for faying it, I hope I am animated in my conduct by a grace which is as little practifed as understood, and that is charity. It is the happiness and comfort of all men, who have a regard to their fellow-creatures, and defire their good-will upon a proper foundation, that every thing which is truly laudable is what every man living may attain. The greatest merit is in having focial virtues, fuch as juftice and truth, exalted with benevolence to mankind. Great qualifications are not praises to the poffeffor but from the application of them; and all that is justly commendable among men, is to love and ferve them as much as it is in your power, with a contempt of all advantages to yourself (above the conveniencies of life) but as they tend to the service of the publick. He who has warmed his heart with impreffions of this kind, will find glowings of good-will, which will fupport him in the fervice of his country against all the calumny, reproach, and invective, that can be thrown upon him. He is but a poor creature who cannot bear being odious in the service of virtue. Riches and honours can adminifter to the heart no pleasure, like what an honeft man feels when he is contending for the interests of his country, and the civil rights of his fellow. fubjects, without which the being of man grows brute, and he can never, under it, give to Heaven that worship which is called a reasonable facrifice, nor fupport towards his fellow-creatures

that

that worthy difpofition, which we call difinterefted friendship. The highest pleasure of the human foul confifts in this charity; and there is no way of making it fo diffufive, as by contending for liberty.

As to laying afide the common views by which the mistaken world are actuated, a man of liberal education can eafily furmount those low confiderations; and when he confiders himfelf, from the moment he was born into this world, an immortal, though a changeable being, he will form his interefts and profpects accordingly, and not make provifion for eternity with perishable things. When a man has deeply planted fuch a fentiment as this for the rule of his conduct, the purfuits of avarice and ambition will become as contemptible as the sports of children; and there can be no honours, no riches, no pleasures laid in his way, which can poffibly come in competition with the fatisfactions of an enlarged and public fpirit.

From this moment, therefore, I fhall go on with as much vigour and chearfulness as I am able, to do all that is in my power, without the leaft partiality to perfons or parties, to remove the prejudices which Englishman has against Englishman, and reconcile wounded brethren, fo far as to behold each other's actions with an inclination to approve them.

The man who will reduce himself to this tem

per,

per, will eafily perceive how far his affections have been wrought upon and abufed, from an oppofition to particular men, to facrifice the interests of his country itself.

The prostituted pens which are employed in a quite contrary fervice, will be very ready to entertain a pretender to fuch reformations with a recital of his own faults and infirmities; but I am very well prepared for fuch usage, and give up myself to all nameless authors, to be treated just as their mirth or their malice directs. them.

It is the difgrace of literature, that there are fuch inftruments; and to good government, that they are fuffered: but this mischief is gone fo far in our age, that the pamphleteers do not only attack those whom they believe in general difaffected to their own principles, but even fuch as they believe their friends, provided they do not act with as fincere a prejudice as themselves. Upon the least deviation from an implicit hatred to the oppofite party, though in a cafe which in the nearest concern affects their country, all their good qualities are turned to ridicule; and every thing, which was before valued in them, is become contemptible. Thus in one of the papers I fend you, a gentleman, who has diftinguifhed himself by a becoming veneration, in the House of Commons, for the affembly, and has ever delivered himself with a regard to his

own

own dignity, and that of the place he was in; is reprefented frivolously as a declaimer: and a noble Lord, who is confpicuoufly adorned with the knowledge of letters, and is eminent for a lively fprightly eloquence, rectified by learning; is declared a companion fit only for pert novices and fophifters. And what is ftill more monftrous than all, a third man of quality, for the like offence, is told, in this nice age of proportioning rewards to merit and fervice, that he has as much as he deferves.

But it is to be hoped Englishmen will at last confider, and that the Ministry will fee Dunkirk effectually demolished.

It is as frivolous as unjuft, to hope to ftop our mouths when we are concerned for fo great a point as the business of Dunkirk, by mention of the prerogative, and urging our fafety in our good and gracious Queen.

By her great example, religion, piety, and all other public and domeftic virtues, are kept in countenance in a very locfe and profligate age; all the hours of her precious life, which God long preferve, are divided between the exercifes of devotion, and taking minutes of the fublime affairs of her government.

Befides which, her Majefty has manifested herself the most affectionate wife, the moft conftant friend, the moft tender mother, and has filled every duty with a virtue as fuperior to the

reft

reft of the world as is her high condition. But I fhall leave what I have to fay on this topick, to the time when the confequence of it will be infignificant to me, but which, I hope, will do her honour, that is, justice, when I am no more, and the remains of her facred perfon are as common duft as mine.

But, as this bright example is in the person of a lady, it cannot be fuppofed that the general fense of a people, the sub-divifions of affection and intereft among great men (to be learned only by converfation with them, even in their unguarded leisure), can appear to her but from the information of fuch as have the happiness and honour to lay them before her. Her Majefty is therefore more particularly neceffitated to rely upon the intelligence of her Miniftry; and, from that very reason, their fellow-subjects may be the more folicitous for what paffes beyond the ordinary rules of government. Thus all which they offer for our fecurity and implicit reliance upon what is tranfacted by the court of England, to wit, her Majefty's care and goodnefs, are arguments for exerting both our zeal and our gratitude; that at any time artful men may not take advantage of the fecurity we have in her virtue, to indulge too much the power of any foreign Prince whatsoever, especially that of the most warlike potentate in Europe.

I cannot leave this fubject without being still

7

anxious