should be demolished; it is necessary for the safety, honour, and liberty of England, that it should be so.

That when Dunkirk is demolished, the power of France, on that side, should it ever be turned against us, will be removed several hundred miles further off of Great Britain than it is at present.

That after the demolition, there can be no considerable preparation made at sea by the French on all the channel, but at Brest; and that Great Britain being an island, which cannot be attacked but by a naval power, we may esteem France effectually removed, by the demolition, from Great Britain, as far as the distance from Dunkirk to Brest.

Pray, Mr. Ironside, repeat this last particular, and put it in a different letter, That the demolition of Dunkirk will remove France many hundred miles farther off from us; and then repeat again, That the British nation expects the demolition of Dunkirk.

'I demand of you, as you love and honour your queen and country, that you insert this letter, or speak to this purpose, your own way; for in this all parties must agree, that however bound in friendship one nation is with another, it is but prudent that in case of a rupture, they should be, if possible, upon equal terms.

Be honest, old Nestor, and say all this; for whatever half-witted hot whigs may think, we all value our estates and liberties, and every true man of each party must think himself concerned that Dunkirk should be demolished.

It lies upon all who have the honour to be in the ministry to hasten this matter, and not let the credulity of an honest brave people be thus infamously abused in our open streets.

'I cannot go on for indignation; but pray God that our mercy to France may not expose us to the mercy of France.

6 Your humbe servant,

ENGLISH TORY.'

No. 129.] Saturday, August 8, 1713.

Animasque in vulnere ponunt.

Virg. Georg. iv. 238.

And part with life, only to wound their foe. ANGER is so uneasy a guest in the heart, that he may be said to be born unhappy who is of a rough and choleric disposition. The moralists have defined it to be a desire of revenge for some injury offered.' Men of hot and heady tempers are eagerly desirous of vengeance, the very moment they apprehend themselves injured: whereas the cool and sedate watch proper opportunities to return grief for grief to their enemy. By this means it often happens that the choleric inflict disproportioned punishments upon slight and sometimes imaginary offences: but the temperately revenge

ful bave leisure to weigh the merits of the cause, and thereby either to smother their secret resentments, or to seek proper and adequate reparations for the damages they have sustained. Weak minds are apt to speak well of the man of fury; because, when the storm is over, he is full of sorrow and repentance; but the truth is, he is apt to commit such ravages during his madness, that when he comes to himself, he becomes tame then, for the same reason that he ran wild before, 'only to give himself ease;' and is a friend only to himself in both extremities. Men of this unhappy make, more frequently than any others, expect that their friends should bear with their infirmities. Their friends should in return desire them to correct their infirmities. The common excuses, that they cannot help it, that it was soon over, that they harbour no malice in their hearts, are arguments for pardoning a bull or a mastiff; but shall never reconcile me to an intellectual savage. Why indeed should any one imagine, that persons independent upon him should venture into his society, who hath not yet so far subdued his boiling blood, but that he is ready to do something the next minute which he can never repair, and hath nothing to plead in his own behalf, but that he is apt to do mischief as fast as he can! Such a man may be feared, he may be pitied; he can never be loved.

I would not hereby be so understood as if I meant to recommend slow and deliberate malice; I would only observe, that men of moderation are of a more amiable character than the rash and inconsiderate; but if they do not husband the talent that Heaven hath bestowed upon them, they are as much more odious than the choleric, as the devil is more horrible than a brute. It is hard to say which of the two when injured is more troublesome to himself, or more hurtful to his enemy; the one is boisterous and gentle by fits, dividing his life between guilt and repentance, now all tempest, again all sunshine. The other bath a smoother but more lasting anguish, lying under a perpetual gloom; the latter is a cowardly man, the former a generous beast. If he may be held unfortunate who cannot be sure but that he may do something the next minute which he shall lament during his life; what shall we think of him who bath a soul so infected that he can never be happy until he hath made another miserable! What wars may we imagine perpetually raging in his breast! What dark stratagems, unworthy designs, inhuman wishes, dreadful resolutions! A snake curled in many intricate mazes, ready to sting a traveller, and to hiss him in the pangs of death, is no unfit emblem of such an artful, unsearchable projector. Were I to choose an enemy, whether should I wish for one that would stab me suddenly, or one that would give me an Italian

