ABSTRACT
I consider a King in England as something which the military keep to cheat with, in the same manner that wooden gods and conjuror’s wands were kept in time of idolatry and superstition; and in proportion as knowledge is circulated throughout a country, and the minds of the people become cleared of ignorance and rubbish, they will find themselves restless and uneasy under any government so established. This is exactly the case with the people of England. They are not sufficiently ignorant to be governed superstitiously, nor yet wise enough to be governed rationally, so that being complete in neither, and equally defective in both, are for ever discontented and hard to be governed at all. They live in a useless twilight of political knowledge and ignorance, in which they have dawn enough to discover the darkness by, and liberty enough to feel they are not free; constantly slumbering, without an ability to sleep, without an inclination to rise. (1778)
