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LETTER V.

Of the Defeat of the Diffenters in the House of Commons, March, 2, 1790, and the Conduct of the Clergy in procuring it.

INCE I wrote the preceding letter, your clergy (for

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it has been their measure and not yours, and in the pursuit of it they have confulted their enmity to the Diffenters rather than either their own reafon, or your intereft) have gained their point. After a full difcuffion of the queftion before the houfe of Commons a great majority appeared against the repeal. The clergy have had their triumph, and, no doubi, exult in our defeat; nor do we envy them. For we are not in the leaft difcouraged. We know mankind too well to expect that, impofed upon as they have been fo long, they will hear the plaineft reasons the first, or the second time that they are prefented to them, Affure yourselves that they will be prefented again and again, a fourth, a fifth; and if neceflary, a fiftieth time, We shall give abundant exercife for the talent your clergy appear to have for invective, and many more inflammatory fermons, fuch as Mr. Madan's, will be preached and published. We also, while we are able to speak, fhall preach, and while the prefs is open to us, we fhall not fail to write, in our own defence; and after a few years more the nation at large must be stupid indeed, if they do not perfectly underfland the subject. And as we are more than ever confident that reason, justice, and found policy are clearly on our fide, we have no doubt but that the final decifion will be in our favour. We fhall even ask more than we have hitherto done, and shall not be refused.

When we confider how many more friends we have now, that all the influence of a popular king, and all the

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arts of an infidious minifter are against us (no ftone having been left unturned to defeat our application) than we had in the two last reigns, when the court was uniformly in our favour, we are convinced that liberal fentiments, favourable to our just claims, have gained much ground; and we are confident, from the encreafing liberality of the age (the progrefs of which all the clergymen in England can no more put a stop to, than they can prevent the fun, after he is rifen, from afcending to his meridian altitude) will gain ground more and more. As to the clergy, we make ourselves perfectly easy about them. For fhould the court once more fmile upon us (and courts you know are changeable things) should the minifter of the day only give a fingle nod, their oppofition will vanifh as by a charm. It will be like throwing a few drops of Dr. Franklin's oil upon the waves, which will make their troubled waters as fmooth as a looking glafs. Mr. Madan may preach again from the fame text to speak evil of no man, and to be gentle towards all men; but it will be a very different sermon from that which is now before you, and much more agreeable to the spirit of the apostle. The bishops of this reign would, in such a case, inftantly become as liberal as thofe of the laft; and as to the inferior clergy, they would wheel about as quickly as foldiers on a parade when the word of command is given in the presence of the king in St. James's park. Indeed, to be confiftent with themselves, they must obey the higher powers whatever they are. For the powers that be are ordained of God, and therefore to refift the power, as Mr. Madan has been careful to remind you, is to refift the ordinance of God.

Should the king, like Ahafuerus in the book of Efther, vi. 1. not be able to fleep, and call upon one of the lords of his bedchamber to read to him out of the book of the records of the chronicles of the kings of England, and should there find who had been the most zealous for the revolution under king William, for the acceffion of the House of Hanover, and for the suppreffion of the rebellions in 1715 and 1745,

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and who took his part even in a late change of adminiftration, and then inquire what honour and dignity (ch. vi. 6.) had been done to his friends, and the friends of his family, and learn that, inftead of any thing having been done to reward, much had been done to mortify and punish them; that to this very day they had been perfecuted by lies and calumnies, as men whofe laws were diverse from those of all other people, and who do not keep the king's laws, and therefore say, that it is not for the king's profit to fuffer them (ch. iii. 8.) poor defpifed Mordecai may be advanced, and fome other use be made of the gallows that was erected for him.

