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"and contempt, pity for fuch a degradation of my talents, "and contempt for fuch a proof of my malevolence.' Now I confider him as a perfon of ability, not at all inferior to what he is pleased to afcribe to me, and of a naturally ingenuous and good difpofition, but miserably misled by high church prejudices; in confequence of which he has hastily taken up a business to which neither his talents, nor those or any other man, are equal. I have, however, so good an opinion of his candour, as to be perfuaded that, after fome time, he will see these matters in a very different light from what he does at prefent; and if, when he is perfectly cool, he would read even my controverfial writings, he would entertain a very different opinion both of them, and of myself, than he does at prefent.

For

Notwithstanding the frightful pi&ure Mr. Madan gives of me, he fays, p. 6, that he can "meet me, except in the "light of cavil and disputation, not only with civility, but "with pleasure and good will." 1 hope, therefore, that he was not perfectly ferious in what he has faid of me. if I knew any person of such a character as he describes mine to be, I should certainly never with to meet him at all. I should always fufpect him of fome mischievous intention or other, and be continually in dread of his power. After such a picture as he has drawn, I fhould naturally look for the horns, the tail, and the cloven foot, as proper accompaniments of the character. Nay I fhould not chufe to have much to do with any person who confidered me in fuch a light; confcious as I am to myfelf, that my character and conduct are very different from what he conceives them to be.

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LETTER X.

Of Mr. Madan's Apology for his Treatment of the Diffenters.

My Friends and Neighbours,

MR.

R. Madan is willing, in his fecond publication, to foften, in some measure, his cenfure of the Diffenters in general, as perfons of a turbulent difpofition, feditious, republicans, and king killers, by repeatedly afferting that he only meant the chief leaders of the party. But the expreffions that he particularly quotes, as most liable to suspicion, are those of the Refolutions of the district meeting at Leicester, which were by no means the language of the heads of a party, but were approved, and unanimously adopted, by a very large body of Diffenters, of all denominations, in no less than nine contiguous counties. Thefe Refolutions he has annexed at large to his Sermon, by which he certainly did not mean to give any favourable idea of them.

Now these Resolutions are exactly fimilar to those that were paffed in all other parts of England; fo that any cenfure of them, muft neceffarily apply to the great body of Diffenters, and not to a few only. We do not thank Mr. Madan for excepting some individuals among the Diffenters from his virulent accufation of the whole body, because it is well known there are no large bodies of men without fome well difpofed individuals; and I appeal to the whole town, and to Mr. Madan's own hearers, if the impreffion left by his Sermon was not in the highest degree unfavourable to the whole body of Diffenters, and therefore whether it was not deserving (confidering his justly respected character) of particular and indignant notice. However, his charges appeared to me so very absurd, that I treated them, as you have seen, rather with ridicule, than with anger; whereas

whereas though his Letter abounds with wit, yet anger evidently predominates in it.

Upon the whole, I cannot help comparing Mr. Madan's conduct to that of a boy*, who should wantonly thruft his stick into a hive of quiet and induftrious bees, and then think to walk off unhurt; not recollecting, that, inoffenfive as they naturally are, they have stings, and are capable of refentment. Had he caught a few single bees by themselves, he might have crushed them without alarming the reft, and without any risk to himself at all. He does not, however, deny but that he alluded to myself in particular, as one of those more violent Diffenters, on whom his cenfure was intended to fall; and if he really took me to be that malicious Being above defcribed, he should not have trodden upon my cloven foot, or have kicked me so near to my tail, without remembering that I had horns, and he had none.

Befides, who are the violent Diffenters that Mr. Madan refers to, and how far can he be juftified in afcribing their particular fentiments to the whole body of Diffenters? My own sentiments, especially my religious ones, which are all that are concerned in this case, have been no where so unpopular as among the Diffenters themselves; and what Mr. Madan will not fufpect, but what I know to be true, they gave the greatest offence to those who are commonly diftinguished by the appellation of rational Diffenters; and it is only of late that the cafe has begun to be a little otherwise. At one time there were not more than two or three pulpits in England that I confidered as open to me.