may seem strange to a vulgar reader, but the following reflection will make it plain. That philosopher invented the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid, which is the foundation of trigonometry, and consequently of navigation, upon which the commerce of Great Britain depends.

The mathematics are so useful and ornamental to human life, that the ingenious sir William Temple acknowledges, in some part of his writings, all those advantages which distinguish polite nations from barbarians to be derived from them. But as these sciences cultivate the exterior parts of life, there are others of a more excellent nature, that endue the heart with rudiments of virtue, and by opening our prospects, and awakening our hopes, produce generous emotions and sublime sentiments in the soul.

The divine sages of antiquity, who by transmitting down to us their speculations upon good and evil, upon Providence, and the dignity and duration of thinking beings, have imprinted an idea of moral excellence on the minds of men, are most eminent benefactors to human nature; and however overlooked in the loud and thoughtless applauses that are every day bestowed on the slaughterers and disturbers of mankind, yet they will never want the esteem and approbation of the wise and virtuous.

whereas those of the mind are permanent and universal. Plato and Euclid enjoy a sort of immortality upon earth, and at this day read lectures to the world.

But to inform the understanding, and regulate the will, is the most lasting and diffusive benefit, there will not be found so useful and excellent an institution as that of the Christian priesthood, which is now become the scorn of fools. That a numerous order of men should be consecrated to the study of the most sublime and beneficial truths, with a design to propagate them by their discourses and writings, to inform their fellow-creatures of the being and attributes of the Deity, to possess their minds with the sense of a future state, and not only to explain the nature of every virtue and moral duty, but likewise to persuade mankind to the practice of them by the most powerful and engaging motives, is a thing so excellent and necessary to the well-being of the world, that nobody but a modern freethinker could have the forehead or folly to turn it into ridicule.

The light in which these points should be exposed to the view of one who is prejudiced against the names, religion, church, priest, and the like, is to consider the clergy as so many philosophers, the churches as schools, and their sermons as lectures, for the information and improvement of the audience. How would the heart of Socrates or Tully have rejoiced, had they lived in a nation where the law had made

morality and theology every seventh day, in several thousands of schools erected at the public charge throughout the whole country; at which lectures all ranks and sexes, without distinction, were obliged to be present for their general improvement! And what wicked wretches would they think those men who would endeavour to defeat the purpose of so divine an institution?

It is indeed usual with that low tribe of writers, to pretend their design is only to reform the church, and expose the vices, and not the

As in the distribution of other things, so in this the wisdom of Providence appears, that men addicted to intellectual pursuits bear a small proportion to those who rejoice in exerting the force and activity of their corporeal organs; for operations of the latter sort are limited to a narrow extent of time and place,

printed the other day (which without my mentioning the title, will on this occasion occur to the thoughts of those who have read it) hopes to insinuate by that artifice what he is afraid or ashamed openly to maintain. But there are two points which clearly show what it is he aims at. The first is, that he constantly uses the word priests in such a manner, as that his reader cannot but observe he means to throw an odium on the clergy of the church of England, from their being called by a name which they enjoy in common with heathens and impostors. The other is, his raking together and exaggerating, with great spleen and industry, all those actions of churchmen, which, either by their own illness, or the bad

Light in which he places them, tend to give men an ill impression of the dispensers of the gospel; all which he pathetically addresses to the consideration of his wise and honest countrymen of the laity. The sophistry and illbreeding of these proceedings are so obvious to men who have any pretence to that character, that I need say no more either of them or their author.

