TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, Jan. 19, 1783. My dear William,-Not to retaliate, but for want of opportunity, I have delayed writing. From a scene of most uninterrupted retirement, we have passed at once into a state of constant engagement, not that our society is much multiplied. The addition of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass our days alternately at each other's chateau. In the morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the afternoon wind thread. Thus did Hercules and Sampson, and thus do I; and, were both those heroes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both. As to killing lions, and other amusements of that kind, with which they were so delighted, I should be their humble servant, and beg to be excused. Having no frank, I cannot send you Mr. ―'s two letters, as I intended. We corresponded as long as the occasion required, and then ceased. Charmed with his good sense, politeness, and liberality to the poor, I was indeed ambitious of continuing a correspondence with him, and told him so. Perhaps I had done more prudently had I never proposed it. But warm hearts are not famous for wisdom, and mine was too warm to be very considerate on such an occasion. I have not heard from him since, and have long given up all expectation of it. I know he is too busy a man to have leisure for me, and I ought to have recollected it sooner. He found time to do much good, and to employ us, as his agents, in doing it, and that might have satisfied me. Though laid under the strictest injunctions of secrecy, both by him and by you on his behalf, I consider myself as under no obligation to conceal from you the remittances he made. Only, in my turn, I beg leave to request secrecy on your part, because, intimate as you are with him, and highly as he values you, I cannot yet be sure, that the communication would please him, his delicacies on this subject being as singular as his benevolence. He sent forty pounds, twenty at a time. Olney has not had such a friend as this many a day; nor has there been an instance, at any time, of a few families so effectually relieved, or so completely encouraged to the pursuit of that honest industry, by which, their debts being paid, and the parents and children comfortably clothed, they are now enabled to maintain themselves. Their labor was almost in vain before; but now it answers: it earns them bread, and all their other wants are plentifully supplied.* I wish that, by Mr. -'s assistance, your purpose in behalf of the prisoners may be The benevolent character here alluded to is John Thornton, Esq. My dear Friend, It is reported among persons of the best intelligence at Olney—the barber, the schoolmaster, and the drummer of a corps quartered at this place-that the belligerent powers are at last reconciled, the articles of the treaty adjusted, and that peace is at the door. I saw this morning, at nine o'clock, a group of about twelve figures, very closely engaged in a conference, as I suppose, upon the same subject. The scene of consultation was a blacksmith's shed, very comfortably screened from the wind, and directly opposed to the morning sun. Some held their hands behind them, some had them folded across their bosom, and others had thrust them into their breeches pockets. Every man's posture bespoke a pacific turn of mind; but, the distance being too great for their words to reach me, nothing transpired. I am willing, however, to hope that the secret will not be a secret long, and that you and I, equally interested in the event, though not perhaps equally well informed, shall soon have an opportunity to rejoice in the completion of it. The powers of Europe have clashed with each other to a fine purpose; that the Americans, at length declared independent, may keep themselves so, if they can; and that what the parties, who have thought proper to dispute upon that point have wrested from each other in the course of the conflict may be, in the issue of it, restored to the proper owner. Nations may be guilty of a conduct that would render an individual infamous forever; and yet carry their heads high, talk of their glory, and despise their neighbors. Your opinions and mine, I mean our political ones, are not exactly of a piece, yet I cannot think otherwise upon this subject than I have always done. England, more perhaps through the fault of her generals than her councils, has, in some instances, acted with a spirit of cruel animosity she was never chargeable with till now. But this is the worst that can be said. On the other hand, the Americans, who, if they had contented themselves with a struggle for lawful liberty, would have deserved * Private correspondence. † Preliminaries of peace with America and France were signed at Versailles, Jan. 20th, 1783. France, Spain, and Holland, all of whom united with America against England. equalled by that of his queen, had regarded them, unworthy of his notice as they were, with an eye of suitable indifference; or, had he thought it a matter deserving in any degree his princely attention, that they were