reigning family. It was the fulsome flattery and abject principles of the clergy that chiefly contributed to precipitate the Stuarts to their ruin, and they are acting the same part at present. They taught Charles II. to behave with the most indecent ingratitude and treachery to the Presbyterians, who were the true authors of his restoration, and they are dictating the same ingratitude to the present reigning family, to which the Dissenters have ever been most zealously attached, while the clergy were almost universally disaffected.

These are facts that lie on the very surface of the English History, and yet the clergy have the assurance to charge us with disaffection. If there be any disposition towards it, it is what their violence and injustice have driven us to. There are others, we trust, who can better distinguish the signs of the times than they, and who will not again sacrifice the interests of the nation, and the constitution itself, to their bigotry, avarice and ambition.

In

Many of the facts introduced into this part of my Appeal will be found to be the same with those that are mentioned, and spiritedly remarked upon, by Mr. Edwards, in his "Letters to the British Nation," as well as alleged by Mr. Whitbread and others in the House of Commons. † reality we had no other than the same authorities. I should not, however, have thought it necessary to have made so many of the same observations with Mr. Edwards, if this part of my Appeal had not been printed before I saw his last Number. I earnestly recommend this last Number of his Letters, as containing several more particulars than had come to my knowledge.

I cannot omit this opportunity of congratulating my late congregation on the acquisition of two such valuable ministers as Mr. Edwards and Mr. Jones, whose first and truly excellent discourse to them is now before the public. They have, in a great measure, verified my prediction, in my "Letter to the Inhabitants of Birmingham;"§ and the increasing numbers and spirit of the Unitarian Dissenters in that town must have already convinced the bigotted highchurch party there, that they have been far from gaining any

Of whom see Vol. XV. p. 69, Note.

+ See supra, p. 435.

Author of several pamphlets on Unitarianism and Religious Liberty, under the signature of A Welsh Freeholder. (See supra, pp. 432, 433.) Mr. Jones, who soon quitted the Christian Ministry for the profession of the Law, died very lately. § Appendix, No. IX.

thing by the Riot, or by my expulsion from the place. Such has ever been, and such, from the nature of things, must always be, the effect of intolerance and persecution. But bigotry will neither read nor reflect, so that to this demon, equally furious and blind, the instructive page of history is unfolded in vain.

Mr. Burn charges the Unitarians with " inviting the aid of persecution.' If we have given the invitation, the high-church party at Birmingham have been as ready to give as we to ask, and have thereby given us the assistance that we found we wanted. And though Mr. Burn says, as a proof that I have not been persecuted, that " I have not suffered, as a Christian," my case is so far common with those who are usually termed Protestant Martyrs in the reign of Queen Mary in this country, and of Philip II. and Louis XIV. abroad; for none of them suffered as Christians. We have this, however, in common with the proper Christian martyrs, that we equally suffer for conscience' sake. "Much less," adds Mr. Burn," has it been made to appear that the clergy were accessory to his misfortune.' When I wrote the former part of this Appeal, I did not consider them as accessory to it, but now, in a certain sense, I do so; and they are called upon either to vindicate themselves, or to bear the imputation; and they will, no doubt, do that which they will find the easiest to them. If it be true, as they now pretend, that they lament the Riot in Birmingham, (which the total failure of their object may now perhaps lead them to do,) numbers of their brethren in many parts of England do not. I could enlarge greatly in my evidence of this, if it were prudent so to do. No other event in modern times has shewn so decisively what spirit the high-church clergy of this country are really of. It is the spirit of church establishments universally, and truly AntiChristian.

I deferred the printing, and after that the publication, of this work, which was composed in August, with a view to give my readers an account of the complete termination of every thing relating to the Riot in Birmingham; hoping that the very inadequate compensation that was awarded ust would have been paid at least before this time. But finding this to be still delayed, and that there is no near prospect of the business being dispatched, though the term fixed by

* Reply, p. 102. (P.)

↑ See Vol. XV. p. 523, Note*.

the law for this purpose is expired, (it being now nearly a year and a half since the disaster, and eight months since the cause was heard,) and many of my friends and my enemies too call for the work, I have consented to withhold it no longer.

I shall close this Preface with repeating what I have observed more than once in the course of the work, viz. that depending, as I necessarily must, on the information of others, with respect to the facts introduced or alluded to in it, it is very possible that I may have been misled. But I wish to give our adversaries an opportunity of exculpating themselves, if they can, from the charges brought against them; and certainly they are under obligation to me on this account; it being always an advantage to know what our adversaries say and believe concerning us, as we may then either defend ourselves or neglect the accusation, as we think proper.†

Clapton, Jan. 1, 1793.

This they had not done in 1794. See Vol. XV. p. 529.

