infamous book levelled against me had nefariously undertaken the vindication of all tyrants, I was specially and unanimously selected by the redeemers of my country, as not unequal to an adversary of such renown or a subject of such importance, to defend in public the cause of the people of England, and if ever it might so be asserted, of Liberty herself: and Lastly, because in a matter of so much difficulty and such anxious expectation, I neither disappointed the hope, shall I call it? or the opinion of my countrymen, nor failed to convince great numbers of foreign statesmen and scholars; having at the same time so shattered my presumptuous adversary in the conflict, by humbling his pride and ruining his character, as to prevent him for the three years during which he survived his defeat, notwithstanding all his indignant menaces, from again molesting me otherwise than by purchasing the feeble assistance of some contemptible allies, and suborning (as will shortly appear) a few poor fulsome panegyrists to repair, if possible, his recent and unforeseen disgrace. These important circumstances then, considered as proofs of the divine goodness, advancing a powerful claim to my gratitude, and supplying also a most favourable auspice for the commencement of my present undertaking, I now commemorate with the profoundest veneration.

Who indeed is there, that does not look upon

his country's glories as his own? And what can be more glorious to any country, than the restoration of freedom in both it's civil and it's religious concerns? In both these respects, what people or what state has evinced more fortitude, or experienced better fortune, than this? For fortitude does not wholly exert itself in battle, but equally exhibits it's energy and it's intrepidity in opposition to every species of fear. The Greeks, those primary objects of our respect, and the Romans, when they were about to expel a tyrant, displayed no other virtue than a zeal for liberty, with a weapon to wield and an arm to strike. All that was farther necessary they easily accomplished, with happy omens, amidst the praises and gratulations of mankind. Neither did they seem so much to rush into the danger of doubtful contest, as to hurry forward to the fair and honourable struggle of virtue, to rewards and crowns and the assured hope of immortality. Tyranny was not, then, a hallowed thing: tyrants had not, as the sudden self-created viceroys and vicars of Christ, from hopelessness of the affection, entrenched themselves behind the blind superstition, of the populace the lower orders had not, under the stupefying influence of the priesthood, sunk into a state of barbarism darker even than that, in which the idiots of India now grovel. For these only worship as deities a crew of pernicious demons, whom they cannot get rid of;

those on the contrary, to incapacitate themselves for the expulsion of tyrants, converted them into arrogant divinities against themselves, and consecrated the pests of mankind to their own destruction.

6

With all those legions of inveterate opinions, superstitions, abuses, and terrors-objects of deeper dismay to others, than an actual enemy -the people of England had to contend and all those through their better instruction, aided doubtless by suggestions from above, they subdued; with such a confidence in their cause, and so high a degree of valour and of virtue, that though a numerous population, they can no longer be considered from their towering and elevated qualities as a lower order;' and Britain herself, which has long been accounted a land prolific of tyrants, has henceforth a title to be proclaimed by posterity more prolific of patriots-patriots, not goaded by a contempt or an infraction of the laws to ungoverned licentiousness, not inflamed by mock images of virtue and of glory, or allured through a ridiculous imitation of the ancients by the empty name of liberty; but guided along the right and only path to true freedom by innocence of life and purity of morals, and armed in the just and necessary defence of religion and the laws.

Relying then uniformly on the assistance of God, they repelled servitude with the most justifiable war: but though I claim no share of

their peculiar praise, I can easily defend myself from the charge (should any such be brought against me) of indolence, or of timidity. For I did not so decline the toils and dangers of war, as not in another way, with much more. efficacy and with not less danger to myself, to assist my countrymen, and exhibit a mind neither shrinking from adverse fortune, nor actuated by any improper fear of calumny or of death. Eminently devoted as I had been from my childhood to the more liberal studies, and always stronger in my intellect than in my body, I avoided the labours of the camp, in which any robust private might easily have surpassed me, and betook myself to those weapons which I could wield with superior effect: that so I might bring my better and more valuable faculties, if indeed they were of any value, and not my worse, as my greatest possible contribution to the assistance of my country and this her most honourable cause.

Concluding therefore within myself that, if God selected them to achieve exploits so glorious, he had doubtless selected others as writers properly to record and embellish those achievements, and to protect by argument (the bulwark, properly and peculiarly belonging to man) that truth, which had already been protected by arms; though I profoundly admire those heroes of the field, I am so far from complaining of my own province, that I felicitate

myself upon it, and again fervently thank the heavenly Giver of all good gifts, that it is such as much rather to be an object of envy to others, than of regret to myself. In regard to myself, however, I would not willingly institute any comparison with the humblest of my species, nor utter a single syllable, that should wear the appearance of presumption: but whenever I look to my most noble and illustrious cause, and to the exalted function of defending the defenders of my country imposed upon me by their own free suffrages and judgements, I confess I can hardly restrain myself from adventurously soaring beyond the natural simplicity of an exordium, and seeking a more dignified commencement; since I as far exceed in grandeur and strength of subject all the celebrated orators of antiquity, as I yield to them in my power of doing justice to it, with respect both to my feelings and to my expressionsconfined too, as I necessarily am, to a foreign language, in which I often fall beneath my own conceptions.

This subject has indeed excited such expectation, and is become a matter of so much publicity, that I imagine myself not as in the Forum or on the Rostra, surrounded by the single people of Rome or of Athens; but as if I had already in my former Defence addressed, and were now again addressing, almost the whole of Europe met together to listen and to decide;