hardly bear the burden, supposing he does not quite sink under it. If he dissent from the established mode of worship, he cannot serve God according to his conscience, without being disturbed and insulted by a profane populace, who are countenanced and encouraged by persecuting magistrates. Nay, it is well if he be not prosecuted, fined, imprisoned, or put to death. If he be committed to jail, he can never be bailed out on any occasion. If he be sent to prison ever so unjustly, he can recover no damages for false imprisonment; if he be wronged of his property, in a variety of cases, at the peril of his life, he dares not complain. If he be maliciously robbed of his good name, he cannot recover it by law, together with suitable damages. If his bed be defiled, he can get no satisfaction for that capital injury. His house can be forcibly entered into at any time; he is obliged to work so long for the sovereign gratis, that he cannot mind his own business; if he be wantonly struck by a great man, there is no law for him, and the wisest thing which he can do is to say nothing; if he be murdered, little or no notice is taken of it; a plebeian assassin can easily make his escape, and nobody dares prosecute a noble murderer. If he freely speak his mind, either upon religious subjects, or political affairs, he is summoned before an ecclesiastical and civil inquisitor; and it is well if he escape with the reprimand, which a chief magistrate in a mild republic gave to a gentleman of my acquaintance, who modestly hinted at a method of redressing an avowed grievance: "Who has appointed you, sir, a teacher of your sovereigns? They know their business: learn to know your own." But what is worst of all, if he be capitally accused, his accusers are perhaps his judge and jury. He is put in a dungeon, without knowing why; his witnesses are not suffered to speak for him; he is kept so long on the rack, that he is perhaps obliged to turn false accuser against himself.— He is tried secretly. His fortune and life lie, possibly, at the mercy of two or three judges only. Nay, he may fall a sacrifice to the prejudice, caprice, envy, hatred, or hurry of one single man. Being tried by his peers, or by twelve of his fellow citizens, is an invaluable blessing, of which he has not the least idea.

Not so the happy subjects of Great Britain. Whether they have a freehold or not, they all enjoy this advantage: and, if the law be put in force, they are partakers of all the branches of civil and religious liberty, which are opposed to the above-described branches of hard vassalage.— And (what is most wonderful) the poor enjoy these blessings as well as the rich the plebeian shares them with the nobleman. Hence it is, that the subjects of Great Britain are the freest of all the men who live under any civil government in the world. And hence it appears, that when you assert there is no difference between having no share in legislation, and being an absolute slave, you display an amazing unacquaintedness with the civil governments of Europe; you betray an astonishing want of gratitude to God and the sovereign, for the civil and religious liberty which we enjoy; and you verify the observation of an ingenious foreigner, who has lately written upon the British constitution, and who intimates, the blessings of liberty are so familiar to the English, that they neither relish nor know them. They may, in this respect, be com pared to the children of princes, who, being born and educated in a palace, are so accustomed to its elegance and grandeur, and so unac

quainted with the sordidness of cottages, and the gloominess of dungeons, that they never heighten their happiness, and excite their gratitude, by comparing the blessings they enjoy with the hardships that others endure.

Just as this comparison may be with respect to you, sir, it can however hardly suit the case of many of the colonists. Some of them, alas! know too well what tyranny and cruel servitude are. When poor, naked, bleeding slaves, ready to expire under the repeated strokes of a cutting whip, are obliged to keep their groans, and stifle their sighs, for fear of raising the cruelty of their tyrants to a higher pitch of fierceness;-when this is the case, I say, of all the men upon earth, it least becomes the hard masters-the domestic sovereigns of these poor creatures, to com. plain of the mild government they are under, and to scream Tyranny! slavery! robbery! murder! And why? Truly because some of them are enjoined to pay taxes, about thirty times lighter than those which millions of their fellow subjects, who have no votes, cheerfully pay in England: because the parliament will not suffer them to destroy, with impunity, the property of our merchants; and because the king will not have the collectors of the public revenue to be in continual danger of being murdered among them. O partiality, how high is thy glaring throne; and how many are thy warm votaries in America, and thy sanguine advocates in England!

