sincerity and integrity, I will not take upon me to affirm: but certainly I have enabled all men to discover what he has given to HIS OWN. The same remark is unhappily applicable to the following letters from the Bishop of Norwich; and with most sincere sorrow of heart have I experienced on this occasion the melancholy operations of security and ambition in corrupting such an affable, unaffected, and intelligent man as Dr. Pretyman, and a person of manners so truly polite and amiable and engaging as Dr. Sutton. How should I have exulted on their account, as well as my own, if they had not abandoned me in an extremity, which would have done so much honour to that disinterested testimony in my favour, so reasonably expected from them; so much honour to their friendship and humanity!

SIR,

Norwich, Feb. 3, 1799.

YOUR letter of the 29th ult. reached me yesterday, but, because of the intemperance of the weather, too late to be answered by that night's post.

The nature and extent of that evidence which I shall be competent to give, if called upon in a court of justice, respecting your character for veracity and integrity, you are as able to estimate as I am. The intercourse that subsisted between us, was at no time of that intimate nature that should entitle me to speak, of my own knowledge, to either. I respected, and respect you as a scholar: and of the rest of your character I KNEW and know nothing, but in common with the public.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your faithful humble servant,

Mr. Gilbert Wakefield, Hackney.

C. NORWICH.

MY DEAR SIR,

AMONG the many letters of congratulation on my late advancement, none has given me more pleasure than that which I have this moment received from you. The favorable testimony of an OLD ACQUAINTANCE, and a man of great learning, cannot but be highly flattering to me. If business should at any time bring you to London, I hope you will give me an opportunity of shaking hands with you in Wimpole-street.

From, MY DEAR SIR,

YOUR SINCERE FRIEND,

and faithful humble servant,

April the 6th, 1792.

The Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, Hackney.

C. NORWICH.

From Dr. Pearce, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Dean of Ely, I received a very short and impudent epistle.

SIR,

As I have nothing to say, that can be of any service to you on your trial, I hope you will not give me the trouble of appearing on the occasion.

APPENDIX. (Ε.)

AN

ADDRESS TO THE JUDGES,

IN THE

COURT OF KING'S BENCH,

ON THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1799

MY LORDS,

By a precipitate decision on the guilt of my intentions ye are now empowered, with a privilege of most awful responsibility, under which I had much rather be the sufferer than the agent to inflict punishment on me for the supposed errors or perversities of my understanding. Now such punishment and such offences, whatever the irrational and indistinct conceptions of rude antiquity may have sanctioned by authority, prescribed by records, and established by precedent, are so essentially inapplicable to each other, that I may securely challenge the whole aggregate of human intellect to point out the least affinity between them.

Represent to yourselves the palpable distinction between transactions of this nature, and a case of active violence or positive hostility. Have I injured another by assault upon his person, or depredation on his estate? Though I regard all corporal punishment as universally indefensible in itself, because infinitely pernicious in it's effects, still the restraint of confinement becomes unquestionably a suitable expedient for the prevention of similar mischiefs from the same aggressor, till he be brought to a due sense of his injustice, and prove the sincerity of this conviction by such demeanour, as implies a radical reformation of his principles: otherwise, iniquity and confusion from the unrestrained intemperances of selfish and licentious men would sweep away the floodgates of society, and desolate the comforts of civil life. But, with respect to opinions and exertions of intellect in written appeals to the understandings of men, who call themselves free, where actual violence is not only not exerted, but discouraged and condemned in explicit language; if the most shadowy pretence for personal incommodity of any kind can be ascertained by