The inhabitants of the earth may properly be ranged under the two general heads of gentlemen and mechanics. This distinction arises from the different occupations wherein they exert themselves. The former of these species is universally acknowledged to be more honourable than the other, who are looked upon as a base and inferior order of men. But if the world is in the right in this natural judgment, it is not generally so in the distribution of particular persons under their respective denominations. It is a clear settled point, that the gentleman should be preferred to the mechanic. But who is the gentleman, and who the mechanic, wants to be explained.

The philosophers distinguish two parts in human nature; the rational, and the animal. Now, if we attend to the reason of the thing, we shall find it difficult to assign a more just and adequate idea of these distinct species, than by defining the gentleman to be him whose occupation lies in the exertion of his rational faculties; and the mechanic, him who is employed in the use of his animal parts, or the organic parts of his body.

The concurring assent of the world, in preferring gentlemen to mechanics seems founded in that preference which the rational part of our nature is entitled to above the animal; when we consider it in itself, as it is the seat of wisdom and understanding, as it is pure and immortal, and as it is that which, of all the known works of the creation, bears the brightest impress of the Deity.

It claims the same dignity and pre-eminence, if we consider it with respect to its object. Mechanical motives or operations are confined to a narrow circle of low and little things: whereas reason inquires concerning the nature of intellectual beings, the great author of our existence, its end, and the proper methods of attaining it. Or, in case that noble faculty submit itself to nearer objects, it is not, like the organic powers, confined to a slow and painful manner of action; but shifts the scenes, and applies itself to the most distant objects with incredible ease and despatch. Neither are the operations of the mind, like those of the hands, limited to one individual object, but at once extended to a whole species.

And as we have shown the intellectual powers to be nolder than those of motion, both

their own nature, and in regard to their thject, the same will still hold if we consider

their office. It is the province of the former to preside and direct; of the latter, to execute and obey. Those who apply their hands to the materials appear the immediate builders of an edifice; but the beauty and proportion of it is owing to the architect, who designed the plan in his closet. And in like manner, whatever there is either in art or nature of use or regularity, will be found to proceed from the superior principle of reason and understanding. These reflections, how obvious soever, do nevertheless seem not sufficiently attended to by those who, being at great pains to improve the figure and motions of the body, neglect the culture of the mind.

From the premises it follows, that a man may descend from an ancient family, wear fine clothes, and be master of what is commonly called good-breeding, and yet not merit the name of gentleman. All those whose principal accomplishments consist in the exertion of the mechanic powers, whether the organ made use of be the eye, the muscles of the face, the fingers, feet, or any other part, are in the eye of reason to be esteemed mechanics.

I do therefore, by these presents, declare, that all men and women, by what title soever distinguished, whose occupation it is either to ogle with the eye, flirt with the fan, dress, cringe, adjust the muscles of the face, or other parts of the body, are degraded from the rank of gentry; which is from this time forward appropriated to those who employ the talents of the mind in the pursuit of knowledge and practice of virtue, and are content to take their places as they are distinguished by mora. and intellectual accomplishments.

The rest of the human species come under the appellation of mechanics, with this difference, that the professed mechanics, who, not pretending to be gentlemen, contain themselves within their proper sphere, are necessary to the well-being of mankind, and consequently should be more respected in a well-regulated commonwealth, than those mechanics who make a merit of being useless.

Having hitherto considered the buman species as distinguished into gentlemen and mechanics, I come now to treat of the machines; a sort of beings that have the outside or appearance of men, without being really such. The free-thinkers have often declared to the world, that they are not actuated by any incorporeal being or spirit; but that all the operations they exert, proceed from the collision of certain corpuscles, endued with proper figures and motions. It is now a considerable time that I have been their proselyte in this point. I am even so far convinced that they are in the right, that I shall attempt proving it to others.

The mind being itself invisible, there is no other way to discern its existence, than by the effects which it produceth. Where design,