotten: and in matters of government especially, where the people rarely think till they are made to feel, when the grievance is taken away, the false system easily returns, and sometimes with redoubled force, which had given birth to it.