the public credulity. He will see the existence of known facts, when they militate against the credit of a ministry, doubted or denied; dubious victories extolled beyond all resemblance to truth; and defeats, in the highest degree disgraceful and injuri ous, artfully extenuated. All who have had oppor→ tunities of receiving true intelligence, after some great and unfortunate action, have been astonished at the effrontery which has diminished the number of lives lost to a sum so small, as contradicts the evident conclusions of common sense, and betrays the features of falsehood at the first appearance. All who have been able to judge of the privileges of Englishmen, and the rights of human nature, have seen with abhorrence, doctrines boldly broached and sophistically defended, which strike at once at the English constitution, and the happiness of man in society. They have seen this done by those who pretended an almost exclusive regard to law, order, and religion; themselves grossly violating all of them, while they are reviling others for the supposed violation, in the bitterest language which rancour, stimulated by pride and avarice, can utter.

When powerful ministers, possessed of a thousand means of patronising and rewarding obsequious instruments of their ambition, are willing to corrupt, there will never be wanting needy, unprincipled, and aspiring persons to receive the infection. But can men be really great, really honourable-can they be patriots and philanthropists-can they be zealous and sincere friends to law, order, and religion, who thus hesitate not to break down all the fences of honour, truth, and integrity; and render their administration of affairs more similar to the juggling tricks of confederate sharpers, than to the grave, ingenuous conduct of statesmen, renowned for their

wisdom and revered for their virtue? Do men thus exalted, whose conduct is a model, and whose opinion is oracular, mean to teach a great nation that conscience is but a name, and honour a phantom? No books of those innovators, whom they persecute, contribute to discredit the system, which these men support, so much as their own sinister measures of self-defence.

There is little hope of preventing the corruption of the diurnal papers by any remonstrance addressed to men, who, entrenched behind wealth and power, scorn to yield at the summons of reason. There may be more hope in appealing to the readers and encouragers of such papers. Do they wish to be deceived? Is it pleasant to be misled by partial, mutilated, and distorted narratives? Is it manly to become voluntary dupes? Or is it honourable, is it honest, to cooperate with any men, for any purposes, in duping others? No, let the press, however it may be perverted by private persons, to the injury of society, be preserved by the public, by men high in office, the guardians of every valuable institution, as an instrument of good to the community, as the support of truth, as the lamp of knowledge.

Though the liberty of the press should be preserved, yet let it be remembered, that the corrup tion of the press, by high and overbearing influence, will be almost as pernicious to a free country as its destruction. An imprimatur on the press would spread an alarm which would immediately remove the restraint; but the corruption of the press may insinuate itself unperceived, till the spirit of despotism, promoted by it, shall at last connive at, or even consent to, its total abolition.

SECTION VII.'

The fashionable Invectives against Philosophy and Reason, a Proof of the Spirit of Despotism.

PERSONS Who Owe all their preeminence to the merit of their forefathers, or to casual events, which constitute good fortune, are usually desirous of fixing a standard of dignity, very different from real worth, and spare no pains to depreciate personal excellence, all such excellence as is, in fact, the most honourable; because it cannot exist without talents or virtues. Birth and riches, fashion and rank, are in their estimation infinitely more honourable and valuable than all the penetrating sagacity and wonderful science of a Newton. Such persons value Newton more as a knight than as a philosopher; more for the title bestowed upon him by Queen Anne, than the endowment given him by God, and improved by his own meritorious exertion.

Upon this principle, many men in our times, who wish to extend and aggrandize that power, from whose arbitrary bounty they derive all the honour they are capable of acquiring, endeavour to throw contempt on philosophy. It may indeed be doubted, whether they all know the meaning of the word; but they know it implies a merit not derived from princes, and therefore they wish to degrade it. Their fountain of honour, they conceive, has no resemblance, in its nature of efficacy, to the famed fountains of Parnassus: it conveys no inspiration, except that which displays itself in the tumour of pride.

The present age has heard upstart noblemen give to philosophers (whose genius and discoveries entitle them to rank, in Reason's table of precedency,

every

above nobleman in the red book) the opprobrious appellation of wretches and miscreants. Philosophy and philosophers have been mentioned by men, whose attainments would only qualify them for distinction in a ball room, with expressions of hatred and contempt due only to thieves, murderers, the very outcast and refuse of human nature.

The mind is naturally led to investigate the cause of such virulence, and to ask how has philosophy merited this usage from the tongue of factitious grandeur. The resentment expressed against philosophy is expressed with a peevishness and acrimony that proves it to proceed from the sense of a sore place. How has pride been so severely hurt by philosophy? It has been exposed, laid open to the eye of mankind in all its nakedness. Philosophy has held the scales, and rejected the coin that wanted weight. Philosophy has applied the touchstone, and thrown away the counterfeit. Hence the spirit of despotism is incensed against philosophy; and if proclamations or cannon balls could destroy her, her perdition would be inevitable and eternal. Folly exclaims aloud, "Let there be no light to detect my paint and tinsel." But happily, the command of Folly, however imperial her tone, is not the fiat of Omnipotence. Philosophy therefore will survive the anathema; and standing on the rock of truth, laugh at the artillery of confederated despots.

When she deserts truth, she no longer deserves to be called philosophy: and it must be owned, that when she has attacked religion, she has justly lost her reputation. But here it is well worthy of remark, that those who now most bitterly revile her, gave themselves little concern about her, till she descended to politics. She might have continued to argue against religion; and many of her present opposers

would have joined in her cry with alacrity: but the moment she entered on the holy ground of politics, the ignorant grandees shuddered at the profanation, and "Avaunt Philosophy," was the word of alarm.

Philosophy, so far from deserving contempt, is the glory of human nature. Man approaches by contemplation to what we conceive of celestial purity and excellence. Without the aid of philosophy, the mass of mankind, all over the terraqueous globe, would have sunk in slavery and superstition, the natural consequences of gross ignorance. Men at the very bottom of society, have been enabled by the natural talents they possessed, seconded by favourable opportunities, to reach the highest improvėments in philosophy; and have thus lifted up a torch in the valley, which has exposed the weakness and deformity of the castle on the mountain, from which the oppressors sallied, in the night of darkness, and spread desolation with impunity. Despots, the meanest, the basest, the most brutal and ignorant of the human race, would have trampled on the rights and the happiness of men unresisted, if philosophy had not opened the eyes of the sufferers, shown them their own power and dignity, and taught them to despise those giants of power, as they appeared through the mist of ignorance, who ruled a vassal world with a mace of iron. Liberty is the daughter of Philosophy; and they who detest the offspring, do all that they can to vilify and discountenance the mother.

But let us calmly consider what is the object of this philosophy, so formidable in the eyes of those who are bigotted to ancient abuses, who hate every improvement, and who wish to subject the many to the controul of an arbitrary few. Philosophy is ever employed in finding out whatever is good, and