obedience and non-resistance, no doubt, keep all in perfect subjection to one head.

Now, what becomes of an hypothesis, when there are no facts to support it? If there be no conspiracy of Dissenters against the government, no peculiarly refractory disposition of the wives of the Dissenters against their husbands, or peculiar obstinacy in Dissenters' children towards their parents, what evidence is there of the existence of a turbulent disposition in Dissenters at all? in Dissenters at all? Mr. Madan should attend more than he has done to the connexion of causes and effects, and then he will find himself compelled to give up his favourite hypothesis of the universal disposition to republicanism, and consequently, as he will suppose, to anarchy, in the principles of the Dissenters.

It was particularly fortunate for the Anabaptists, that there were but few of them in England at the time of the civil wars, and that the mention of them does not occur in any civil transactions of the times. For, as they had been the most turbulent of all the sectaries in Germany, they would certainly have come in for their share of Mr. Madan's censure, who would never have been persuaded but that they had brought their seditious principles with them into this country. They now fall under his censure, (which includes them as well as all other Dissenters,) merely because they keep bad company, and go by a bad name. For this reason too, the Quakers also, and the English Catholics, ought to bear their share of this censure, and the calumny being divided among so many, it will hardly be felt by any individual. This, I flatter myself, will be the case when, as classes of men equally aggrieved by the laws now existing, we shall all join in one petition for the repeal of all penal laws in matters of religion, and, without swords in our hands, demand, as our natural and just right, the civil privileges of other subjects.

If the sins of remote ancestors are to be imputed to people now living, and Mr. Madan had been a Welshman, he might urge his countrymen to make war upon the English, for driving them out of their lawful possessions in the time of Hengist and Horsa. Do not then follow Mr. Madan in looking for the guilt of the present generation in that of another, one hundred and fifty years ago, but consider our conduct at present; and of this, without having recourse to history, you can judge, yourselves, and you will not be misled by preachers, who, by taking advantage of your ignorance, may impose upon you.

However, after all that has been urged a thousand times, and from the clearest evidence of history, to exculpate the present Dissenters from the horrid crime of cutting off king Charles's head, this guilt, like original sin, is so entailed upon us, that I believe it must descend to our latest posterity, and even to the day of judgment. It is even ready to seize all the proselytes we may make, whether they be the posterity of Charles himself, or of his executioners. The clergy have repeated the accusation so often, and in such strong modes of asseveration, as the settled principles and conviction of their hearts, that they seem to believe it as firmly as they do any of the Thirty-nine Articles; so that in time it may take its place among them, and make a fortieth; though they will then exceed the number of "forty stripes save one," which was the limit of castigation in the Jewish law; and many who must subscribe them or starve, I am persuaded, would rather choose that one were taken away, than that any more were added to them. We are the sheep, and our accusers are the wolves, and, say what we will, we must be guilty.

Indeed, the more I reflect on the temper with which Mr. Madan must have written, the more concern it gives me, as an unpromising feature of the times we live in. Reasoning

as follows: If his good sense can be thus blinded, and if, notwithstanding the sweetness of his temper, and his polished manners, his passions can be so violently inflamed, as to abuse us innocent Dissenters in the manner that he has done, what must be the strength of those principles which have produced so unlooked for an effect? And what have we not to dread from them in persons of inferior understandings, of less liberal education, and of harsher dispositions? I should not even wonder if, in understandings more clouded, and tempers more irrascible, this extreme bigotry should produce the effects of absolute insanity.

If Mr. Madan can really consider all the Dissenters of the present day as unquestionably Republicans, and so strongly insinuate that we are all ready to treat the present king as Oliver Cromwell did Charles I., I have reason to rejoice in the Act of Indemnity. Without this I should now expect that, though my ancestors, being churchmen, might have fought under the standard of Charles I., I, being a Dissenter, should be actually indicted for the crime of murdering that blessed martyr, and that myself and my three sons (for the politeness and mildness of which Mr. Madan makes such a boast would perhaps spare my daughter) might be hanged,

drawn and quartered, for our share in that horrid transaction.

The philosophical world has of late been amused with a story of a poisonous [Upas] tree in the island of Java, that would not suffer any plant to grow, or any animal to approach, within twelve miles of it. But the murder of this king has a far more baneful and extensive influence; and, according to appearance, we can never remove far enough from it. I should think, however, that the clergy should fix some time, a thousand years for example, (for I would not be unreasonable in fixing too short a term of probation,) after which, if the Dissenters should behave like other sub. jects, and kill no more kings, it should be deemed illiberal in such preachers as Mr. Madan to charge us with the crimes of republicanism and king-killing. However, it seems hardly fair to infer a habit from a single act, and we are not charged with killing any more kings than one.

