of change: they therefore take up, one day, the' most violent and stretched prerogative, and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from the one to the other without any fort of regard to caufe, to perfon, or to party.

In France you are now in the crifis of a revolution, and in the tranfit from one form of government to another-you cannot see that character of men exactly in the fame fituation in which we fee it in this country. With us it is militant; with you it is triumphant; and you know how it can act when its power is commenfurate to its will. I would not be fuppofed to confine those observations to any description of men, or to comprehend all men of any defcription within them-No! far from it. I am as incapable of that injuftice, as I am of keeping terms with those who profess principles of extremes; and who under the name of religion teach little elfe than wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution is this; they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the defperate ftrokes which are fometimes ufed in extreme occafions. But as thefe occafions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratuitous taint; and the moral fentiments fuffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by the depravation. This fort of people are fo taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have fucceeded in stopping up thofe that lead to the heart. They have per

verted in themselves, and in thofe that attend to them, all the well-placed fympathies of the human breast.

This famous fermon of the Old Jewry breathes. nothing but this fpirit through all the political part. Plots, maffacres, affaffinations, feem to fome people a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap, bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid to their tafte. There must be a great change of fcene; there must be a magnificent stage effect; there must be a grand fpectacle to rouze the imagination, grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment of fixty years fecurity, and the ftill unanimating repofe of public profperity. The Preacher found them all in the French revolution. This infpires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pifgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious ftate of France, as in a bird-eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into the following rapture:

"What an eventful period is this! I am "thankful that I have lived to it; I could al"moft fay, Lord, now lettest thou thy fervant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy falva"tion.-I have lived to fee a diffufion of know

ledge, which has undermined fuperstition and "error. I have lived to fee the rights of men "better understood than ever; and nations pant

ing for liberty which feemed to have loft the "idea of it. I have lived to fee Thirty Millions

of People, indignant and refolute, spurning at flavery, and demanding liberty with an irrefiftible voice. Their King led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch furrendering himself to his "Jubjects *"

Before I proceed further, I have to remark, that Dr. Price feems rather to over-value the great acquifitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The last century appears to me to have been quite as much enlightened. It had, though in a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of Dr. Price; and fome of the great preachers of that period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the triumph of France. On the trial of the Rev. Hugh Peters for high treason, it was depofed, that when King Charles was brought to London for his trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the triumph. "I faw," fays the witnefs, "his majefty in the coach with fix "horses, and Peters riding before the king "triumphing." Dr. Price, when he talks as if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent; for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this precurfor, the fame Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall,

* Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to fome of the spectacles which Paris has lately exhibitedexpreffes himself thus, "A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering fubjects is one of thofe appearances of σε grandeur which feldom rife in the profpect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my life, I fhall "think of with wonder and gratification." Thefe gentlemen agree marvellously in their feelings.

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(he had very triumphantly chofen his place) faid, " I have prayed and preached these twenty years; " and now I may say with old Simeon, Lord, now "lettest thou thy fervant depart in peace, for mine *» Peters had not have feen thy falvation *. the fruits of his prayer; for he neither departed fo foon as he wished, nor in peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of his followers may be in this country) himfelf a facrifice to the triumph which he led as Pontiff. They dealt at the Reftoration, perhaps, too hardly with this poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and his fufferings, that he had as much illumination, and as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all the fuperftition and error which might impede the great business he was engaged in, as any who follow and repeat after him, in this age, which would affume to itself an exclufive title to the knowledge of the rights of men, and all the glorious confequences of that knowledge.

After this fally of the preacher of the Old Jewry, which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the fpirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of governments, the heroic band of cafbierers of monarchs, electors of fovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, ftrutting with a proud conscioufness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had obtained fo large a fhare in the donative, were in hafte to make a generous diffufion of the know

* State Trials, vol. ii. p. 360, p. 363.

ledge

ledge they had thus gratuitously received. To make this bountiful communication, they adjourned from the church in the Old Jewry, to the London Tavern; where the fame Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved and carried the refolution, or addrefs of congratulation, tranfmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Affembly of France.

I find a preacher of the gospel prophaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly call ed "nunc dimittis," made on the first prefentation of our Saviour in the Temple, and applying it, with an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle, that perhaps ever was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This "leading in triumph," a thing in its beft form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our Preacher with fuch unhallowed tranfports, muft fhock, I believe, the moral tafte of every well-born mind. Several English were the stupified and indignant fpectators of that triumph. It was (unless, we have been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling a proceffion of American favages, entering into Onondaga, after fome of their murders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with fcalps, their captives, overpowered with the fcoffs and buffets of women as ferocious as themselves, much more than it refembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martial nation;-if a civilized nation, or any men who had a fenfe of generofity, were capable of a perfonal triumph over the fallen and afflicted.