in reality the property of his good friend the applause, seem to me to have incurred the guilt of parricide, by renouncing their parent, by making her ruin their favorite object, and by associating themselves with her worst enemy for the accomplishment of their purpose. France, and of course Spain, have acted a treacherous, a thievish part. They have sto-king of England; or, had the latter been less len America from England; and, whether they are able to possess themselves of that jewel or not hereafter, it was doubtless what they intended. Holland appears to me in a meaner light than any of them. They quarrelled with a friend for an enemy's sake. The French led them by the nose, and the English have thrashed them for suffering it. My views of the contest being, and having been always, such, I have consequently brighter hopes for England than her situation some time since seemed to justify. She is the only injured party. America may perhaps call her the aggressor; but, if she were so, America has not only repelled the injury, but done a greater. As to the rest, if perfidy, treachery, avarice, and ambition, can prove their cause to have been a rotten one, those proofs are found upon them. I think, therefore, that, whatever scourge may be prepared for England on some future day, her ruin is not yet to be expected. obstinately determined to hold fast his interest in them, and could he with that civility and politeness in which monarchs are expected to excel, have entreated his majesty of France to accept a bagatelle, for which he seemed to have conceived so strong a predi lection, all this mischief had been prevented. But monarchs, alas! crowned and sceptred as they are, are yet but men; they fall out, and are reconciled, just like the meanest of their subjects. I cannot, however, sufficiently admire the moderation and magnanimity of the king of England. His dear friend on the other side of the Channel has not indeed taken actual possession of the colonies in question, but he has effectually wrested them out of the hands of their original owner, who nevertheless, letting fall the extinguisher of patience upon the flame of his resentment, and glowing with no other flame than that of the sincerest affection, embraces the king of France again, gives him Senegal and Goree in Africa, gives him the islands he had taken from him in the West, gives him his con Acknowledge now that I am worthy of a place under the shed I described, and that I should make no small figure among the quidquered territories in the East, gives him a nunes of Olney. I wish the society you have formed may prosper. Your subjects will be of greater importance, and discussed with more sufficiency. The earth is a grain of sand, but the spiritual interests of man are commensurate with the heavens. Yours, my dear friend, as ever, W. C. The humor of the following letter in reference to the peace, is ingenious and amusing, TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.† Olney, Feb. 2, 1783. fishery upon the banks of Newfoundland; and, as if all this were too little, merely because he knows that Louis has a partiality for the king of Spain, gives to the latter an island in the Mediterranean, which thousands of English had purchased with their lives; and in America all that he wanted, at least all that he could ask. No doubt there will be great cordiality between this royal trio for the future: and, though wars may perhaps be kindled between their posterity some ages hence, the present generation shall never be witnesses of such a calamity again. I expect soon to hear that the queen of France, who just before this rupture happened, made the has, in acknowledgment of all these acis of queen of England a present of a watch, kindness, sent her also a seal wherewith to ratify the treaty. Surely she can do no less. W. C. I give you joy of the restoration of that sincere and firm friendship between the kings of England and France, that has been so long interrupted. It is a great pity when hearts so cordially united are divided by trifles. Thirteen pitiful colonies, which the king of England chose to keep, and the king of TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* France to obtain, if he could, have disturbed Olney, Feb. 8, 1783. that harmony which would else no doubt My dear Friend,-When I consider the have subsisted between those illustrious per-peace as the work of our ministers, and resonages to this moment. If the king of France, whose greatness of mind is only * This passage alludes to the formation of what was called "the Eclectic Society," consisting of several pious ministers, who statedly met for the purpose of mutual edification. It consisted of Newton, Scott, Cecil, Foster, &c. It is still in existence. † Private correspondence. flect that, with more wisdom, or more spirit, they might perhaps have procured a better, I confess it does not please me. Such ano* Private correspondence. ↑ Lord Shelburne, who made this peace, was taunted in the House of Commons by Mr. Fox with having been previously averse to it, and even of having said that, sions. We truly love you both, think of you often, and one of us prays for you;-the other will, when he can pray for himself. