REMARKS

ON THE

HISTORY O

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

LETTER I. •

SIR,

SINCE

INCE the bufy fcene of the year is over at home, and we may perhaps wait feveral months before the successful negotiations of France furnish us with new hopes of a general pacification, and give you occafion to carry your fpeculations forward, it may be proper enough for you to caft your eyes backwards, to reflect on your own conduct, and to call yourself to account before your own tribunal.

I am so much perfuaded of the integrity of your intentions, that I do not in the leaft fufpect you will think my advice impertinent; and therefore I fhall attempt to lead your thoughts on this fubject, by giving you an account of fome parts of a con

* As the dedication and preface, that flood at the head of these remarks, were written by another and a very inferior hand, they are therefore omitted here.

VOL. I.

T

verfation,

verfation, at which I happened to be prefent very lately.

Several of your papers and feveral of those which have been written against you, lay before a company, which often meets, rather to live than to drink together; according to that distinction which Tully makes to the advantage of his own nation over the Greeks. They difpute without ftrife, and examine as difpaffionately the events and the characters of the present age, as they reafon about those which are found in hiftory. When I came in, a gentleman was faying, that your victories had been cheaply bought; and that he had not feen one champion, able to break a launce, enter the lifts against you; upon which fome were ready to obferve the inconfiftencies of human nature, and how hard it often proves to hire men to avow and defend even that which they are hired to act. Others were willing to hope that corruption had not spread very wide, nor taken root very deep amongst us. All agreed, that if your papers could be fufpected to be written in oppofition to the prefent minifters, the feeble and low oppofition you have met with, would deferve to be looked upon as a very melancholy fymptom for them; fince it would denote that their caufe was deemed univerfally bad; or that their perfons were grown univerfally odious among men of fenfe, ingenuity and knowledge. It would denote their guilt, or their misfortune, perhaps both.

Here one of the company interpofed, by obferv. ing very prudently, that any thing fo void of probability, as not to fall even under fufpicion, was unworthy of farther confideration. But, faid he, whatever particular views Mr. D'Anvers may have had, one general effect, which I cannot approve, has followed from his writings. We must • remember that when he began to publifh his weekly lucubrations, univerfal quiet prevailed, if not univerfal fatisfaction; for in what place, or at

what

what time was the laft ever found? Few people enquired; fewer grumbled; none clamored; all acquiefced. Now the humor of the nation is altered. Every man enquires with eagernefs, and • examines with freedom. All orders of men are • more intent than I ever obferved them to be on the course of public affairs, and deliver their judg'ments with lefs referve upon the most important. From this alteration, for which the Craftsman is chiefly answerable, no good confequence can, 1 think, proceed; and it is visible that feveral in• conveniencies may.'

To this many of us could by no means affent. We apprehended that in a country, circumftanced like ours, and under a government conftituted like ours, the people had a right to be informed and to reafon about public affairs; that when wife and honeft measures are purfued, and the nation reaps the advantage of them, the exercise of this right will always be agreeable to the men in power; that, indeed, if weak and wicked measures are purfued, the men in power might find the exercife of this right difagreeable, inconvenient, and fometimes dangerous to them; but that, even in this case, there would be no pretence for attempting to deprive the people of this right, or for difcouraging the exercise of it: and that to forbid men to complain, when they fuffer, would be an instance of tyranny but one degree below that which the triumvirs gave, during the flaughter and terror of the profcriptions, when by edict they commanded all men to be merry upon pain of death.

The perfon from whom we differed, brought us back to the particular cafe of your writings, Mr. D'Anvers. He endeavored to fupport what he had faid against them in this manner:

There was no good reafon for raising this spirit, ⚫ which I diflike, in the nation, when the Craftsman began to write, or there was such a reafon. If there was none, why has he given so much alarm?

T 2

"If

<

• If there was one, how has it come to pafs that fo great an alarm has produced fo little effect? Will you fay that he had very good reason to rouze this fpirit, but that it has hitherto had no opportunity of exerting itself? Or will you fay that his reafons were good and the opportunity fair, but that the minds of men, which have been con'vinced by the former, have not yet been determined to improve the latter? I obferve on all these alternatives, that if there was no good and even preffing reafon to raife fuch a spirit in the nation as I diflike, (because I expect no national benefit, and I fear much inconveniency from it) Mr. D'Anvers has acted a very wicked part, and is little • better than a fower of sedition.-If there was such a reafon, but no fuch opportunity, he has acted a very weak part, and is but a fhallow politician. -If there was fuch a reafon and fuch an opportunity, but no difpofition in the minds of men to follow their conviction, you may excufe your favourite author, perhaps, by alledging that the minds of men are in the power of God alone; but you will represent our national con'dition to be more desperate than I ever thought it, or am yet willing to believe it.Upon this fuppofition I affirm that Mr. D'Anvers is not to be excused, if he continues to write; for if he cannot raise this difpofition by perfuafion, what does he aim at farther? I hope that he and you, who defend him, admire as much as I profess to do that divine faying of Plato: "We may en"deavor to perfuade our fellow citizens; but it is "not lawful to force them even to that which is "best for them."

Whilft all this paffed, I took notice that an antient venerable gentleman fhewed more emotion, and greater impatience than I remembered to have teen him ever exprefs before. As foon as the other

had