eyes; and be no longer led blindfold by a male legislature. A friend of mine was lately complaining to me, that his wife had turned off one of the best cook-maids in England, because the wench had said something to her fellow-servants, which seemed to favour the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act.

When errors and prejudices are thus spread among the sex, it is the hardest thing in the world to root them out. Arguments, which are the only proper means for it, are of little use: they have a very short answer to all reasonings that turn against them, "make us believe that, if you can;' which is in Latin, if I may upon this occasion be allowed the pedantry of a quotation, non persuadebis, etiamsi persuaseris. I could not but smile at a young university disputant, who was complaining the other day of the unreasonableness of a lady with whom he was engaged in a point of controversy. Being left alone with her, he took the opportunity of pursuing an argument which had been before started in discourse, and put it to her in a syllogism: upon which, as he informed us with some heat, she granted him both the major and the minor, but denied him the conclusion.

The best method, therefore, that can be made use of with these polemical ladies, who are much more easy to be refuted than silenced, is to show them the ridiculous side of their cause, and to make them laugh at their own politics. It is a kind of ill manners to offer objections to a fine woman; and a man would be out of countenance that should gain the superiority in such a contest. A coquette logician may be rallied, but not contradicted. Those who would make use of solid arguments and strong reasonings to a reader or hearer of so delicate a turn, would be like that foolish people whom Ælian speaks of, that worshipped a fly, and sacrificed an ox to it.

The truth of it is, a man must be of a very disputatious temper, that enters into state-controversies with any of the fair sex. If the malignant be not beautiful, she cannot do much mischief; and if she is, her arguments will be so enforced by the charms of her person, that her antagonist may be in danger of betraying his own cause. Milton puts this confession into the mouth of our father Adam; who, though he asserts his superiority of reason in his debates with the mother of mankind, adds,

-Yet when I approach

Her loveliness, so absolute she seems,
And in herself complete; so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say,
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:
All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded, wisdom in discourse with her

Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows;
Authority and reason on her wait-

If there is such a native loveliness in the sex, as to make them victorious even when they are in the wrong, how resistless is their power when they are on the side of truth! And, indeed, it is a peculiar good fortune to the government, that our fair malecontents are so much over-matched in beauty, as well as number, by those who are loyal to their king, and friends to their country.

Every paper, which I have hitherto addressed to our beautiful incendiaries, hath been filled with considerations of a different kind; by which means I have taken care that those who are enemies to the sex, or to myself, may not accuse me of tautology, or pretend that I attack them with their own weapon. For this reason I shall here lay together a new set of remarks, and observe the several artifices by which the enemies to our establishment do raise such unaccountable passions and prejudices in the minds of our discontented females.

In the first place, it is usual among the most cunning of our adversaries, to represent all the rebels as very handsome men. If the name of a traitor be mentioned, they are very particular in describing his person; and when they are not able to extenuate his treason, commend his shape. This has so good an effect in one of our female audiences, that they represent to themselves a thousand poor, tall, innocent, fresh-coloured young gentlemen, who are dispersed among the several prisons of Great Britain; and extend their generous compassion towards a multitude of agreeable fellows that never were in being.

Another artifice is, to instil jealousies into their minds, of designs upon the anvil to retrench the privileges of the sex. Some represent the Whigs as enemies to Flanders' lace: others had spread a report, that in the late act of parliament for four shillings in the pound upon land, there would be inserted a clause for raising a tax upon pin-money. That the

ladies may be the better upon their guard against suggestions of this nature, I shall beg leave to put them in mind of the story of Papirius, the son of a Roman senator. This young gentleman, after having been present in public debates, was usually teased by his mother to inform her of what had passed. In order to deliver himself from this importunity, he told her one day, upon his return from the senate-house, that there had been a motion made for a decree to allow every man two wives. The good lady said nothing; but managed matters so well among the Roman matrons, that the next day they met together in a body before the senate-house, and presented a petition to the Fathers against so unreasonable a law. This groundless credulity raised so much raillery upon the petitioners, that we do not find the ladies offered to direct the lawgivers of their country ever after.

