ble grandeurs of his nature for ever and ever affording new delights to the contemplative mind. Perhaps the sacred historian might not so much blame the Athenians for telling and hearing some new thing, as for spending their time in nothing else.

But what has all this to do with petitioning? A great deal. You say the petitioners are innovators. They deny this, and say they are antiquarians, only not superstitious enough to prefer the rust to the medal. But without availing themselves of this, they prove that the love of novelty is natural, that it puts men on inventing some things, and improving others; that new discoveries by the people call for new limitations, protections, laws from the state that the yearly assembling of the states is an allowance of the necessity of abrogating some laws, reforming others, and making new ones. That therefore innovation is neither foreign from the nature of things in general, nor from the British constitution in particular; and they might add that almost all the great men that have appeared in the world have owed their reputation to their skill in innovating. Their names, their busts, their books, their elogiums, diffused through all countries, are a just reward of their innovations. When idolatry had overspread the world, Moses was the minister of a grand and noble innovation. When time had corrupted the institutions of Moses, Hezekiah innovated again, destroying what even Moses had set up; and when the reformations of others were inadequate, Jesus

Christ, ascending his throne, created all things new twelve innovators went one way, seventy another, their sound went into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world, reforming, and renovating the whole face of the earth. When wealth had produced power, power subjection, subjection indolence, indolence ignorance, and the pure religion of Jesus was debased, here rises an Alfred, there a Charles; Turin produces a Claude, Lyons a Waldo, England a Wickliff; the courage of Luther, the zeal of Calvin, the eloquence of Beza, the patience of Cranmer, all conspire to innovate again. Illustrious innovators! You pleaded for conscience against custom; your names will be transmitted to all posterity with deserved.

renown.

Still it will be said, legislators ought not to innovate without cause, nay they ought not to risk an innovation without a moral certainty of great advantages. Be it so. And suppose a senator should ask the repeal of any law, and should urge that all statute law was expository only of the law of nature; that when the former did not square with the latter, it ought to be new cast, and should prove that the law, whose repeal he solicited, was of that kind; would any body say to that senator, Sir, your reasoning is just, but we must not innovate without cause?

As to the advantages arising from an universal toleration, it is highly probable they would be very great. Lenity in governors naturally produces the surest and noblest effects in the governed. Solo

mon's counsellors, who were able politicians, remarked this to Rehoboam: Serve the people, said they, answer them, and speak good words to them, then will they be thy servants for ever. It would remove a mark of infamy from many of his majesty's loyal subjects, whose ambition is only to pass for what they really are, the hearty, not the hired friends of the constitution. It would destroy the endless strifes about words to no profit, which have too long armed brother against brother. It would disarm popery of its most formidable weapon against protestantism, that is, the endless divisions of protestant communities. Schisms in

churches, like factions in states, are more about words than things, and if to extinguish whig and and tory be a chef d'ouvre* in the state, why is not the extinction of party names a good work in the church? It will be replied, all this would alter nothing, wise men do not judge now of names but things; and they would continue to do so then. Very true. Statute law does not rule wise men ; wise men know a law superior to it, and live by that law. But do the bulk of mankind know any thing more than names? Do they penetrate beyond appearances? Are they not ready with Hospinian's landlord to believe, if a friar tells them, that Adam was a monk and that Eve was a nun?

People of this class are the proper people (if any are) to subscribe upon oath, for to the number they swear every day one more can be no very

* A master stroke

considerable addition; nor would they puzzle themselves with enquiring why they were fined for swearing at home, and rewarded for it abroad. Had they learning, did they study the nature and obligations of man, did they deal in matters of conscience, did they use all their learning and influence to diffuse loyalty to the crown, benevolence to men, and piety towards God; did they offer to give every possible security to the civil magistrate, except subscribing another man's creed upon oath, which, in their opinion was no security at all; was this the case with the lower orders of men, they ought to be indulged in this article: and since the contrary is evident, they ought not to be dupes to names, and parties, about which they know nothing but the names. There is scarcely one in a thousand that frees himself from the prejudices excited by party tales. One instance indeed occurs in the life of Junius, the famous professor of divinity at Leyden. A great number of people were met to hear a dispute between Junius and a Franciscan. The people had been made to believe many idle stories about the heretical Junius. An old man bustling in the croud expressed a prodigious desire of seeing this heretic, which, when Junius was informed of, he desired might be granted. The croudmade way, the old man marched forward, and diligently surveying him from head to foot, cried, now I know the falshood of what I have been told. What have you been told, said Junius. I was told, replied he, that you had cloven feet!

For the sake of these men the innovation (if it must be so called) in question is pleaded for. A fine plea truly! Let them wallow in their brutal prejudices, why should you destroy the felicity of their ignorance?

Softly good Sir: do you hear St. James? Ye have dsspised the poor. And what then? Why you are very irrational in so doing. All your property is in their hands; they manufacture all you use; they cultivate your lands, manage your cattle, transact almost all your affairs, export your surplus, import your superfluities: the wealth of a peerage is intrusted with them. The dearest part of your comforts are committed to them; they nurse your children in their tenderest and most ductile days, and too often instil into noble blood what time can never exhale. Yea more, your own safety depends on them; they build and man your fleets, they form your armies, they guard you by day, they stand centinel for you at night. You may despise the poor. You may even undertake to prove that universal benevolence, the spirit and the splendour of christianity, ought to be denied them. You may maintain that their stupid credulity ought to be imposed on by names, and their savage zeal kept in its old channel. But prudent people will think otherwise, and wish for an innovation. True, they are the dirty feet of the body politic; but their union to the head makes them respectable. For your part, you shall submit to the punishment of hearing an old tale, and a further penalty shall be inflicted on you if you will