The reveries of solitude Author:Richard Graves Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OH OFFICIOUS DEMAGOGUES. OWARDS the end of laft autumn, I fpent a month with an old acquaintance in the country: he is the clergyman of a large village, in... more » a fequeftered valley, inhabited chiefly by fubftantial farmers, and the cottagers employed by them in the cultivation of their farms. As I am an early rifer, I was highly gratified to obferve with what cheerfulnefs and alacrity they all went out in the morning to their refpe£live employments: the plowman whiffling after his team; the woodman with his bill-hook, followed by his faithful cur; the milk-maid finging beneath her cow; and the fober farmer fuperintending the whole: and on a Sunday attending the publick worfhip, as their anceftors had done before them; and refpeftfully bowing to their rector as he pafled by them, entirely fatisfied with the plain doctrine with which he fupplied them. And fuch is the cafe, I am perfuaded, in many of the lefs- frequented parts of the kingdom, where luxury, and the examples of the wealthy and extravagant, have not yet extended their baneful influence. Woe betide thofe officious patriots, then, who, under a pretence of improving the condition of thefe contented, inoffenfive mortals, fhall attempt to rob them of their prefent fhare of felicity! But, alas! as we rode over once or twice a week, to a large clothing town, at about five miles diftance, we here found the publick-houfe, where we put up our horfes, filled with a mob of ragged wjetches, belonging to the different branches of the trade, dunking pots of ale, and liftening to a feditious newfpaper, (which, I found, was fent down gratis every week) tending to perfuade them, " that the nation was on the brink of " ruin; that trade was languiming under the burthen " of our taxes; and, from the defects in our conjlitution " and...« less