some among the mob insult the gentlemen as they came to the hotel to the dinner; and if other principal gentlemen too, who placed themselves upon the steps of Mr. Brooke's house, the very next to the hotel, had not been seen to encourage rather than discountenance the people. Without some extraordinary exertions to mislead the people, they could not possibly have taken offence at any thing that was said or done by the parties who met and dined.

The advertisements that preceded the dinner were as explicit as could be penned. The toasts and the songs, too, were such as the people would, I am persuaded, have most cheerfully encored, had they been left to follow the dictates of their own honest hearts, and to consult their own feelings only. Nay, not a man among the high-church party itself, I should think, could have refused to join in the closing lines of the song that was prepared for the occasion, which were:

"Let each loyal Briton then joyfully sing,

The blessings of freedom, and long live the king."

Is this language inconsistent with the public professions of attachment to the constitution held out in the advertisement? Is it not sufficiently declaratory to amount of itself to a full proof to every impartial person, that the meeting has been basely calumniated, and that it has only been used as an ostensible occasion of persecuting and vilifying the Dissenters? And yet, what is it that has been alleged against them? Many indeed have been the frivolous charges against yourself, who justly stand so conspicuous among us; but against the body of Dissenters, what do all the charges that have been offered amount to?

Mr. Madan has sedulously endeavoured to give a serious alarm founded upon our proceedings to obtain a repeal of the Test Laws; but that gentleman's apprehensions were totally groundless. Had we entertained any unbecoming or illegal intentions, we should not have regularly published our proceedings to the world; but this has been our practice. No resolutions, as far as ever I knew or heard of, have been formed at any of those meetings but what are before the public. I will venture to add, there are none passed upon the late attempt but what are in every degree equalled in spirit and firmness by those which were passed upon former occasions, in prosecuting the attempt to obtain relief from the penalties to which Dissenters were subject for keeping schools, in which, though repeatedly unsuccessful at first, we were at last happy enough to be redressed.

If Mr. Burn and his brethren have any instances of disloyalty to charge us with, any acts of disaffection to the state to accuse us of, let them bring them forth; let the charge be made. When the advertisement expressing our loyalty and attachment to the government of this kingdom was published on the 14th of July, what was further necessary to prove us good citizens? Was it becoming us, who were conscious of none but upright motives and undisguised actions, to be deterred from an innocent purpose by a dread of the machinations of those who we were told had been secretly plotting mischief against us? Surely not.

After expressing myself thus unreservedly upon real facts, you

will easily imagine with what feelings I read Mr. Burn's modest insinuation of the activity of the magistrates. He says, (p. 44,) "They staid in town for the express purpose of interposing their If it was authority, should any attempt be made to break the peace." so, why did they not interfere when they both heard and saw the notorious insults offered to some of the gentlemen as they went into the hotel? What did they do in this, the supposed origin of the business? What did they, when in the evening they saw the two meeting-houses and your house destroyed? Did they make any extraordinary constables, or enter upon any other spirited opposition? No: while the meeting-houses were still burning, and the mob destroying your furniture and your house, they both returned home and went very peaceably to bed; and when two respectable gentlemen went over to them at my request early the next morning, one of them expressed much anger at being called out of his bed. And yet the diffident" Mr. Burn very modestly represents the merit of the magistrates as approved and sanctioned by one of the most numerous and respectable town meetings that was ever convened in Birmingham, and says, the only proof of delinquency on the part of the magistrates was their want of success.* A striking proof, indeed, this scene affords of the faithful discharge of their duty! as Mr. Burn declares it; and, that he may not lose the full emphasis of the words, he prints them in italics. I confess, however, that, before this scene of outrage, I never heard of an instance wherein a magistrate, "faithfully discharging his duty," in quelling a mob, when addressing the Rioters, whom he found in the very act of pulling down a house, should desire them to "take care not to hurt one another." And yet this is one among many other proofs furnished upon the present occasion. I think it renders all others superfluous. Otherwise many more, equally in point, might be mentioned, as well as the following singular fact, viz. that throughout the whole of the late scene, though the justices personally attended at your house, and at several other houses, whilst the Rioters were destroying and burning them, the Riot Act was never once read, or even attempted to be read.†

