UN

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THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

WILLIA M,

LORD MANSFIELD, LORD CHIEF JUSTICE

O F

ENGLAND.

MY LORD,

T

HE purpose of this address is not to make a return for the favours I have received from you,

for

they

they are many and great; but to add one more fecurity to myself, from the malice of the prefent and the forgetfulness of future times. A purpose, which tho' it may be thought lefs fober than the other, is certainly not more selfish. In plain terms, I would willingly contrive to live, and go down to pofterity under the protection of your Name and Character: from which, that Pofterity, in the administration of public juftice, must receive their inftruction; and in the duties of private life, if they have any virtuous ambition, will take their example.---But let not this alarm you. I intend not to be your Panegyrift. To praise you for Eloquence, would be to praise you for a thing below your Character, unless it were for that species of Eloquence which MILTON describes, and You have long practifed. "TRUE "ELOQUENCE, fays he, I find to be (( none, but the serious and hearty "love of Truth: And that, whose "mind foever is fully poffeffed with a

" fervent

" fervent defire to know good things, "and with the deareft Charity to in"fufe the knowlege of them into "Others, WHEN SUCH A MAN WOULD (c SPEAK, his words, like fo

many nim"ble and airy Servitors trip about him "at command, and in well ordered "Files, as he would wifh, fall aptly "into their own places."

To live in the voice and memory of Men is the flattering dream of every adventurer in Letters: and for me who boast the rare felicity of being honoured with the friendship of two or three fuperior Characters, Men endowed with virtue to attone for a bad age, and of abilities to make a bad age a good one, for me not to aspire to the best mode of this ideal exiftence, the being carried down to remote ages along with thofe who will never die, would be a ftrange infenfibility to human glory.

But as the protection I feek from your Lordship is not like those blind Afylums

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Afylums founded by Superftition to fkreen iniquity from civil vengeance, but of the nature of a TEMPLE OF JusTICE, to vindicate and fupport the Innocent, You will expect to know the claim I have to it; and how, on being feized with that epidemic malady of idle, vifionary men, the projecting to inftruct and reform the Public, I came to ftand in need of it.

I had lived to fee --- it is a plain and artless tale I have to tell --- I had lived to fee what Law-givers have always feemed to dread, as the certain prognoftic of public ruin, that fatal Crifis when RELIGION HATH LOST IT'S HOLD ON THE MINDS OF A PEOPLE.

I had obferved, almoft the rife and origin, but furely very much of the progrefs of this evil: for it was neither fo rapid to elude a distinct view, nor yet fo flow as to endanger one's forgetting or not obferving the relation which its several parts bore to one another:

And

And to trace the steps of this evil may not be altogether useless to those, whoever they may be, who, as the Inftruments of Providence, are deftined to counter-work its bad effects.

The most painful circumftance in this relation is, (as your Lordship will feel) that the mischief began amongst our friends; by men who loved their Country; but were too eagerly intent on one part only of their Object, the fecurity of its CIVIL LIBERTY.

To trace up this matter to its fource, we need go no further back than to the happy Acceffion of that illuftrious Houfe to whom we owe all which is in the power of grateful Monarchs, at the head of a free People, to bestow; I mean, the full enjoyment of the common rights of Subjects.

It fortuned that at this time, fome warm friends of the Acceffion, newly gotten into power, had too haftily perhaps

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