one more than usual to the number of his domesticks, and beside a fool and a chaplain (which are often united in one person) would retain a poet in his family; for, perhaps, a rhymer is as necessary among servants of a house as a Dobbin with his bells at the head of a team? But these things I leave to the wisdom of my superiors. While I have been directing your pen, I should not forget to govern my own, which has already exceeded the bounds of a letter: I must therefore take my leave abruptly, and desire farther ceremony, to believe that SIR, you, without your most humble servant, I am, December 1, J. S. SOME SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST ENLARGING THE POWER OF BISHOPS IN LETTING LEASES. Mihi credite, major hæreditas venit unicuique vestrum in iisdem bonis a jure et a legibam ab iis a quibus illa ipsa bona relicta sunt. CICERO Pro A. CECINA. SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST ENLARGING THE POWER OF BISHOPS, ETC. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1723.. IN handling this subject, I shall proceed wholly upon the supposition, that those of our party, who profess themselves members of the church established, and under the apostolical government of bishops, do desire the continuance and transmission of it to posterity, at least in as good a condition as it is at present: because, as this discourse is not calculated for dissenters of any kind, so neither will it suit the talk or sentiments of those persons, who, with the denomination of churchmen, are oppressors of the inferiour clergy, and perpetually quarrelling at the great incomes of the bishops; which is a traditional cant delivered down from former times, and continued with great reason, although it be near 200 years since almost three parts in four of the church revenues have been taken from the clergy, beside the spoils that have been gradually made ever since of glebes and other land, by the confusion of times, the |