with the reafon involved, than to caft away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reafon; because prejudice, with its reafon, has a motive to give action to that reafon, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady courfe of wifdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hefitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unrefolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through juft prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

Your literary men, and your politicians, and fo do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, effentially differ in thefe points. They have no refpect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a fufficient motive to deftroy an old fcheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no fort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in hafte; becaufe duration is no object to thofe who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in difcovery. They conceive, very fyftematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that government may vary like modes of drefs, and with as little ill effect. That there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense

of present conveniency, to any conftitution of the ftate. They always fpeak as if they were of opinion that there is a fingular fpecies of compact between them and their magistrates, which binds the magiftrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majefty of the people. has a right to diffolve it without any reason, but its will. Their attachment to their country itself, is only fo far as it agrees with fome of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

Thefe doctrines, or rather fentiments, feem prevalent with your new ftatefmen. But they are wholly different from thofe on which we have always acted in this country.

I hear it is fometimes given out in France, that what is doing among you is after the example of England. I beg leave to affirm, that scarcely any thing done with you has originated from the practice or the prevalent opinions of this people, either in the act or in the fpirit of the proceeding. Let me add, that we are as unwilling to learn these leffons from France, as we are fure that we never taught them to that nation. The cabals here who take a fort of fhare in your tranfactions as yet confift but of an handful of people. If unfortunately by their intrigues, their fermons, their publications, and by a confidence derived from an expected union with the counfels and forces of the French nation, they fhould draw confiderable numbers into their faction, and in confequence

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quence fhould feriously attempt any thing here in imitation of what has been done with you, the event, I dare venture to prophefy, will be, that, with fome trouble to their country, they will foon accomplish their own deftruction. This people refused to change their law in remote ages, from refpect to the infallibility of popes; and they will not now alter it from a pious implicit faith in the dogmatifm of philofophers; though the former was armed with the anathema and crufade, and though the latter fhould act with the libel and the lampiron.

Formerly your affairs were your own concern only. We felt for them as men; but we kept aloof from them, because we were not citizens of France. But when we fee the model held up to ourselves, we must feel as Englishmen, and feeling, we must provide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite of us, are made a part of our interest ; so far at least as to keep at a distance your panacea, or your plague. If it be a panacea, we do not want it. We know the confequences of unneceffary phyfic. If it be a plague; it is fuch a plague, that the precautions of the moft fevere quarantine ought to be established against it.

I hear on all hands that a cabal, calling itself philofophic, receives the glory of many of the late proceedings; and that their opinions and fystems are the true actuating spirit of the whole of them. I have heard of no party in England, literary or political, at any time, known by fuch a defcription. It is not with you compofed of thofe men, is it? whom the vulgar, in their blunt, homely

homely ftyle, commonly call Atheists and Infidels? If it be, I admit that we too have had writers of that defcription, who made fome noife in their day. At prefent they repofe in lafting oblivion. Who, born within the laft forty years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through? Afk the bookfellers of London what is become of all thefe lights of the world. In as few years their few fucceffors will go to the family vault of "all the Capulets." But whatever they were, or are, with us, they were and are wholly unconnected individuals. With us they kept the common nature of their kind, and were not gregarious. They never acted in corps, nor were known as a faction in the ftate, nor prefumed to influence, in that name or character, or for the purposes of such a faction, on any of our public concerns. Whether they ought fo to exift, and fo be permitted to act, is another queftion. As fuch cabals have not exifted in England, fo neither has the spirit of them had any influence in establishing the original frame of our conftitution, or in any one of the feveral reparations and improvements it has undergone. The whole has been done under the aufpices, and is confirmed by the fanctions of religion and piety. The whole has emanated from the fimplicity of our national character, and from a fort of native plainnefs and directness of understanding, which for a long time characK3 terized

terized thofe men who have fucceffively obtained authority amongst us. This difpofition ftill remains, at least in the great body of the people.

We know, and what is better we feel inwardly, that religion is the bafis of civil fociety, and the fource of all good and of all comfort*, In England we are fo convinced of this, that there is no ruft of fuperftition, with which the accumulated abfurdity of the human mind night have crufted it over in the courfe of ages, that ninety-nine in an hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We fhall never be fuch fools as to call in an enemy to the fubftance of any fyftem to remove its corruptions, to fupply its defects, or to perfect its conftruction. If our religious tenets should ever want a further elucidation, we fhall not call on atheismto explain them. We fhall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed. with other incense, than the infectious stuff which is imported by the fmugglers of adulterated metaphyfics. If our ecclefiaftical establishment fhould want a revifion, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we fhall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its confecrated revenue.-Violently condemning neither

*Sit igitur hoc ab initio perfuafum civibus, dominos effe omnium rerum ac moderatores, deos; eaque, quæ gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione, ac numine; eofdemque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quifque fit, quid agat, quid in fe admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat religiones intueri ; piorum et impiorum habere rationem. His enim rebus imbutæ mentes haud fane abhorrebunt ab utili et a vera fententia. Cic. de Legibus, 1. z.

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