* Mr. Madan will perhaps conftrue this as a reflection upon him, on account of his youth, fince he thinks, p. 20, that I meant fomething contemptuous by mentioning that circumstance both with respect to Mr. Pitt, and himself before; whereas any impartial reader will fee that I had no idea of the kind with respect to either of them. It is true, however, that I do not fee any thing fo transcendant in the abilities of Mr. Pitt, as Mr. Madan does, p. 20, nor have I at present the favourable opinion that I once was willing to entertain of his heart, because I do not think that his condu& in his high office fufficiently correfponds to his professions before he arrived at it.

With

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With respect to my political publications, my late Letter to Mr. Pitt greatly displeased the Diffenters in general; and many of my own particular friends, thofe whom I have reafon to value the most, have not yet forgiven it. But my whole history shews that it has not been my custom to court popularity, even among the Diffenters, much less to aspire to the emoluments, as Mr. Madan infinuates, p. 22, of the established church. If I did, my conduct has been ill adapted to gain my end.

As to the late application to parliament, I had nothing to do in suggesting it, and very little in promoting it. Nay, apprized of my extreme unpopularity, it is well known to all my friends, that I purposely kept out of the way, left my presence should impede the bufinefs. All that I ever thought of doing was delivering the Sermon on the 5th of November laft. And a difcourfe on fome topic relating to public liberty being always expected on that day, and the ufual topics of that kind being pretty much exhaufted among us, I thought I might as well make choice of that subject, as any other; and when I fat down to write, I was far from having any thoughts of publishing the discourse.

If Mr. Madan would have proved my real principles to be dangerous, he should have confidered what I have written without a view to controverfy, on the fubject of government, especially my Lectures on the Study of Hiflory and General Policy, which I particularly pointed out to him. There he will find the principles that I taught when I was tutor at Warrington, those that are now taught at the new college in Hackney, at Northampton, and as I am informed in the colleges in North America. If Mr. Madan had looked into those Lectures, which, from the circumstances above mentioned, he may suppose bid fair to contain fuch principles of government as will generally be taught to young men of fortune among us, he would have found them, indeed, to be favourable to liberty, but unfavourble to republicanifm; and all my acquaintance know that I am even a zealous friend of a limited monarchy, fuch as our constitution is.

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In a conversation I had laft fummer, at which Dr. Jackson, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, was present, I maintained the importance of three different powers in every well balanced ftate, with fo much earnestness, that, with great good humour, he and the rest of the company rallied me, as being a trinitarian in politics, though an unitarian in religion. On this question I always took the part of Mr. Adams against Dr. Franklin, who was a favourer of a republican government; though even be was so well satisfied with our own, that I (who knew him well, if any man did) know that he would have facrificed every thing for the prefervation of it.

I fcruple not to fay that I think the power of the crown to be at prefent much too great; but this does not affect my idea of the real use of a king. I am an enemy to the biɛrarchy, not only as antichriftian, but as a great means of giving the crown the undue influence it now has; in confequence of which the court can carry almoft whatever measures they please.

While the clergy had a leaning to the Pretender, which continued till there were no more hopes of his fucceeding to the crown, they ferved as a balance to the power of the crown? but, now they are wholly with it, and the influence of the Diffenters, which in all the late reigns was intirely with the court, has begun, in confequence of a series of unprovoked discouragements, to turn the other way, though ftill it is not generally fo.

I am forry to find Mr. Madan approving of the Extras that were made from the preface to my Letters to Mr. Burn, and that "he thinks himself and the public, p. 12, indebted "to the ingenious editor of them, as forming a neat fyllabus "of my constitutional principles ;" and speaking ironically, "a fummary, yet full, evidence of my many public merits." For by keeping out of fight every thing that shewed I had nothing in view besides public difcuffion, that editor, and his abettors, must have meant to infinuate that I intended fomething of a more violent kind. For what is there alarming

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