In the mean time, we Diffenters are perfectly fatisfied with the uprightness of our views, and the juftness of our caufe, and fhall patiently wait till the nation fhall coolly reconfider the question; unless the clergy rifing as (if they receive no check from above) they naturally will, in their violence against us, fhould, in order the better to secure the intereft of their church, procure a law to banish (for they will hardly now think of burning) us all; and then, as fome of them are now known to boast that they have no Diffenters in their parishes, they may join in one general Te Deum, that there are none in the nation; and that we are all driven to France or America, where they fuppofe we shall meet with spirits congenial to our own. If, in confequence of this, as the Diffenters have always been an induftrious people, another Birmingham and another Manchester fhould be established there, they will only rejoice the more, that all the taxes, and all the tithes, then perhaps doubled, will be paid chearfully by the genuine fons of the church, and that their pockets will be no more contaminated with the fees of Diffenters. Then will church and state congratulate each other, and be as fociable and happy as the tuo kings of Brentford, dreading no gunpowder, real or metaphorical.

With respect to your intereft as a trading nation, and the feveral articles of your manufacture, what are they compared to the articles of religion? Any one of the thirty-nine is of more value than an hundred of thofe in your invoices. The

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church

church is even before the king, and the king, no doubt, before his fubjects. Let the church therefore, that is, the clergy, be by all means gratified in the first place, the king in the next, and you, the people, keeping your proper order,

in the last.

The zeal of your clergy for the church may best be estimated by the facrifices they make to it; and I can fhew you that, in order to prevent the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, which they confider as neceffary to the fecurity of the church, they have facrificed a thing of far more value to them than their temporal intereft. For they have thought the cause so good, that it deferved to be promoted at the expence even of truth. You will alfo fee, by the account which I shall give you of their conduct, that mere zeal for the church is not the whole of their merit. They have fhewn great ability in the management of their affairs, and are as fit for minifters of ftate, as for the fervice of the church.

Thinking it of fome confequence to their purpose, that fome Diffenters, whofe names are known to the public (fo that it might be imagined that their fentiments would be those of some confiderable number at least of the body to which they belonged) fhould be reprefented as factious men, and enemies to government in church and ftate, they fent, too late to be discovered and counteracted, to every member of the House of Commons, and to all the bishops, a printed paper (a copy of which I have in my hands) containing Extracts from the preface to my Letters to Mr. Burn, so disposed, and mutilated, as to give a very unfair view of my real principles and conduct; and of this paper a moft important ufe was made by Mr. Burke in the courfe of the debate, raifing the indignation of the house against me, and the Diffenters in general, as being fuppofed to avow fentiments equally violent with myself.

I shall give the following paragraph as a specimen of the whole, that you may judge of their proceedings yourfelves. That which is printed in the Roman chara&er is their

extract,

extract, but what immediately follows in Italics, they omitted, evidently because it was not calculated to answer their purpose.

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"Whether I be more pleased, or difpleafed, with their present violence, let them now judge. The greater their "violence, the greater is our confidence of final fuccefs. Because it will excite more public difcuffion, which is all that "is necessary for our purpose." Preface, p. 15.

Without the latter claufe of this paragraph, which they artfully kept out of fight, it was natural to conclude, as the House no doubt did, that to the violence of the clergy, I was ready to oppofe ftill greater violence, and not fo inoffenfive a thing as mere argument.

That my mode of promoting reformation, and of procuring redrefs of grievances, is of the moft pacific nature, you may fee in the following paragraph, which is part of a Note (p. 12) in the fame Preface, but which you will not wonder that they omitted to quote, because it would no more have answered their purpose, than the laft clause of the preceding paragraph.

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"It has always been my opinion that Diffenters fhould not accept of any civil offices for which the majority of "their countrymen have pronounced them difqualified, but patiently acquiefce in their exclufion from them, till it "fhall please God, in the course of his providence, and by "means of our peaceable reprefentations and remonftrances, "to open the eyes, and enlarge the minds, of our country"men, and thereby give them more just ideas of the natural "rights of men, and of the true intereft of their country."

This printed paper, thus artfully managed, ferved Mr. Burke as a text, from which he declaimed, in his eloquent manner, against myself, and all the Diffenters, just as Mr. Madan has done in his Sermon, with this difference, that Mr. Burke was imposed upon, and suspecting no fraud, kept to the text that was given him; whereas Mr. Madan soon loft fight of his. But what will Mr. Burke, and the rest of D 4 the

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