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. My dear Friend,-In never want a subject. hand, and self, with its interesting to a friend. W. C. Olney, Feb. 13, 1783. writing to you I Self is always at concerns, is always other peace would ruin us, I suppose, as effectually as a war protracted to the extremest inch of our ability to bear it. I do not think it just that the French should plunder us and be paid for doing it; nor does it appear to me that there was absolute necessity for such tameness on our part as we discover in the present treaty. We give away all that is demanded, and receive nothing but what was our own before. So far as this stain upon our national honor, and this diminution of our national property, are a judgment upon our iniquities, I subinit, and have no doubt but that ultimately it will be found to be judgment mixed with mercy. But so far as I se see it to be the effect of French knavery and British despondency, I feel it as a disgrace, and grumble at it as a wrong. I dislike it the more, because the peacemaker has been so immoderately praised for his per-it without suspecting the author. formance, which is, in my opinion, a contemptible one enough. Had he made the French smart for their baseness, I would have praised him too; a minister should have shown his wisdom by securing some points, at least for the benefit of his country. A schoolboy might have made concessions. After all perhaps the worse consequence of this awkward business will be dissension in the two Houses, and dissatisfaction throughont the kingdom. They that love their country will be grieved to see her trampled upon; and they that love mischief will have a fair opportunity of making it. Were I a member of the Commons, even with the same religious sentiments as impress me now. I should think it my duty to condemn it. You may think perhaps that, having commenced poet by profession, I am always writing verses. Not so; I have written nothing, at least finished nothing, since I published, except a certain facetious history of John Gilpin, which Mrs. Unwin would send to the Public Advertiser," perhaps you might read You will suppose me a politician; but in truth I am nothing less. These are the thoughts that occur to me while I read the newspaper; and, when I have laid it down, I feel myself more interested in the success of my early cucumbers than in any part of this great and important subject. If I see them droop a little, I forget that we have beca many years at war; that we have made a humiliating peace; that we are deeply in debt, and unable to pay. All these reflections are absorbed at once in the anxiety I feel for a plant, the fruit of which I cannot eat when I have procured it. How wise, how consistent, how respectable a creature is man! Mrs. Unwin thanks Mrs. Newton for her kind letter, and for executing her commis when the independence of America should be granted, the of its independence deserved to be stained with the blood of the traister who should sign it. It was in allusion to this circninstance that Mr. Fox applied to him the followmg ludicrous distich: san of Britain would have set; and that the recognition You've done a noble deed, in Nature's spite, modesty will not permit me to specify, exMy book procures me favors, which my cept one, which, modest as I am, I cannot suppress, a very handsome letter from Dr. Franklin at Passy. These fruits it has brought me. I have been refreshing myself with a walk in the garden, where I find that January (who according to Chaucer was the husband of May) being dead, February has married the widow. Yours, &c.. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. W. C. Olney, Feb. 20, 1783. Suspecting that I should not have hinted at Dr. Franklin's encomium under any other influence than that of vanity, I was several times on the point of burning my letter for that very reason. But, not having time to write another by the same post, and believing that you would have the grace to pardon a little self-complacency in an author on so trying an occasion, I let it pass. One sin naturally leads to another and a greater, and thus it happens now, for I have no way to gratify your curiosity, but by transcribing the letter in question. It is addressed, by the way, not to me, but to an acquaintance of mine, who had transmitted the volume to him without my knowledge. "Passy, May 8, 1782. "Sir, I received the letter you did me the honor of writing to me, and am much obliged by your kind present of a book. The relish for reading of poetry had long since left me, but there is something so new in the manner, so easy, and yet so correct in the lan Tho' you think you are wrong, yet I'm sure you are right.guage, so clear in the expression, yet concise, Lord Shelburne's defence was, that he was compelled to the measure, and not so much the author as the instrument of it. See Parliamentary Debates of that time. *A beautiful village near Paris, on the road to Versailles. and so just in the sentiments, that