London, and other places, to consider of proper measures to obtain redress, to solicit Parliament, &c.; and when these meetings are, as indeed they necessarily must be, attended with expense, must not funds be established to defray those expenses? Have not these things been done a thousand times in this country, without any body ever imagining that there was any thing seditious, or hostile to Government in them? Now candour would suppose that we Dissenters, like other bodies of men who have held similar public meetings, have had no farther view than to relieve ourselves in a legal way, from what we consider as hardships.

By printing the words other public uses in italics, Mr. Madan certainly meant to insinuate that, besides what we express, we had some farther concealed and dangerous views; as if there were not many public uses of a very innocent nature, for which money was necessary, besides merely defraying the expense of public meetings. You see that we print and publish many pamphlets, as well as insert the Resolutions of our meetings in the public papers, in order to give our countrymen the information which we see they want concerning our situation, and the reasons for our application to Parliament. This business also requires a very extensive correspondence, which is necessarily attended with expense.

Now, might not Mr. Madan's imagination, if it had not been of a very suspicious turn indeed, have led him to suppose, that by other public uses were meant such expenses as these, and others equally necessary, but not deserving to be particularly specified in a printed resolution? What a

strange, suspicious turn must that man's mind have who could imagine that under such an innocent expression, any dark designs were concealed; as if we were ready to take arms in order to overturn the Government! He must be a mere Don Quixote who can believe any such thing, and worse than a Quixote who could insinuate it without believing it. But as Mr. Madan solemnly declares that he speaks from the "settled principles and conviction of his heart, as he hopes for mercy from the God of truth," I am willing to think that, strange as this notion is, and bordering even upon insanity, it has actually got possession of his mind. For can it be supposed that a minister of the gospel of peace, in the perfect use of his reason, could, on such a trifling ground as this, endeavour to raise your indignation against persons with whom you have lived in good neighbourhood from your infancy, and whom you know to be

as well affected to Government, and as peaceably disposed as himself?

Whatever the Dissenters be with respect to their religious principles, which concern only God and ourselves, you see that we are not absolutely mad; and that we must be, to think of overturning a government so well established as that of this country, even if we were not friends to it. But the Dissenters have given clearer proofs of their value for it, and especially of their attachment to the reigning family, than the generality of the clergy, whose loyalty, though they now make so great a parade of it, is well known to be of very late date; whereas ours was always zealous and active from the first accession of the present reigning family, as the most authentic documents testify.

As to our public .neetings, which have given such umbrage to Mr. Madan, have not the Quakers always been in the habit of doing the very thing that he considers as of so seditious a tendency in us? Have not they their district meetings every month, and their national meetings in London every year; and have they not a common fund to defray the expenses attending them, and for other purposes also not particularly specified? As to what we do in our district meetings, (for as yet we have not held any national one,) are not our Resolutions made public? You see them in all the newspapers, so that you may read and examine them yourselves, and see whether they contain any thing of a seditious nature. It is for your information and judgment of them, that we are at so much expense to make them public. Our wish is to give you information, to lay our case clearly before you, to invite the accusations of our adversaries, and to make you our judges.

Mr. Madan could not write as he has done, without suspecting that, besides our printed Resolutions, we have others which we do not publish, like the secret articles in public treaties between states and sovereigns. But so very heterogeneous a body as the Dissenters are, agreeing in nothing but a desire of equal liberty, could not well have, or keep, secrets. Mr. Madan himself says, that "we betray our final views indiscreetly."* And truly, if we were not honest men, we are very indiscreet indeed. You never heard of rogues and traitors going to work as we do. If they did, they would have very little chance of succeeding in such designs as Mr. Madan imputes to us.

Sermon, p. 27. (P.)

You have been told in a variety of publications, that I have threatened to blow up the church, if not the state also, with gunpowder, and Mr. Madan, (who if the church be blown up, must take his fate along with it,) has insinuated that I in particular have dangerous views. Now, my good friends and neighbours, I am not actually a madman. You know too much of me to believe this. You see me walk about the streets very composedly, without molesting any body, and always behaving civilly to those who behave civilly to me, and therefore I hope you will not think I have any such diabolical intention. In fact, all the gunpowder that I manufacture is contained in such pamphlets as this that you are now reading; and though it may serve for wadding to a gun, it can do nothing else towards shooting birds or killing men. My gunpowder is nothing but arguments, which can have no force but what you yourself shall be pleased to give them, from your own conviction of the reasonableness of what I lay before you.†

Sermon, p. 26. (P.)

Many persons into whose hands these Letters may fall, especially at some distance of time, will hardly be able to understand what is said in them of my comparison of the progress of free inquiry to the action of gunpowder; and it makes me smile to think there should be any occasion to explain it. It may be of use, however, to shew how ready some people are to cavil at the most innocent things, when they have a previous, though ill-grounded, suspicion of a man's intentions. The almost incredible number of times that this simple comparison has been quoted, or alluded to, by the enemies of the Dissenters, shews also how tremblingly alive they are to the apprehension of danger to their system, and gives me an idea that I own I had not before, of the weakness of it. To us this affords no unpleasant prospect, and it may tempt us to sport with their fears on other

occasions.

