selyte to Judaism, nor his having, in his zeal against Catholick priests and all fort of ecclesiastics, 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 use of it. We have rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the manfion. We have prisons almost as strong as the Baftile, for those who dare to libel the queens of France. In this spiritual 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 disgraceful to the antient religion to which he has become a proselyte; or until some persons from your fide of the water, to please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him. He may then be enabled to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue, and a very small poundage, on the long compound interest of the thirty pieces of filver (Dr. Price has shewn us what miracles compound interest will perform in 1790 years) the lands which are lately difcovered to have been ufurped by the Gallican church. Send us your popish Archbishop of Paris, and we will fend you our proteftant Rabbin. We shall treat the perfon you send us in exchange like a gentleman and an honest man, as he is, but pray let him bring with him the fund of his hospitality, bounty, and charity; and, depend upon it, we shall never confiscate a fhilling of that honourable and pious fund, nor think of enriching the treasury with the spoils of the poor-box. To To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honour of our nation to be somewhat 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 speak only from myself; when I disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all communion with the actors in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I affert any thing else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from observation not from authority; but I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty extensive and mixed communication with the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, and after a course of attentive observation, began early in life, and continued for near forty years. I have often been astonished, considering that we are divided from you but by a fslender dyke of about twenty-four miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the two countries has lately been very great, to find how little you feem to know of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneoufly, if they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally prevalent in England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence 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 their opinions. No such thing, I affure you. Because half a dozen grashoppers grashoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are filent, pray do not imagine, that those 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 shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome infects of the hour. I almost 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 such hoftility) they would be treated with another fort of triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had a king of France in that situation; 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 since that period. Thanks to our fullen refiftance to innovation, thanks to the cold fluggisiness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive) lost the generosity and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have we fubtilized ourselves into savages. We *are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the difciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries 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 presumption, and the filent tomb shall have imposed 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 sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters 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 shreds of paper about the rights of man. We preferve the whole of our feelings still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in cur bosoms. 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 such ideas • The English are, I conceive, misrepresented 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 spirit which prevails at Paris, he says, "The spirit of the people in this place has abolished all the proud distinctions ** which the king and nobles had ufurped in their minds; " whether ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected; because all other feelings are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty; and by teaching us à servile, 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 course 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 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 reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, 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 sagacity 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 most enlightened and liberal " amongst 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. K with |