It is, indeed, an

But we cannot

you the spirit that prevails at Manchester, and we have similar accounts from all the west of England. alarming crisis that things are come to. doubt that a wise and good Providence superintends and directs the whole. I long to be with you on many accounts. Mr. Keir thinks it had better be soon than later. It may, however, be, advisable to defer it, till the legal inquiry be

over.

With my earnest prayers and best wishes, and with respects to all my friends, especially my fellow-sufferers, I am, dear Sir, yours sincerely."

No reflection need be made on this disgraceful history excepting in the words of Robert Hall, who says, that "to the unenlightened eyes of posterity it will appear a reproach, that in the eighteenth century, an age that boasts its science and improvement, the first Philosopher in Europe, of a character unblemished and of manners the most mild and gentle, should be torn from his family, and obliged to flee an outcast and a fugitive from the murderous hands of a frantic rabble; —but when they learn that there were not wanting teachers of religion who secretly triumphed in these barbarities, they will pause for a moment and imagine that they are reading the history of Goths or of Vandals."

But there were every where some to be found to sympathize with the sufferer, and addresses of condolence and respect were made to him from public bodies, religious, political, and scientific, both in England and in France. Of all these, none, he says, gave him so much satisfaction as those from his late congregation, and especially from the young persons belonging to it who had attended his classes for religious instruction. His whole correspondence with them is delightful and affecting. The following extract of the second letter from the young people is a specimen.

"FROM THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE NEW MEETING.

Birmingham, August 22, 1791.

Dear and resPECTED SIR, PERMIT us to indulge our feelings in again addressing you. When assurances of gratitude and attachment are not necessary, there is a gratification in expressing the prevailing sentiments of the heart; and when you, Sir, are the object, we feel no common ardor. We have too much confidence in your goodness, and have had too many proofs of your affectionate regard to our happiness, to imagine you will think us troublesome.

We have received your affectionate and animating letter. Our tears spoke our feelings. We cannot express them. Language is feeble and inadequate. But we will bind your instructions to our hearts. While we remember whose pupils we have been, we cannot act unworthily. We can never sufficiently express our sense of the obligation you have conferred upon us, but we dwell upon the subject with too much pleasure to omit any opportunity of renewing it. To you, Sir, we are indebted for the desire of improvement. You have given us habits of employing our leisure hours in the cultivation of our understandings, in pursuits that afford delight and advantage, and which are calculated to raise us higher in the scale of being. The love of virtue you have implanted in us by precept and example. We will guard and cherish it; and while we enjoy the fruits of it, our souls exulting shall bless you. You have deprived adversity of its sting, and have enabled us to extend our views with satisfaction beyond the world, by impressing our minds with the strongest evidence of the great truths of Christianity. These advantages, Sir, we have received from you. We feel their importance, and will diffuse them as far as our influence extends. It shall be our grand object to endeavour to follow your example in a firm adherence to what we believe to be the cause of truth, in preserving our minds open to convictiou, and in the cultivation

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 !"

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."