with that benevolence and charity enforced by the first principles of the Law of Nature, and confirmed by the facred Oracles which they all revere.

In my fugitive pieces, to which the circumstances of the times have given rife, you discovered the fincerity of my defigns, in attempting to diffufe to the community at large, the influence of benignity. My feeble efforts have attracted your attention, and procured me the honour of your efteem. With regard to the rights of fociety, and protection due to the man who does not forfeit them by his mifconduct, the learned, the virtuous, the liberal-minded of all denominations, make no distinction; but, with every refpect due to religion, leave fanaticism, the noxious vermin that neftles in its wool, to prey upon the ulcerereads of the biguts. Hence, neither my character of a Catholic Clergyman, which, in these Kingdoms, the prepoffeffion of ignorance has rendered fo odious, nor the discountenance of the laws, which doom me to transportation, with the common malefactor, nor the difagreeable circumstances

of

of a profeffion ftill exposed to the wanton lafh of every religious perfecutor, were deemed a fufficient plea for exclufion from a fociety compofed of so many great and shining men.

Robertfon's religion has proved no obftacle to his admiffion among the Spanish academicians. You, my brethren, have fet the brilliant example of philanthropy in this kingdom; and foared far above the fphere of contracted minds. Happy for the world had the gentle voice of Nature been always liftened to, and his religion forgotten in the man!

The calamities, of which a contrary conduct has been productive, are flightly glanced at in my treatife on toleration. In the two neighbouring kingdoms, the fcenes which have been exhibited laft year, are melancholy proofs, that a tolerating spirit, the fair offspring of candour and benevolence, confers happiness on individuals, and gives nations a bloom and vigour which intolerance blasts and enervates. In confequence of the happy change in the difpofitions of

the

the people, Ireland has seen her peaceful natives employed in the ufeful labours of life; her citizens, confident in each other, improving trade and commerce, under a variety of difficulties; her judges refpected on their tribunals; and the pleafing fcenes of harmony and union fpread through every province. Such the refult of benevolence! Such the fruits of toleration! Such was our fituation, when in Great-Britain nothing could be feen but the course of public juftice f pended, and martial law proclaimed; the law and the legiflature trampled in their awful fanctuary; the torn canonicals of bishops, the lacerated robes of temporal peers, the streets enfanguined with the ftreaming blood of deluded victims fumptuous edifices changed into blazing piles; the conflagration of Rome re newed by the torch of religious frenzy the houses of inoffenfive citizens chalked out for deftruction; a city given up to plunder; affaffins and malefactors let loofe from their chains, and invited, by the hollow voice of fanaticifm, to fare the fpoils; a king on the verge of de ftruction;

ftruction; a kingdom on the eve of being plunged into the calamities of civil war; the sword taking the place of the robe, and dictating to the violators of the law; and the ftern hand of justice fucceeding, in its turn, to the sword, and fweeping from the face of the earth, the gleanings of military execution.

Such

the poisonous fruits of mifguided zeal, and religious intolerance! The feeds of fuch difafters have been fown in diftant

times, when barbarity, or the composition lion of princes, contending for the throne, contributed to divide the people; and, from a mistaken policy, fovereigns themfelves, in oppofition to the maxims of legiflation and wisdom, thought it more eligible to become heads of the half, than the fathers of all their fubjects.

Such measures weakened their arms abroad, and will ever prove destructive at home. In every plain the English generals met with their fellow fubjects, difputing the laurel, under the banners of kings who gave them encouragement.

The Catholic and Proteftant powers on the Continent, by adopting a differ

ent

ent plan, and uniting their subjects of every denomination, in the ties of one common intereft, ftrengthened their refpectives ftates against the encroachments of each other, and prevented their dominions from being changed a fecond time, into extenfive fields of battle, covered with bodies, fallen by the fword of religious madness; or defolate waftes fimilar to thofe from whence reftraints and diftrefs have banished the human species: the prefent Emperor's mother restored her Chriftian fubjects of every denomination, to the freedom and rights of citizens. The fon has opened his calm bosom to the Jew, and is become the father of the man who blafphemes the Saviour whom his fovereign adores. Ireland! Ireland, where the Proteftant gentleman gives alms to the pilgrim without enquiring into his religion, and where the Catholic peafant preffes his diftreffed fellow creature, to take share of a handful of vegetables, fcarce fufficient to fupport his own wretched existence :--Ireland, whofe generous fons have more compaffion and feelings for the ftranger, than

their