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of fortitude, patience and charity. We have, indeed, no slight. trial of the latter, when we behold the enlightened and benevolent friend of all mankind, whose life has invariably exhibited, and whose instructions have ever enforced, the practice of every mild and gentle virtue, treated with a cruelty which would disgrace a barbarous age. But we will remember our principles, the principles, Sir, we have imbibed from you, and will say, in the language of philosophy and Christianity, Deluded men, we pity you may your hearts be turned, and your errors forgiven !"

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It is gratifying to know that these addresses were not confined to one party, but that many forgot their differences and prejudices in the desire to do justice to an injured man. "However some of us," they say, may differ from you in several doctrinal opinions, we are well convinced of the integrity of your character, and think ourselves highly obliged to you for your services in the cause of religious and civil liberty. In this cause we respect you as a confessor; and admire the magnanimity and meekness, equally honorable to the man and the Christian, with which you have borne the losses you have sustained. The approbation of your own mind, the esteem of the friends of freedom, and the persuasion that your personal misfortunes, under the direction of a wise and benevolent Providence, will finally prove conducive to public good, will, we doubt not, still continue to afford you support, and enable you to rejoice, even in tribulation."

It was not by words only that he was cheered in his trial. He received relief in large donations of money from various persons and bodies of men; among the rest a subscription of thirty pounds from a society of Calvinists. So that his pecuniary losses were made up to him, as he states, though what was awarded to him by the courts of law fell two thousand pounds short of them. His friends in London gave him an asylum; and after it was found that it would be impossible for him to return to Birmingham, the congregation in Hackney, recently under the charge of Dr. Price, invited him

to become their pastor, and he was settled there in November the same year. Here then, four months only after the riots, he was quietly seated again at his wonted employments; knowing that the most virulent ill will was existing towards him in various quarters, and subjected to many vexatious annoyances, yet calmly and happily pursuing his studies as a philosopher and divine, and seeking as always to do good to the world by the efforts of his pen. "I found myself," he says, "as happy as I had been at Birmingham; and, contrary to general expectation, I opened my lectures to young persons with great success, being attended by many from London; and though I lost some of the hearers, I left the congregation in a better situation than that in which I found it. On the whole, I spent my time even more happily at Hackney than ever I had done before, having every advantage for my philosophical and theological studies, in some respect superior to what I had enjoyed at Birmingham; especially from my easy access to Mr. Lindsey, and my frequent intercourse with Mr. Belsham, professor of divinity in the New College, near which I lived. Never, on this side the grave, do I expect to enjoy myself so much as I did by the fireside of Mr. Lindsey, conversing with him and Mrs. Lindsey on theological and other subjects, or in my frequent walks with Mr. Belsham, whose views of most important subjects were, like Mr. Lindsey's the same with my own."

But after a little more than two years, he was convinced that continuance in this situation was impossible, and he prepared to withdraw from it. We give the account in his own words.* "After the riots in Birmingham, it was the expectation, and evidently the wish of many persons, that I should immediately fly to France or America. But I had no consciousness of guilt to induce me to fly from my country. On the

Preface to his Fast Sermon, 1794.

"If, instead of flying from lawless violence I had been flying from public justice, I could not have been pursued with more rancor,

contrary, I came directly to London, and instantly, by means of my friend, Mr Russell, signified to the king's ministers, that I was there, and ready, if they thought proper, to be interrogated on the subject of the riot. But no notice was taken of the message.

Ill treated as I thought I had been, not merely by the populace of Birmingham, for they were the mere tools of their superiors, but by the country in general, which evidently exulted in our sufferings, and afterwards by the representatives of the nation, who refused to inquire into the cause of them, I own I was not without deliberating upon the subject of emigration; and several flattering proposals were made me, especially from France, which was then at peace within itself, and with all the world; and I was at one time much inclined to go thither, on account of its nearness to England, the agreeableness of its climate, and my having many friends there.