I have read "Your most obedient humble servant, TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. My dear Friend,-Great revolutions happen in this ants' nest of ours. One emmet of illustrious character and great abilities pushes out another; parties are formed, they range themselves in formidable opposition, they threaten each other's ruin, they cross over and are mingled together,* and like the coruscations of the Northern Aurora amuse the spectator, at the same time that by some they are supposed to be forerunners of a general dis solution. There are political earthquakes as well as natural ones, the former less shocking to the eye, but not always less fatal in their influence than the latter. The image which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream was made up of heterogeneous and incompatible materials, and accordingly broken. Whatever is so formed must expect a like catastrophe. Nor ought we to forgot Lord Thurlow's treatment of the poet Crabbe. The latter presented to him one of his poems. "I have no time," said Lord Thurlow," to read verses; my avocations do not permit it." "There was a time," retorted the poet," when the encour agement of literature was considered to be a duty appertaining to the illustrious station which your lordship holds." Lord Thurlow frankly acknowledged his error, and nobly redeemed it. "I ought," he observed, "to have noticed your poem, and I heartily forgive your rebuke:" and in proof of his sincerity he generously transmitted the sum of one hundred pounds, and subsequently gave him preferment in the church. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* Olney, Feb. 24, 1783. My dear Friend,-A weakness in one of my eyes may possibly shorten my letter, but I mean to make it as long as my present materials, and my ability to write, can suffice for. I am almost sorry to say that I am reconciled to the peace, being reconciled to it not upon principles of approbation but necessity. I have an etching of the late Chancellor The deplorable condition of the country, inhanging over the parlor chimney. I often sisted on by the friends of administration, contemplate it, and call to mind the day when and not denied by their adversaries, convinces I was intimate with the original. It is very me that our only refuge under Heaven was like him, but he is disguised by his hat, in the treaty with which I quarrelled. The which, though fashionable. is awkward; by treaty itself I find less objectionable than I his great wig, the tie of which is hardly dis- did, Lord Shelburne having given a color to cernible in profile, and by his band and gown, some of the articles that makes them less which give him an appearance clumsily sacer-painful in the contemplation. But my opinion dotal. Our friendship is dead and buried; yours is the only surviving one of all with which I was once honored. Adieu. W. C. The sarcasm conveyed in the close of this letter, and evidently pointed at Lord Thurlow, is severe, and yet seems to be merited. It will be remembered, that Lord Thurlow and Cowper were on terms of great intimacy when at Westminster school, though separated in after life; that Cowper subsequently presented him with a copy of his poems, accompanied by a letter, reminding him of their former friendship; and that his lordship treated him with forgetfulness and neglect. It is due, however, to the memory of Lord Thurlow, to state that instances are not wanting to prove the benevolence of his character. When the south of Europe was recommended to Dr. Johnson, to renovate his declining strength, he generously offered to advance the sum of five hundred pounds for that purpose.+ *This expression, as well as the allusion to Nebuchadnezzar's image, refers to the famous coalition ministry, under Lord North and Mr. Fox. ↑ See Murphy's Life of Johnson, upon the whole affair is, that now is the time (if indeed there is salvation for the country) for Providence to interpose to save it. A peace with the greatest political advantages would not have healed us; a peace with none may procrastinate our ruin for a season, but cannot ultimately prevent it. The prospect may make all tremble who have no trust in God, and even they that trust may tremble. The peace will probably be of short duration; and in the ordinary course of things another war must end us. A great country in ruins will not be beheld with eyes of indifference, even by those who have a better country to look to. But with them all will be well at last. As to the Americans, perhaps I do not forgive them as I ought; perhaps I shall always think of them with some resentment, as the destroyers, intentionally the destroyers, of this country. They have pushed that point farther than the house of Bourbon could have carried it in half a century. I may be preju diced against them, but I do not think them equal to the task of establishing an empire. * Private correspondence. Great men are necessary for such a purpose: and their great men, I believe, are yet unborn. They have had passion and obstinacy enough to do us much mischief; but whether the event will be salutary to themselves or not, must wait for proof. I agree with you that it is possible America may become a land of extraordinary evangelical light, but at the same time, I cannot discover anything in their new situation peculiarly favorable to such a supposition. They cannot have more liberty of conscience than they had; at least, if that liberty was under any restraint, it was a restraint of their own making. Perhaps a new settlement in church and state may leave them less.