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The Queen with great propriety ascribed this defeat to Providence,

Aflavit Deus et dissipantur,"

"He blew with his winds and they were scattered,"

was the motto she took on this occasion. But the protection of Providence had been shewn in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, by English valour, before the storms had nearly compleated the ruin of the hostile fleet. The check which they met with before Calais, a situation not unlikely to prove the scene of a similar disappointment in a similar enterprise, had blasted all their hopes, and convinced them that their project was impracticable. After this event, they met with, in their attempt to return home by steering northwards round Scotland and Ireland, those tempests that destroyed so large a proportion of what had escaped the English arms. For this signal deliverance, as it was then thought, and as I believe most people think it at present, the Queen ordered a public thanksgiving to be made in all the Churches of the King

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dom, and went herself to St. Paul's, in great solemnity, to perform the same duty.

According to your principle this ceremony must have been, instead of an acceptable offering, an impious mockery of the Almighty. To return thanks to him for victories procured by means which he has prohibited, must be an insult, not a grateful sacrifice. An unconditional submission to a bloody and bigotted tyrant, would have been more consonant to your ideas of Christian duty.

To come to later times-Let me request you to specify in what manner you qualify your non-resisting principles, in order to reconcile them with what took place at the Revolution? The Prince of Orange came over here at the head of an army, and with, as may well be presumed, a determination, had he been attacked, to repel force with force.

Do you regard this transaction as unchristian, or that it would have been more

agreeable to the dictates of christianity, for the nation to have stood unconcerned spectators of the ruin of their Constitution, Laws and Religion, by an infatuated bigot, rather than manfully to resist, and leave a lesson to posterity, to defend and support those invaluable rights.

But I wish to remind you that it is owing to the resistance made at that memorable period, and several times since, particularly in the years 1715 and 1745, that you yourself owe the privilege of delivering the very sentiments I here condemn. Without a defensive war we should have now left neither Laws, Constitution, nor Religion. Would a Peace purchased by unconditional submission "preserve," as you express it "the authority of the laws, and the sanc tions of equity, in their strength and purity." Are they so preserved in that country from whom we must receive the terms? Are they not fluctuating under the caprice of a Despot, who moulds them as his interest, fancy, or desire of revenge may dictate? Are the “restraints which virtue and decency im

pose on the conduct" better observed in France than with us? Should we improve these virtues by taking our models from that quarter? Would our accustomed habits of industry be encouraged by such a Peace as our inveterate enemies would impose?

Our industry diminished, as you, without sufficient grounds for your assertion represent it, is still sufficient to excite their jealousy, and to prompt them to destroy the objects of it at all events. You represent in this part of your discourse "the authority of the laws and the sanctions of equity, as weakened, loosened, and too often overturned, when the military spirit has once seized upon the national character." That the military spirit has seized, as you call it, upon the national character you yourself allow, but you bring no instances of the effects you so much deprecate. Are the courts of law shut to applications in behalf of either civil or criminal justice? Are the decisions of the judges perverted, or the verdicts of juries corrupted, by the military spirit? Are the determinations of the courts

of equity influenced by partiality to military men, or overawed by fear of their outrage? Have you any examples in our history, within the last century, to produce where any perversion of justice from this cause has taken place? Had any such appeared, the gentleman to whom you inscribe your Sermon, with such lofty encomiums, would not have been the last to notice it.

But the truth is, that the administration of justice is now, and has been long before our time, upright, impartial, and judicious, conducted by men knowing in their duty, and resolute to practice it; not corrupted by court favour, nor awed by popular prejudices. If it has erred, and what human institutions are free from error, it has been (in criminal matters) rather on the side. of mildness and mercy, than on that of severity, or straining either of the letter or meaning of the laws. If this be (as I believe it to be) the truth of the case, I cannot but be of opinion that you have been highly to blame, in throwing out such groundless

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