I shall esteem myself happy, sir, if this check to licentiousness recom. mend itself to your conscience as a Protestant, and to your candour as a well wisher to the cause of true liberty. Think not the plainness, with which I have addressed you, springs from malice or disrespect. Though I have bluntly attacked your errors, I sincerely love and honour you as an enemy to tyranny, and a (mistaken) asserter of British liberty.Therefore, while I blame your dangerous performance, I gladly do justice to your good meaning; and I cordially join you, where you express a loyal, ardent wish, that a speedy reconciliation may take place between us and our colonies, upon an honourable, constitutional basis, and that our beloved sovereign may long live to sway the sceptre over a free people; provided you do not mean by a "free people," a tumultuous, mobbing people, making liberty to consist in refusing to pay taxes, and in giving to the Scriptural yoke of civil government the opprobrious name of "abject slavery."

Should you accuse me, sir, as you do Mr. Wesley, of "inflaming the minds of the people here against our American brethren;" you will do me as much injustice as you do to my friend. Our only design is to promote a proper obedience to those parts of the Gospel of peace, which enjoin us a due subjection to our superiors; and to enforce the articles of religion which the last reformers drew up, to keep overdoing Protestants from the enthusiasm of wild republicans. Far from being prejudiced against the colonists, I feel a deep concern for their spiritual and temporal welfare. Yea, such is my partiality to them, and my fear of a greater effusion of the blood of Britons, and sons of Britons, that I even wish the government would make the easy yoke of which they causelessly complain easier still, by granting them some privileges, denied not only to millions of Britons here, but also to the members of parliament, and to the king's own brothers, who, while they are out of Eng. land, are all taxed without being consulted. I humbly wish that our

legislators would condescend to talk with the colonists about the taxes which suit their country and circumstances best. And as British senators know how to pity the prejudices of mankind, especially the prejudices of sons of Britons, with respect to the precious blessing of liberty; I wish that the king and parliament would extend their greatest mercy to subjects who have been hurried out of the way of loyalty chiefly by their inattention to the blessings which they enjoy, and by the delusive hopes, with which, it is to be feared, some of our own countrymen have rashly flattered, and artfully seduced them. In a word, I ardently wish that, upon the return of the colonists to their duty, the government would bind them to their mother country, both by the silken cords of pardoning love, and by the silver bands of some prerogatives, which may convince them that Great Britain considers them not only as subjects, but also as younger brothers.

Such kindness, together with the scourge of a civil war, which they so severely feel already, would probably attach them to the parent state for ever. Should this be the case, how great will be the joy of those who properly value the blessings of peace and order! And how full the disappointment of the demon of discord, who envies us the singular blessings which we enjoy! Great Britain and America will then become the fixed, the unrivalled seats of truth, arts, sciences, and commerce. They will collect the treasures of the old and new world. They will play into each others hands the wealth of the universe. And, joined together, they will be more than a match for their combined enemies. So shall genuine Protestantism, sober liberty, uninterrupted peace, and growing prosperity, conspire to crown the richest island, and finest continent in the world. Happy, for ever happy will they be, if their riches and grandeur do not corrupt and intoxicate them: and if civil and religious phrenzy never hinder them more from paying an, humble regard to our Lord's important precept, "Render to Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and unto God the things which are God's. That you, sir, I, and all our fellow labourers in the Gospel, may faithfully practise, and zealously preach this neglected part of the doctrine of Christ; that our most sanguine patriotism may always be tempered by a due sense of what we owe to our governors; and that our warmest loyalty may always be attended with a proper consciousness of what we owe to God, to our fellow citizens, and to posterity, are the Christian, constitutional prayers which I ardently offer to the King of kings, and in which I invite you to join, reverend sir, your affectionate brother, and obedient servant,

J. F.

AMERICAN PATRIOTISM

FARTHER CONFRONTED WITH

REASON, SCRIPTURE, AND THE CONSTITUTION :

BEING

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DANGEROUS POLITICS

TAUGHT BY THE

REV. MR. EVANS M. A., AND THE REV. DR. PRICE.

WITH

A SCRIPTURAL PLEA

FOR THE

REVOLTED COLONIES.

BY J. FLETCHER, VICAR OF MADELEY, SALOP.

"Skill in politics contributeth not a little to the understanding of divinity. I learned more from Mr. Lawson than from any divine: especially his instigating me to the study of politics, in which he much lamented the ignorance of divines, did prove a singular benefit to me." (Rev. Mr. R. Baxter's Life, pp. 107, 108.)