But probably you may have already been informed of this through another channel. I will not therefore detain you any longer, for I fear you must already have thought this letter too long. But, as in writing it I have not been actuated by any desire of criminating others, or retorting their malevolent calumnies, I hope you will excuse its prolixity, or any little degree of warmth that may appear in this attempt in justification of myself, to which I have steadily endeavoured to confine my remarks; for, after all that I have suffered, and am still suffering, I can truly say that I am more disposed to pity than to criminate the authors and abettors of it. Their season of reflection, I hope, is approaching, and I would by no means retard it by any irritating reflections. I therefore most cheerfully

Will Mr. Burn say that the magistrates were neither of them intoxicated with liquor, in the course of the first evening of this interesting and disgraceful event? (Russell.)

A striking contrast this to the repeated readings of this Act when the brothels, and Mr. Brooke's house, were in danger, in May last. (Russell.)

close this letter with my best wishes for the restoration of that peace and good neighbourhood which, notwithstanding the party-spirit which has so long governed some bigots among us, reigned at Birmingham previous to this truly unexpected and cruel interruption of it; and I am confident nothing will be wanting to promote it that can consistently be required at the hands of the Dissenters.

Believe me, with more respect, gratitude, and affection, than I can express,

Dear Sir,

Most sincerely and truly yours,

WILLIAM RUSSELL.

Birmingham, August 20, 1792.

No. XVII.

AN ADDRESS OF THE DEPUTIES AND DELEGATES OF THE DISSENTERS IN ENGLAND, TO THE SUFFERERS IN THE RIOT AT BIRMINGHAM, AND THE ANSWER BY THE SUFFERERS.

(See supra, p. 439, Note *.)

To the Protestant Dissenters of the Town and Neighbourhood of Birmingham, who suffered from the Riots which happened in the month of July last.

WE, the assembled deputies and delegates of the Protestant Dissenters of England, in the name of the numerous and respectable body of our constituents, feel it incumbent on us thus publicly to testify our astonishment and horror at the outrages which you have experienced from an ignorant and misguided multitude, and our respect for that manly fortitude with which you have supported these unmerited sufferings.

While, however, as sustaining one common character, we are anxious to pay this sincere tribute of affectionate and fraternal sympathy to all our injured brethren, we are persuaded that we shall gratify alike your feelings and our own, when, waving our various speculative, and especially our theological differences, we desire to express our peculiar concern on the account of that distinguished individual, whom the rancour of this cruel persecution selected as the first victim of its rage. Deeply convinced of the importance of truth, we unite in admiring the ardour which he has ever discovered in the pursuit of it; as freemen, we applaud his unremitted exertions in the great cause of civil and religious liberty; as friends to literature, we are proud of our alliance with a name so justly celebrated as that of Dr. Priestley; and we pray the Almighty Disposer of events long to continue to us and to the world, a life which science and virtue have contributed to render illustrious.

We rejoice in the thought that, though loaded with calumny and overwhelmed by violence, you have not yet been disgraced by one serious imputation of a crime; and it is therefore reasonable to con

fide in the justice of your country for an ample reparation of the wrongs you have sustained; but, in proportion to your innocence, the infamy of these proceedings falls with accumulated weight on the authors and the perpetrators of such mischief; nor can we avoid observing in the circumstances of this transaction, evident symptoms either of some gross defect in our general system of police, or of the most supine and culpable negligence in those whose immediate duty it was to have protected the places of public worship, as well as the lives and property of their fellow-citizens; and we trust that the executive government, which exerted so much laudable activity to repress the disorders on the first notice, will proceed more fully to vindicate its own dignity and the national honour, by seriously inquiring how it came to pass that they were permitted to rise, unchecked, to such a height of destructive fury.

