It is certain that its power is by no means in
exact proportion to its reasonableness. It must always have been
discoverable by persons of reflection, but it is now obvious to the
world, that a theory concerning government may become as much a cause of
fanaticism as a dogma in religion. There is a boundary to men's
passions, when they act from feeling; none when they are under the
influence of imagination. Remove a grievance, and, when men act from
feeling, you go a great way towards quieting a commotion. But the good
or bad conduct of a government, the protection men have enjoyed or the
oppression they have suffered under it, are of no sort of moment, when a
faction, proceeding upon speculative grounds, is thoroughly heated
against its form. When a man is from system furious against monarchy or
episcopacy, the good conduct of the monarch or the bishop has no other
effect than further to irritate the adversary. He is provoked at it as
furnishing a plea for preserving the thing which he wishes to destroy.
His mind will be heated as much by the sight of a sceptre, a mace, or a
verge, as if he had been daily bruised and wounded by these symbols of
authority.
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