The great merit, however, of this king Charles was his attachment to the Church of England, to which the clergy consider him as having been a martyr; and for this reason it is that they pursue with such indiscriminate vengeance all persons, whom they can have any pretence, how improbable soever, for charging with it. For this reason, I shall, in a future Letter, consider the nature and value of civil establishments of religion in general, and then proceed to that of the Church of England in particular, that you may judge whether it be reason, or merely interest and passion, that dictates such sermons as those of Mr. Madan. Hoping a more favourable hearing than we have hitherto had, I remain,

My good friends and neighbours,

Yours, &c.

P.S. My next Letter will relate to the Corporation and Test Acts, and I shall prove to you that neither the state, nor the church, have any thing more to fear from the repeal of them than from the repeal of the old statutes concerning witches, or from making any new ones concerning canals or turnpike roads, but that both would be gainers by the measure. Nay, I should not wonder, if, when these acts are repealed, the clergy should take to themselves the merit of all that has been done to promote it, as they do with respect to the Act of Toleration, after all the aversion they shewed to that measure.

LETTER IV.

Of the Corporation and Test Acts.

MY GENEROUS TOWNSMEN AND NEIGHBOURS,

THE nature of the Corporation and Test Acts, which have occasioned all this writing and preaching, has been strangely misrepresented to you, and Mr. Madan's Sermon has no tendency to clear it up. But plain men may judge of plain things, at least by their effects, without much deep reasoning on the subject. Mr. Madan says, "the Dissenters are under no disability which can possibly be avoided consistently with our own security;" that is, the security of the church. Now, without considering what the Corporation and Test Acts are in themselves, you see that, according to Mr. Madan, they are things without which the church cannot be secure, if it could exist at all. But, though I am not of your church, and therefore you cannot suppose that I think it to be the best of all possible churches, I have a much better opinion of it, in some respects, than Mr. Madan has, or any of those high churchmen, who, on this occasion, are such zealous sticklers for it. They must think it a poor, weak and infirm thing, indeed, of no strength at all in its own constitution, or they would never fancy such supports as these to be necessary to it. I can clearly shew them from history and fact, that it is much better established than their fears will allow them to think it is.

If these acts were really necessary to the security of your church, it is plain that it could never have done without them; and I dare say, that after reading Mr. Madan's Sermon, and every thing else that has been written by your clergy, (men of great courage, no doubt, but who are frightened to death on this particular subject,) you take it for granted that your church never was without these Corporation and Test Acts, being its necessary body guards; and, least of all, that it was without them in its tender infancy, when it must most of all have wanted support. But through all the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and till the latter end of that of Charles II., viz. 1673, in all which time it rose from no

Sermon, p. 12. (P.)

thing to its full strength and glory, there was no Test Act at all. All those princes were allowed to employ whom they thought proper in all business of a civil nature, and no inconvenience whatever arose from it. Nor when the Test Act was made was any evil dreaded from the Protestant Dissenters. Nay, they themselves most zealously concurred in passing it. The danger, then, was from the Catholics only, on account of the next heir to the crown being a Catholic. Before this, viz. in 1661, mere party spirit, and not any regard to the safety of the state, had given birth to the Corporation Act.†

If these Acts be really necessary in England, they must be much more so in Ireland, where the church establishment is much weaker than it is here, not more than one in ten of the inhabitants of that country being of it; and yet, in this very reign, viz. A. D. 1779, the Test Act has been repealed there; and though, according to Mr. Madan, the church must necessarily have fallen with it, it still exists, and there is even less danger of its being overturned than before; because the Dissenters, being conciliated and put into good humour by the measure, are less than ever disposed to be hostile to the church. Being, in all civil matters, equally favoured by government with the members of the Established Church, and not lying under the reproach of being unfit to be trusted with power, though they have not in fact any more power than they had before, they consider themselves as in a more respectable situation, and are disposed to be contented with it; leaving the clergy to manage their own affairs, and enjoy all their emoluments as before. But when men are treated like dogs, they will snarl at those who hold the whip over them, whether they receive a blow

or not.

You will naturally ask, How came the church to be so liberal to the Dissenters in Ireland, and so hostile to them in England? I will explain the whole in a very few words. There was no liberality in the case. But the Dissenters in

* See Vol. X. pp. 413, 414.

Locke, in a Letter written for Lord Shaftesbury, in 1675, speaking" of the High Episcopal Man, and the old Cavalier," says, "In requital to the Crown, they declare the goverument absolute and arbitrary; and allow monarchy, as well as episcopacy, to be jure divino, and not to be bounded or limited by human laws."

The letter-writer adds, "In order to secure all this, the first step was made in the Act for regulating Corporations, wisely beginning that in those lesser governments, which they meant afterwards to introduce upon the government of the nation." Locke's Pieces, 1739, folio, pp. 19, 20. See Critical History of England, 1726, pp. 334, 335.

In 1782. See Vol. XV. p. 897, Note.