felyte to Judaifm, nor his having, in his zeal against Catholick priefts and all fort of ecclefiaftics, raised a mob (excuse the term, it is still in use here) which pulled down all our prifons, have preserved to him a liberty, of which he did not render himself worthy by a virtuous ufe of it. We have rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the manfion. We have prisons almost as ftrong as the Baftile, for those who dare to libel the queens of France. In this fpiritual retreat, let the noble libeller remain. Let him there meditate on his Thalmud, until he learns a conduct more becoming his birth and parts, and not fo difgraceful to the antient religion to which he has become a profelyte; or until fome perfons from your fide of the water, to please your new Hebrew brethren, fhall ranfom him. He may then be enabled to purchase, with the old hoards of the fynagogue, and a very fmall poundage, on the long compound intereft of the thirty pieces of filver (Dr. Price has fhewn us what miracles compound intereft will perform in 1790 years) the lands which are lately discovered to have been ufurped by the Gallican church. Send us your popish Archbishop of Paris, and we will fend you our proteftant Rabbin. We fhall treat the perfon you send us in exchange like a gentleman and an honeft man, as he is; but pray let him bring with him the fund of his hofpitality, bounty, and charity; and, depend upon it, we shall never confifcate a fhilling of that honourable and pious fund, nor think of enriching the treasury with the fpoils of the poor-box.

To

To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honour of our nation to be fomewhat concerned in the disclaimer of the proceedings of this fociety of the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no man's proxy. I fpeak only from myself; when I disclaim, as I do with all poffible earnestnefs, all communion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I affert any thing elfe, as concerning the people of England, I fpeak from obfervation not from authority, but I fpeak from the experience I have had in a pretty extenfive and mixed communication with the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all defcriptions and ranks, and after a courfe of attentive obfervation, began early in life, and continued for near forty years. I have often been astonished, confidering that we are divided from you but by a flender dyke of about twenty-four miles, and that the mutual intercourfe between the two countries has lately been very great, to find how little you feem to know of us. I fufpect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneaufly, if they do at all, reprefent the opinions and difpofitions generally prevalent in England. The vanity, reftleffnefs, petulance, and spirit of intrigue of feveral petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of confequence in bustle and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a mark of general acquiefcence in fuch thing, I affure you.

their opinions. No Because half a dozen grafhoppers

grafhoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, repofed beneath the fhadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are filent, pray do not imagine, that thofe who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little fhrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublefome. infects of the hour.

I almoft venture to affirm, that not one in a hundred amongst us participates in the "tri"umph" of the Revolution Society. If the king and queen of France, and their children, were to fall into our hands by the chance of war, in the most acrimonious of all hoftilities (I deprecate fuch an event, I deprecate fuch hoftility) they would be treated with another fort of triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had a king of France in that fituation; you have read how he was treated by the victor in the field; and in what manner he was afterwards received in England. Four hundred years have gone over us; but I believe we are not materially changed fince that period. Thanks to our fullen refiftance to innovation, thanks to the cold fluggishness of our national character, we ftill bear the ftamp of our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive) loft the generofity and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have we fubtilized ourfelves into favages. We are not the converts of Rouffeau; we are not the difciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progrefs amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers;

preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no difcoveries; and we think that no difcoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our prefumption, and the filent tomb fhall have impofed its law on our pert loquacity. In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we still feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbred fentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true fupporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been drawn and truffed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags, and paltry, blurred fhreds of paper about the rights We preferve the whole of our feelings ftill native and entire, unfophifticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bofoms. We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magiftrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when fuch

of man.

ideas

The English are, I conceive, mifrepresented in a Letter published in one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a diffenting minifter.-When writing to Dr. Price, of the fpirit which prevails at Paris, he fays, "The fpirit of the "people in this place has abolished all the proud diftinctions «which the king and nobles had ufurped in their minds; "whether

ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be fo affected; becaufe all other feelings are falfe and fpurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty; and by teaching us a fervile, licentious, and abandoned infolence, to be our low sport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and justly deserving of flavery, through the whole courfe of our lives.

You fee, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confefs, that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of cafting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very confiderable degree, and, to take more fhame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lafted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private ftock of reason; because we fufpect that this stock in each man is fmall, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their fagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they feek, and they feldom fail, they think it more wife to continue the prejudice, whether they talk of "the king, the noble, or the priest, their whole language is that of the moft enlightened and liberal 86 among ft the English." If this gentleman means to confine the terms enlightened and liberal to one set of men in England, it may be true. It is not generally fo.