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 casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very confiderable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, 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 stock of reafon; because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and

こ

capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they feek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wife to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom 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 just prejudice, his duty, becomes a part of his nature.

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect 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 sufficient motive to destroy 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 haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, 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 dress, and with as little ill effect: that there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the state. They always speak as if they were of opinion that there is a fingular species of compact betwen them and their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve it without any reason, but its will. Their attachment to their country country itself is only fo far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with your new statesmen. But they are wholly different from those on which we have always acted in this country.

I hear it is sometimes 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 spirit of the proceeding. Let me add, that we are as unwilling to learn these lessons from France, as we are fure that we never taught them to that nation. The cabals here who take a fort of share in your transactions as yet consist of but a handful of people. If unfortunately by their intrigues, their fermons, their publications, and by a confidence derived from an expected union with the counsels and forces of the French nation, they should draw confiderable numbers into their faction, and in consequence should ferioufly 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 destruction. This people refufed fused to change their law in remote ages, from respect to the infallibility of popes; and they will not now alter it from a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers; though the former was armed with the anathema and crufade, and though the latter should act with the libel and the lamp iron.

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 intereft; 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 consequences of unnecessary physick. If it be a plague; it is such a plague, that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it.

I hear on all hands that a cabal, calling itself philosophick, receives the glory of many of the late proceedings; and that their opinions and systems 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 such a description. It is not with you composed of those men, is it? whom the vulgar, in their blunt homely style, commonly call Atheists and Infidels?

If

1

If it be, I admit that we too have had writers of that description, who made fome noise in their day. At present they repose in lasting oblivion. Who, born within the last 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? Ask the booksellers of London what is become of

all these 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, or were known as a faction in the state, nor prefumed to influence in that name or character, or for the purposes of fuch a faction, on any of our publick concerns. Whether they ought so to exist, and so be permitted to act, is another question. As such cabals have not existed in England, so neither has the spirit of them had any influence in establishing the original frame of our conftitution, or in any one of the several 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,

:

4

1