Hair by Hair

I like not this never-ending recurrence to Acts of Parliament.* Something must be left, and something ought to be left, to the sense and reason and morality and religion of the people.* There are a set of well-meaning men in the country who would pass laws for the regulating and restraining of every feeling of the human breast, and every motion of the human frame:* they would bind us down hair by hair as the Liliputians did Gulliver, till anon when we awoke from our sleep we should wonder by whom we had been enslaved. But I trust, Sir, that Parliament is not and never will be so far under the influence of these minute and meddling politicians as to be induced to pass laws for taking out of a man’s hands the management of his household, the choice of his physician, and the care of the health of his children; for under this sort of domiciliary thraldom, to talk of the liberty of the country would be the most cruel mockery wherewith an humble and subjected people were ever insulted.