Whatever may be the event, we desire to assure you of our warmest affection, of our steadiest support. Although in this instance the storm has fallen on you alone, we all feel ourselves to have been equally within the aim of the spirit which directed it; nor shall we ever attempt to elude similar violence by meanly abandoning the common cause, or deserting our brethren in the hour of distress.

Our adversaries betray little acquaintance with the character and principles of the men whom they presume to insult and vilify, if they imagine that the spirit of the Dissenters is to be subdued and broken by the means which have been employed at Birmingham. Such measures can only tend to cement more closely our bond of union, and to invigorate our efforts to procure the repeal of those invidious and injurious laws, by which we are held forth as the proper objects of suspicion and insult to the unthinking vulgar.

Persuaded that we have never merited those absurd and malicious imputations by which ignorance and bigotry have always attempted to excuse illegal violence, we boldly appeal for our justification to our general conduct, whenever on great national emergencies we have been drawn forth to action. We cannot point out any other criterion of our principles as a body, than the uniform tenor of our public conduct. We know that on such occasions we shall be found ever to have shewn the most affectionate and invariable attachment to the constitution of this kingdom, as settled on the principles of the glorious Revolution, on which alone depends the title of the present august family to the British throne; and on this fair and open ground we challenge any class of our enemies to a comparison.

But although we have no wish to conceal our sentiments, yet maintaining, as we shall never cease to do, the equal right of every citizen to all the common benefits of society, we apprehend that to call on us to purchase protection, safety, or even the good opinion of our fellow-subjects, by any avowal which the law does not require of all, or by any silence which it does not universally enjoin; is an assumption of superiority, which liberal minds will disclaim, and to which, conscious of no inferiority but in numbers, of no guilt but the love of liberty and of our country, we see not the smallest reason to submit.

We trust that our countrymen will at length discover that it is not our fault if some degree of discontent be ever the effect of oppression. We shall not relinquish the attempt to convince them, that civil distinctions founded on religious differences, are the real source of the disturbances which have so frequently arisen among contending sects in the same community; and we flatter ourselves that Britain, which formerly took the lead in religious toleration, will not be the last nation in the world to acknowledge the just claims of religious liberty; but that the day will arrive much sooner than those imagine who reflect not on the present aspect and tendencies of human affairs, when the good sense of our country will admit us to that equal rank for which we contend, and when all shall cordially concur to efface the stain which the late outrages have fixed on our national character.

Signed by the unanimous order of the meeting,
EDWARD JEFFRIES,

King's Head, Poultry,

London, February 1, 1792.

Chairman.*

To the Deputies and Delegates of the Protestant Dissenters of England, assembled in London.

GENTLEMEN,

Birmingham, April 22, 1792.

WE, the sufferers by the late Riots in the town and neighbourhood of Birmingham, were highly gratified by the reception of your affectionate address, and though local circumstances and considerations have retarded our acknowledgment of it, we have not been the less sensible of its value, or unmindful of the return it so forcibly demands from us. Though we were never so sensible of the value of our common faith as at this trying period; though its invigorating principles were not before this æra either justly known, or fully experienced; though we have derived continual support, as well as unspeakable satisfaction and comfort from them, yet we confess they receive fresh energy from the friendly sympathy, and the truly Christian spirit, which you have manifested upon this trying occasion.

We rejoice that, notwithstanding all the opprobrium our malicious adversaries are endeavouring to cast upon us, you have the firmness and generosity to step forth and acknowledge us as brethren. We rejoice that at the very instant in which our common principles are made the subject of general censure and ridicule, your truly respectable body has given public testimony to their efficacy, and generously acted upon them, by thus holding out to us the right hand of fellowship. Persecuted and injured as we have been, and still are, an address of sympathy and condolence from so respectable a body as the assembled Deputies and Delegates of the Protestant Dissenters of England, sent in the name of your

• See supra, pp. 579, 482.