that the mutual intercourfe between the two coun tries 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 erroneoufly, 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 buftle and noife, 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 fuch thing, I affure you. Because half a dozen grafhoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilft thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the fhadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are filent, pray do not imagine, that those who make the noife 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 almost venture to affirm, that not one in a hundred amongst us participates in the "triumph" of the revolution fociety. If the king and queen of France, and their children, were to fall into our hands by the chance of war, in the moft 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 fluggifhnefs of our national

character,

character, we still 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 ourselves into favages. We are not the converts of Rouffeau; we are not the difciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no pro grefs amongst us. Atheifts are not our 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 cur prefumption, and the filent tomb fhall have impofed its law on our pert lóquacity. In England we have not yet been compleatly embowelled of our natural entrails; we ftill feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, thofe 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 ftuffed birds in a mufeum, with chaff and rags, and paltry blurred fhreds of paper about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings ftill native and entire, unfophifticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flefh 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 refpect to nobility. Why? Becaufe when fuch ideas are brought

The English are, I conceive, mifreprefented in a letter publifh ed in one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a diffenting minister. 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 they talk of the king, the noble, or the priest, "their whole language is that of the most enlightened and liberal among ft the English." If this gentleman means to confine the terms enlightened and liberal to one fet of men in England, it may be true. It is not generally fo.

brought before our minds, it is natural to be fo af fected; 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 fport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and juftly deferving 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; and that inftead 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 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 flock of reafon; because we fufpect that this ftock in each man is fmall, and that the individuals would do better to avail themfelves of the general hank and capital of nations, and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their fagacity to difcover 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, 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 reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergeney; it previously engages the mind in a steady courfe of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hefitating in the moment of decifion, fceptical, puzzled, and unrefolved. Prejudice renders man's virtue his habit; and

not

a fe

feries of unconnected acts. Through juft prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

Your literary men, ahd your politicians, and fo do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, efsentially differ in thefe points. They have no respect for the wifdom 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 those 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 mifchievous, 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 fenfe of prefent conveniency, to any constitution of the ftate. They always fpeak as if they were of opinion that there is a fingular fpecies of compact between them and their magiftrates, 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 reafon, but its will. Their attachment to their country itfelf, is only fo far as it agrees with fome of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that fcheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

Thefe doctrines, or rather fentiments, feem prevalent with your new statemen. 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 VOL. IIL

I

you

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 thefe leffons 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 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 should draw confiderable numbers into their faction, and in confequence should 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 some 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 ourfelves, we must feel as Englishmen, and feeling, we muit provide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in fpite 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 most 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