+ I cannot occupy the remainder of this page more suitably than by quoting the following lines, (dated Dec. 29, 1792,) preserved by Mr. Lindsey in his Preface to the London Edition of Dr. Priestley's "Answer to Paine's Age of Reason;" and which my venerable friend says "indignation drew from a genius of superior order." It is indeed "particularly becoming," as Burke remarks in his Reflections, "to shew our justice and gratitude, when those who have deserved well of mankind are labouring under popular obloquy, and the persecutions of oppressive power."

"Stirs not thy spirit, Priestley! as the train
With low obeisance and with servile phrase,
File behind file, advance, with supple knee,
And lay their necks beneath the foot of power?
Burns not thy cheek indignant, when thy name,
On which delighted science lov'd to dwell,
Becomes the bandied theme of hooting crowds?
With timid caution, or with cool reserve,
When e'en each reverend brother keeps aloof,
Eyes the struck deer, and leaves thy naked side
A mark for power to shoot at? Let it be.
On evil days though fallen and evil tongues,
To thee, the slander of a passing age
Imports not. Scenes like these hold little space
In his large mind, whose ample stretch of thought
Grasps future periods. Well canst thou afford
To give large credit for that debt of fame

Thy country owes thee. Calm thou canst consign it
To the slow payment of that distant day,

If distant, when thy name, to freedom's join'd,

Shall meet the thanks of a regenerate land."

444

AN APPEAL.

PART II.

SECTION I.

Introduction, and of the exaggerated Charges in Mr. Burn's Reply.

I Do not remember that I ever entered upon any composition with so much reluctance as I do upon this, though not in the least from any apprehension of not being able to acquit myself to my own satisfaction in it. Indeed, in this respect, no task ever appeared to me more easy and inviting, as I dare say my impartial readers, (and some such I hope to find,) will be sufficiently convinced as I proceed. But I wish to look back as little as possible to an unpleasant scene, excepting in such a manner as to derive benefit from my reflections upon it. Being, however, loudly called upon by the clergy of Birmingham, who have employed the pen of Mr. Burn, and who sanction his performance, I find myself under a necessity of vindicating what I advanced in my Appeal, on the subject of the Riots in that town.

I long entertained hopes that this might be unnecessary, on account of the candour with which my Appeal was written; and, circumstanced as I was, it would naturally be concluded, that I would be as guarded as possible with respect to all the facts that I had occasion to introduce; and as I had no vindictive feelings, I imagined that, considering what I had suffered, (more in some respects than most persons now living could be made to suffer,) I wrote in such a manner as my enemies themselves would think to be temperate. And, indeed, I have the satisfaction to find, that not only my particular friends, but many who were not previously disposed to be my friends, thought that the temper with which I wrote was not unbecoming a Christian. Notwithstanding this, the clergy of Birmingham express a very different idea of my performance, and it is on nothing but an appeal to facts that the propriety of what I advanced before, and of what I shall now advance in defence of it, must depend.

What I have had most occasion to complain of, ever since my writings have drawn any degree of attention upon me, has been unfounded calumny, slanders of the most malignant nature, of which no evidence could be produced, but to which confident assertion procured credit. One of these, respecting my converting Silas Deane to Atheism is acknowledged in this Reply to my Appeal. That stories grow by passing from one hand to another, and that by this means mere suppositions come to be considered as undoubted facts, is not uncommon; and it is not easy to ascertain the degree of guilt in any of the relaters. But to be charged with asserting the very contrary of what a writer does assert, and in the very publication replied to, (which is of course immediately under the eye of the person who professedly replies to it,) is much more extraordinary, as it argues such a force of prejudice as the evidence of a man's own senses will not remove; and there are more, and more striking, instances of this violent prejudice in Mr. Burn's Reply to my Appeal, than I have seen in any piece of controversial writing whatever. If he ever had read my work, he had quite forgotten the contents of it at the time of his writing, and could never have compared the two together. I shall, therefore, do it for him, and let the reader judge between us.

Mr. Burn says the great object in the narrative part of my work was to criminate the clergy," and that I most evidently do this "without discrimination."† Now I do not know how it was possible for me to discriminate more expressly than I have done in the account that I gave of the conduct of the clergy; calling some of them my "friends, engaged in the same cause," and even acknowledging, that some of them were "among the first to afford me substantial assistance."§ If, therefore, I had any where censured the clergy in general, it ought to have been understood with this limitation, which had been sufficiently expressed before. But I think it will be found that every separate passage, if the scope of it be attended to, is sufficiently guarded, and conveys no censure on the clergy as a body, but only on certain descriptions of them. Mr. Burn should at least have quoted some passage in which this censure seems to be general and unqualified; but he does no such thing, contenting himself with asserting it, without producing any evidence of it at all.

* Reply, p. 41. (P.)
Preface. (.P.) Supra, p. 353.

+ Ibid. p. 3. (P.)

§ Ibid. p. 397.