To my Sermon on Free Inquiry, [Vol. XV. pp. 70—82,] preached November 5, 1785, I added some Reflections on the present State of it in this Country, and in them may be seen the following unfortunate paragraph, which, when I read to a friend before it went to the press, he prophetically told me would make much noise; but I believed him not.

"Let us not therefore be discouraged, though, for the present we see no great number of churches professedly Unitarian. It is sufficiently evident that Unitarian principles are gaining ground every day. Every attempt to suppress them, by writing or otherwise, has hitherto been favourable to their spread, and we may be confident it ever will be so. We are now sowing the seeds, which the cold of winter may prevent from sprouting, but which a genial spring will make to shoot and grow up; so that the field which to day appears perfectly naked and barren, may to-morrow be all green, and promise an abundant harvest. The present silent propagation of truth may even be compared to those causes in nature which lie dormant for a time, but which, in proper circumstances, act with the greatest violence. We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion; in consequence of which that edifice, the erection of which has been the work of ages, may be overturned in a moment, and so effectually, as that the same foundation can never be built upon again."

Let the reader now judge whether any thing violent was intended, or in the most distant manner alluded to by me; and yet this very paragraph did I hear Sir

Like all people who think themselves in the right, I wish, no doubt, to bring others to think as I do on every subject of importance. But the pains I take in this way is for your own good, and not for mine; and though I should be ever so much mistaken, my intention is friendly, and no harm can arise from it. If the conduct of your clergy be justifiable, and even commendable, as I acknowledge it to be, in endeavouring to bring Dissenters into the church, provided they make use of no other means than arguments, it cannot be wrong in me to endeavour by other arguments to bring you from it. We equally mean to conduct you to heaven in the way of truth, and the practice of virtue. After all, you hear us both, and judge for youselves; and we have no reason to expect that you will go one way or the other till you think you have good reason for so doing. What, then, is it that your clergy would frighten you with?

I am, &c.

LETTER II.

Proofs from History and recent Facts, that neither the Dissenters in general, nor the Presbyterians in particular, have been such Enemies to Monarchy as Mr. Madan has represented.

MY GOOD FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS,

MR. MADAN is pleased to say, "Is there no reason to see with suspicion their declarations of reverence to the government, and of loyalty to the king, however speciously and pompously announced, when the amount of that reverence has been exactly ascertained by a woeful experience of republican tyranny, and the extent of that loyalty has been exactly delineated with the blood of a king ?"

In this extraordinary paragraph, Mr. Madan, with what views are best known to himself, confounds the case of the present king George III. with that of Charles I., as if they were kings of similar characters, and governed by similar maxims, so that whoever could take it into their heads to rise against the one, and dethrone him, would do

William Dolben, (prompted, no doubt, by some of those bishops whose fears our magnanimous prime minister acknowledged that he also had caught,) read with great solemnity in the House of Commons, as an unquestionable proof of the dangerous designs of the Dissenters with respect to the constitution of this country. Risum teneatis." (P.) See Vol. XVIII. p. 544.

Sermon, p. 13. (P.)

the same by the other if they could. He too plainly insinuates that all Dissenters, at least such as met at Leicester, whose Resolutions he quotes, and which are similar to those that have been adopted in all other meetings, (so that, in fact, he must mean to comprehend the great body of them in his censure,) are in their hearts haters of kings in general, and of the present king in particular; that they would certainly murder them all without distinction, if they had opportunity; and that all our declarations to the contrary are not to be regarded.

Now, not to say that our declarations of reverence for the present government, and of loyalty to the present king, are no more liable to suspicion than his own declarations, that what he tells you to our prejudice, (leading you to consider us as a band of traitors and rebels,) is from his "settled principles and the conviction of his heart, as he hopes for mercy from the God of truth,"* (which mercy, if he sincerely repent, I doubt not he will obtain,) let us consider what reason he can have for this injurious accusation of us as king-haters and king-murderers. Let us see if we can trace where he got these "settled principles and conviction of his heart," though I fear we shall not easily find it. It must be from some very obscure quarter indeed, inaccessible to all mankind, and of which I suspect he will not be able to give any clear account himself. It is certain that the notions he has taken up concerning the death of Charles I., admitting that the present Dissenters, at the distance of near a century and a half from the time of that transaction, were all the lineal descendants of those who put him to death, (inheriting their estates, names, and characters, and considering all kings, and the present king, in the same light as they did him,) were not taken from any History of England that is now extant, at least any that I have ever seen or heard of. But when he is called upon, he will perhaps be pleased to produce it.

The history that I should have thought to be most to his purpose is that of Clarendon, of what he calls "the grand rebellion." But even there he will see that the parliament which began the war with the king, was not a Presbyterian one. It was called, though reluctantly, by the king him

See supra, p. 189.

+"The major part of that body," says Clarendon, "consisted of men who had no mind to break the peace of the kingdom, or to make any considerable alteration in the government of Church or State." History of the Rebellion (Book iii.), 1705, I. p. 184.