Milbank, who takes in plain work, where I hope your ladyship will be pleased to send my clothes. With respect to wages, you know I always left that to your own discretion, and your humanity exceeded my utmost expectations. Therefore, I again leave that matter to yourself. Let me beg, that if you mention this unhappy affair to the young gentleman, it may be with your usual tenderness. I would willingly impute his folly to the ir regularities of youthful passion, rather than to any premeditated scheme; and I doubt not when reason resumes her throne in his heart, he will be sorry that ever he attempted to ruin one who was scarce worthy of his notice.

Whilst I lament the conduct of my unhappy child, I lift up my eyes with thankfulness to that gracious Being who has preserved you from ruin.-You was left an orphan under my care; and when I first took you into my family, it was with a design to promote your interest. Blessed be God, that the precepts which I endeavored to instil into your mind have so far operated on your conduct. Your behaviour in that unhappy affair ought to be laid down as a pattern for all young women to copy after, if they would be respected in this world, or enjoy happiness in the next. I have just been reading

your letter to my son, and he was filled with the utmost shame and confusion. The truth of your narrative forced his conscience to make a genuine confession of his guilt; and unless I judge with the partiality of a mother, he is really a sincere penitent. I laid open to him the nature of his crime, and its aggravating circumstances, arising from the obligations which his elevated rank sub. jected him to, to be an example of virtue to those in a lower sphere of life. I told him, that however trifling such actions might appear in the eyes of his graceless companions, yet there was a God who beheld his inmost thoughts, and would reward him according to his merits. He declares himself fully sensible of his folly, and says he is determined never to attempt such a thing for the future. The bearer will deliver your clothes, together with a bank note of an hundred dollars. Be assured of my constant assistance; and may that God who has preserved you in such imminent danger, be your continual comfort in time and in eternity.

I am, your sincere well wisher.

LETTER 151.

From a Gentleman on his Travels abroad, to his Friend in London, on arbitrary power, and Popish superstition.

DEAR SIR,

It is now above two years since I left England; and if I have not been pleased, I had at least many opportunities of acquiring knowledge. You know when we parted I told you my principal design was to inquire whether the subjects of those countries through which I was to pass were more happy in respect to their lives,

and enjoyment of their property, than those of Great Britain? Or, second, whether virtue was more conspicuous in the conduct of those people than in our own at home? With respect to the first, I need not hesitate one moment in declaring, that the meanest subject in England, or any part of the British dominions, enjoys more real liberty than a Spanish grandee, or a peer of France. But what I have chiefly in view, is the case of the middling and lower ranks of people.

You are well acquainted with the forms of process in the English courts, both in criminal and civil causes. All matters of law are determined in open court by the judges, who are responsible for their conduct to the people; and all facts are determined by the verdict of twelve men, strangers to both parties, and hindered from speaking with any person during the trial. How different is the case here and in the other countries through which I have travelled! When a person is injured in his property, he commences a suit at great expense, and after a long train of pleadings on both sides, the determination both of law and fact is left to the judge, who may possibly be biassed in favor of one party, or, which is still worse, may be corrupted. But in criminal prosecutions the unhappy defendant labors under still more deplorable circumstances. When a man is apprehended on suspicion of murder, or any other capital offence, he is immediately shut up a close prisoner, and the witnesses against him are examined, not viva voce, but perhaps a mile distant, and their evidence written at large in a journal kept for the purpose. All this is done, and even the judgment agreed on by the court, whilst the prisoner is confined in a dungeon. The witnesses are ordered to attend on another day, when the prisoner is brought into

court; the evidence is read to him, and thus, for the first time, he knows who are his accusers. He is then asked

if he is guilty of the facts sworn against him; if he confesses, he receives judgment of death; but if he denies the whole, or any part, he is immediately put to the torture, where, perhaps, by the extremity of pain, he may be forced to confess crimes he never committed, and af terwards suffer death. Again; the property of individuals may be seized by an arbitrary tyrant, to reward the iniquity of a favorite, or gratify the ambition of a mistress.. Happy England, where the cottager is as secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of his honest industry, as the prince in the possession of his revenues on the throne!,

I come now to speak of their religion, which triumphs with as much rigor over the mind and conscience, as the civil power over the body. Religion has been justly defined, "A dedication of the whole man, to the will of God." But popery, so far from answering the above description, seems to be a slavish submission to the dic tates of idle, useless priests, who rule the consciences of the vulgar, and bend them to whatever purpose they please. And indeed there is no great wonder, when we consider that auricular confession puts them in possession of every family secret in their parishes. I am already sufficiently tired with the sight of their follies. The accounts which you have read of the inquisition are far from being exaggerated. I intend to return in an English vessel bound for Marseilles, and from thence hasten to England. I shall expect a letter from you, to be left with my banker in Paris, and remain

Yours affectionately.

Your account of the civil and religious tyranny un-der which the people groan in foreign nations, together with the progress of deism, exhibits to our view a melancholy picture of human nature,-Your description reminds me of that beautiful passage in Addison's letters from Italy, where he says,

They starve, in midst of nature's bounty curst,
And in the loaded vineyard die for thirst.

These people once enjoyed the same privileges as ourselves, and possibly that time may not be far distant when we may be as abject slaves as they. However disagreeable some things may have been to you on your travels, yet I congratulate you on the happiness of being absent from England in these times of public divisions. Never was our Saviour's words more properly verified in this country than at present, when there is scarce one family wherein the most violent dissensions have not happened. An author of no mean rank has asserted, that if ever English liberty is destroyed, it must arise from the people themselves; and, if ever the people should become jealous of the conduct of their representatives in parliament, and those jealousies are well founded, they will soon throw themselves into the arms of arbitrary power.

"They'll fly from petty tyrants to the throne."

Virtue and unanimity have at all times preserved liberty, vice and discord have always procured its ruin. At present there is an universal discontent among nine