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keeping him afloat till he was hoisted on board by a tackle. It would be tedious and disagreeable to describe the fate of every miserable object that suffered by the inhumanity and ignorance of the captain and surgeon, who so wantonly sacrificed the. lives of their fellow creatures. Many were brought up in the height of fevers, and rendered delirious by the injuries they received in the way. Some gave up the ghost in the presence of their inspectors; and others, who were ordered to their duty, languished a few days at work among their fellows, and then departed without any ceremony. On the whole the number of sick was reduced to less than a dozen; and the authors of this reduction ap plauded themselves for the services they had done to their king and country.

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IN the year 1707, about the time the English gained the battle of Saragossa, protected Portugal, and gave to Spain a king, my Lord Valiant, a general officer who had been wounded in fight, retired to Bareges for the benefit of the waters. The Count Medroso, who had fallen from his horse behind the baggage-waggons, a league and a half from the field of battle, had repaired also to the same place. The latter had been well acquainted with the inquisition, on which account his lordship entered one day, after dinner, into the following conversation with him. Lord Valiant. And so, Count, you have been an officer in the inquisition? You must have been engaged in a most villainous employment...

Medroso. Very true, my lord; but as I had rather be their officer than their victim, I preferred the misfortune of burning my neighbour, to that of being roasted myself.

L Valiant. What a horrible alternative! Your bcountrymen were a hundred times happier under the yoke of the Moors, who permitted you to indulge

dulge yourselves freely in superstition; and imperious as they were as conquerors, never dreamed of exercising that strange prerogative of enslaving souls.

Mėdroso. We are not permitted now either to write, speak, or even to think. If we speak it is easy to misinterpret our words, and still much more so if we write. And though we cannot be condemned at an auto de fe for our secret thoughts, we are threatened to lie burning for ever, by the command of God himself, if we dare to think otherwise than the Dominicans. They have persuaded the government also, that if we had commón sense, the state would soon be in a combustion, and the nation become the most unhappy people upon earth. 'I L. Valiant. And do you believe that the Dutch, who have stripped you of almost all your discoveries in India, and who are now among your protectors, are really so abandoned by hea ven, for having given free liberty to the press, and converted the thoughts of mankind into a profitable species of commerce? Was the Roman empire less powerful for permitting Cicero to write his sentiments freely?

Medroso. Cicero! Who is he? I never heard of his name before. We hear nothing of your Cicero's, but of our holy father the pope, and St. Anthony of Padua. Nay, I have hitherto been told that the Romish religion is demolished f men once begin to think for themselves.

L. Valiant.

L. Valiant. How are you to believe this who are assured that your church is of divine institution, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. If this be true nothing can ever destroy it.

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Medrose. Granted, but it may be reduced to almost nothing. Thus it is owing to this thinking that Sweden, Denmark, England, and the greater part of Germany, labour under the terrible misfortune of being no longer subject to the pope. It is even said, that if men thus continue to follow the light of their own mistaken understandings, they will be contented soon with the simple adoration of God, and the mere practice of moral virtue. If the gates of hell should prevail so far as this, what would become of the holy office?

L. Valiant. Had the primitive Christians thus been prohibited to think, Christianity would eertainly never have been established.

Medroso. I do not rightly understand what you

mean.

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L. Valiant. I mean to say that if Tiberius, and the rest of the emperors, had encouraged Dominicans to prevent the primitive Christians from the use of pen and ink; nay, had not the privilege of thinking freely been long enjoyed in Rome, it would have been impossible for the Christians to have established their tenets. If then, the first establishment of Christianity were owing to this liberty of thinking, how contradictory and absurd is, it to endeavour to destroy that

basis

basis on which your church itself was first founded. If any proposal concerning your worldly interest be mad o you, do you not consider some time before you adopt it? And what can be more interesting to a man in this world, than that of his eternal happiness or misery in the next?. There are above an hundred different religions upon earth that'

demn you

and your temets as absurd, impious, and damnable: enter into an examination therefore of those tenets.

Medroso. How should I be able to examine them? I am no Dominican. it here

L. Valiant. But you are a man, and that is sufficient.

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Medroso. Alas, you are much more a man than I am.

L. Valiant. You have nothing to do but to learn to think. You were born with a capacity for it; and though, when a bird in the cage of the in quisition, the holy office clipt your wings, they may grow again. A man who does not understand geometry may learn it. There is nobody that cannot be in some degree instructed. It is a shame to trust our souls in the hands of those we should be afraid to trust with our money. Come, come, venture to think for yourself.

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Medroso. But they say, that if all the world thus thought for themselves, it would be productive of great confusion.

0.

~L. L. Valiant. Quite the contrary, I assure you. Does not lov

not every one speak his mind freely of the

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