But I likewise considered that, if I went thither, I should have no employment of the kind to which I had been accustomed; and the season of active life not being, according to the course of nature, quite over, I wished to make as much use of it as I could. I therefore determined to continue in England, exposed as I was not only to unbounded obloquy and insult, but to every kind of outrage; and after my invitation

nor could my friends have been more anxious for my safety. One man, who happened to see me on horseback on one of the nights in which I escaped from Birmingham, expressed his regret that he had not taken me, expecting probably some considerable reward, as he said, it was so easy for him to have done it. My friends earnestly advised me to disguise myself, as I was going to London. But all that was done in that way, was taking a place for me in the mailcoach, which I entered at Worcester, in another name than my own. However, the friend who had the courage to receive me in London, had thought it necessary to provide a dress that should disguise me, and also a method of making my escape, in case the house should have been attacked on my account; and for some time my friends would not suffer me to appear in the streets."

to succeed my friend, Dr. Price, I had no hesitation about it. Accordingly I took up my residence where I now am, though so prevalent was the idea of my insecurity, that I was not able to take the house in my own name; and when a friend of mine took it in his, it was with much difficulty that, after some time, the landlord was prevailed upon to transfer the lease to me. He expressed his apprehension, not only of the house that I occupied, being demolished, but also a capital house in which he himself resides, at the distance of no less than twenty miles from London, whither he supposed the rioters would go next, merely for suffering me to live in a house of his.

But even this does not give such an idea of the danger that not only myself, but every person and every thing that had the slightest connexion with me, were supposed to be in, as the following. The managers of one of the principal charities among the Dissenters applied to me to preach their annual sermon, and I had consented. But the treasurer, a man of fortune, who knew nothing more of me than my name, was so much alarmed at it, that he declared he could not sleep. I therefore, to his great relief, declined preaching at all.

When it was known that I was settled where I now am, several of my friends, who lived near me, were seriously advised to remove their papers, and other most valuable effects, to some place of greater safety in London. On the 14th of July, 1792, it was taken for granted by many of the neigh'bours, that my house was to come down, just as at Birmingham the year before. When the Hackney association was formed, several servants in the neighbourhood actually removed their goods; and when there was some political meeting at the house of Mr. Breillat, though about two miles from my house, a woman whose daughter was servant in the house contiguous to mine, came to her mistress to entreat that she might be out of the way; and it was not without much difficulty that she was pacified, and prevailed upon to let her

continue in the house, her mistress saying that she was as safe as herself.

On several other occasions the neighbourhood has been greatly alarmed on account of my being so near them. Nor was this without apparent reason. I could name a person, and to appearance a reputable tradesman, who, in the company of his friends, and in the hearing of one of my late congregation at Birmingham, but without knowing him to be such, declared that, in case of any disturbance, they would immediately come to Hackney, evidently for the purpose of mischief. In this state of things, it is not to be wondered at, that of many servants who were recommended to me, and some that were actually hired, very few could, for a long time, be prevailed upon to live with me.

These facts not only show how general was the idea of my particular insecurity in this country; but what is of much more consequence, and highly interesting to the country at large, an idea of the general disposition to rioting and violence that prevails in it, and that the Dissenters are the objects of it. Mr. Pitt very justly observed, in his speech on the subject of the riots at Birmingham, that it was "the effervescence of the public mind." Indeed the effervescible matter has existed in this country ever since the civil wars in the time of Charles I. and it was particularly apparent in the reign of Queen Anne. But the power of government under the former princes of the House of Hanover, prevented its doing any mischief. The late events show that this power is no longer exerted as it used to be, but that on the contrary, there prevails an idea well or ill-founded, that tumultuary proceedings against Dissenters, will not receive any effectual discouragement. After what has taken place with respect to Birmingham, all idea of much hazard for insulting and abusing the Dissenters, is entirely vanished; whereas the disposition to injure the Catholics was effectually checked by the proceedings of the year 1780. From that time they have been safe, and I rejoice in it. But from the year 1791, the

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