-Well-all will be over soon. The time is at hand when an empire will be established that shall fill the earth. Neither statesmen nor generals will lay the foundation of it, but it shall rise at the sound of the trumpet. I am well in body, but with a mind that would wear out a frame of adamant; yet, upon my frame, which is not very robust, its effects are not discernable. Mrs. Unwin is in health. Accept our unalienable love to you both. Yours, my dear friend, truly, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.I Olney, March 7, 1783. My dear Friend,-When will you come and tell us what you think of the peace? Is it a good peace in itself, or a good peace only in reference to the ruinous condition of our country? I quarrelled most bitterly with it at first, finding nothing in the terms of it but disgrace and destruction to Great Britain. But, having learned since that we are already destroyed and disgraced, as much as we can be, I like it better, and think myself deeply indebted to the King of France for treating us with so much lenity. The olive-branch indeed has neither leaf nor fruit, but it is still • This anticipation has not been fulfilled. America has produced materials for national greatness, that have laid the foundation of a mighty empire; and both General Washington and Franklin were great men. 1 There is a remarkable passage in Herbert's Sacred Poets expressive of this expectation, and indicating the probable period of its fulfilment. Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, Ready to pass to the American strand. When height of malice, and prodigious lusts, Impudent sinning, witchcrafts, and distrusts, The marks of future bane, shall fill our cup Unto the brim, and make our measure up; When Seine shall swallow Tiber, and the Thames, By letting in them both, pollute her streams; When Italy of us shall have her will, And all her calendar of sins fulfil; Then shall Religion to America flee; They have their times of Gospel ev'n as we." Herbert concludes by predicting that Christianity shall then complete its circuit by returning once more to the Fast, the original source of Empire, of the Arts, and of Religion, and so prepare the way for the final consummation of all things. : Private correspondence. an olive-branch. Mr. Newton and I have exchanged several letters on the subject; sometimes considering, like grave politicians as we are, the state of Europe at large; sometimes the state of England in particular; sometimes the conduct of the house of Bourbon; sometimes that of the Dutch; but most especially that of the Americans. We have not differed perhaps very widely, nor even so widely as we seemed to do; but still we have differed. We have however managed our dispute with temper, and brought it to a peaceable conclusion. So far at least we have given proof of a wisdom which abler politicians than myself would do well to imitate. How do you like your northern mountaineers ?* Can a man be a good Christian that goes without breeches? You are better qualified to solve me this question than any man I know, having, as I am informed, preached to many of them, and conversed, no doubt, with some. You must know I love a Highlander, and think I can see in them what Englishmen once were, but never will be again. Such have been the effects of luxury! You know that I kept two hares. I have written nothing since I saw you but an epitaph on one of them, which died last week. I send you the first impression of it. My dear Friend,-Were my letters composed of materials worthy of your acceptance, they should be longer. There is a subject upon which they who know themselves interested in it are never weary of writing. That subject is not within my reach; and there are few others that do not soon fatigue me. Upon these, however, I might possibly be more diffuse, could I forget that I am writing to you, to whom I think it just as improper and absurd to send a sheet full of trifles, as it would be to allow myself that liberty, were I writing to one of the four evangelists. But, since you measure me with so much exactness, give me leave to requite you in your own way. Your manuscript indeed is close, and I do not reckon mine very lax. You make no margin, it is true; if you did, you would have need of their Lilliputian art, who can enclose the creed within the circle of a shilling; for, upon the nicest comparison, I find your paper an inch smaller every way than mine. Were my writing therefore as compact as yours, my letters with a margin would * Scotch Highlanders, quartered at Newport Pagnel where Mr. Bull lived. † Vide Cowper's Poems. Private correspondence. |