There has been another method lately made use of, which has been practised with extraordinary success; I mean the spreading abroad reports of prodigies, which has wonderfully gratified the curiosity, as well as the hopes, of our fair malignants. Their managers turn water into blood for them; frighten them with sea-monsters; make them see armies in the air; and give them their word, the more to ingratiate themselves with them, that they signify nothing less than future slaughter and desolation. The disloyal part of the sex immediately hug themselves at the news of the bloody fountain; look upon these fish as their friends; have great expectations from the clouds; and are very angry with you if you think they do not all portend ruin to their country. Secret history and scandal have always had their allurements; and I have in other discourses shown the great advantage that is made of them in the present ferment among the fair ones.

But the master engine, to overturn the minds of the female world, is the "danger of the church." I am not so uncharitable as to think there is anything in an observation made by several of the Whigs, that there is scarce a woman in England who is troubled with the vapours, but is more or less affected with his cry: or to remark, with others, that it is not uttered in any part of the nation with so much bitterness of tongue and heart, as in the districts of Drury-lane. On the contrary, I believe there are many devout and hon

ourable women who are deluded in this point by the artifice of designing men. To these, therefore, I would apply myself, in a more serious manner, and desire them to consider how that laudable piety, which is natural to the sex, is apt to degenerate into a groundless and furious zeal, when it is not kept within the bounds of charity and reason. Female zeal, though proceeding from so good a principle, has been infinitely detrimental to society, and to religion itself. If we may believe the French historians, it often put a stop to the proceedings of their kings, which might have ended in a reformation. For, upon their breaking with the Pope, the queens frequently interposed, and by their importunities reconciled them to the usurpations of the church of Rome. Nay, it was this vicious zeal which gave a remarkable check to the first progress of Christianity, as we find it recorded by a sacred historian in the following passage, which I shall leave to the consideration of my female readers. "But the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts."

No. 33. FRIDAY, APRIL 13.

Nulli adversus magistratus ac reges gratiores sunt; nec immerito; nullis enim plus præstant quam quibus frui tranquillo otio licet. Itaque hi quibus ad propositum bene vivendi confert securitas publica, necesse est auctorem hujus boni ut parentem colant. SENEC. EP. 73.

WE find by our public papers, the university of Dublin have lately presented to the Prince of Wales, in a most humble and dutiful manner, their diploma for constituting his Royal Highness chancellor of that learned body; and that the prince received this their offer with the goodness and condescension which is natural to his illustrious house. As the college of Dublin have been long famous for their great learning, they have now given us an instance of their good sense; and it is with pleasure that we find such a disposition in this famous nursery of letters to propagate sound principles, and to act, in its proper sphere, for the honour and dignity of the royal family. We hope that such an example will have its influence on other societies of the same

nature; and cannot but rejoice to see the heir of Great Britain vouchsafing to patronize, in so peculiar a manner, that noble seminary, which is, perhaps, at this time training up such persons as may hereafter be ornaments to his reign.

When men of learning are acted thus by a knowledge of the world as well as of books, and show that their studies naturally inspire them with a love to their king and country; they give a reputation to literature, and convince the world of its usefulness. But when arts and sciences are so perverted, as to dispose men to act in contradiction to the rest of the community, and to set up for a kind of separate republic among themselves, they draw upon them the indignation of the wise, and the contempt of the ignorant.

It has, indeed, been observed, that persons who are very much esteemed for their knowledge and ingenuity in their private characters, have acted like strangers to mankind, and to the dictates of right reason, when joined together in a body. Like several chemical waters, that are each of them clear and transparent when separate, but ferment into a thick troubled liquor when they are mixed in the same vial.

There is a piece of mythology which bears very hard upon learned men, and which I shall here relate, rather for the delicacy of the satire, than for the justness of the moral. When the city of Athens was finished, we are told that Neptune and Minerva presented themselves as candidates for the guardianship of the place. The Athenians, after a full debate upon the matter, came to an election, and made choice of Minerva. Upon which Neptune, who very much resented the indignity, upbraided them with their stupidity and ignorance, that a maritime town should reject the patronage of him who was the god of the seas, and could defend them against all the attacks of their enemies. He concluded with a curse upon the inhabitants, which was to stick to them and their posterity; namely, "that they should be all fools." When Minerva, their tutelary goddess, who presides over arts and sciences, came among them to receive the honour they had conferred upon her, they made heavy complaints of the curse which Neptune had laid upon the city, and begged her, if possible, to take it off. But she told them it was not in her power, for that one deity could not reverse the act of another. However," said she, "I may alleviate the curse which I cannot remove: it is not possible for me

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