Lord, said the scared calumniator, I shall then want bread, for then nobody will buy what I write."

It was not ambition, it was not ill-nature, that guided his pen; and if he did any harm, he meant none. But when rancour and rage, or a greedy spirit, arms the hand of an author; when he openly defies authority, belies and blackens those who bear it, and vilifies all their measures, not because they are wrong, though he may say so, but because they are theirs; they only who are influenced and misled by bim, are intitled to pity, but he himself to none.

Monsieur Patin, an eminent and witty physician at Paris, who had long seen the falsities and calumnies spread by the writers of news and politics, gives them a character suitable to his indignation; Genus hominum audacissimum, mendacissimum, avidissimum ut rem faciant, "A most shameless. a most lying tribe; most abandonded in pursuit of the penny." They indeed rarely consider what is right or wrong, but what will take. Is any good man unpopular, or to be made so? They cry him down; and then let him be ever so able, ever so virtuous, he is guilty and foolish. Is a worthless man popular, or is it worth while to make him so? They cry him up; and he has at once all merit, and every fine quality. The same pens which libelled a Tennison deified a Sacheverell.

Is the popular humour for war? Or does a cry for war answer any end of sedition or gain? Does it hurt a man or a party they hate! Or does it gratify the men and party they espouse? Or does it quicken the sale of a libel? They are presently loud for war, be it ever so unseasonable, ever so ruinous, and inveigh against all pacific men and counsels. Is the sound of peace in fashion, or serves any of the narrow and passionate purposes abovementioned? They are vehement advocates for peace, let it be ever so premature, and the terms ever so scandalous. They then vilify all the managers and all the advantages of the war, and extol all who would make a ruinous peace. Is the peace solid and honourable, and they displeased and disappointed? It must be shewn in hideous colours, and the people taught to hate it, and all that had any hand in it.

For, as all their strength and hopes lie in the credulity and mutability of the people, they always appeal to them, because they are always sure to deceive them. They have too short maxims: Whatever those whom they dilike attempt, is bad; though it were to save the nation. Whatever promotes their party or their paper, is good; though it threaten national destruction. The same pens which had inculcated passive obedience to a weak prince, barbarously trampling upon all law, excited rebellion against an able prince ruling benevolently by law. Could there be more daring impiety, or more shocking assurance? And ought such memorable assurance and impiety ever to be forgot?

What could the people think of such miserable guides, or of themselves, for not detesting them? They indeed reap their chief security from oblivion. They bounce and rail for a day. Their productions are read and thrown aside. It is forgot that every next production of theirs contradicts their last. They praise and revile, they revile and praise, the same man in the short revolution of a moon, as if they changed with it; yet their inconsistency is not minded, because their

past labours are not remembered. Such labours survive not their date, and like the insects of a day, as they were formed for the day, they die with it.

Unhappily for one of these transient writers, who trusted to his talent in well timing a thing, as the phrase is, a reader of his caught him cruelly mangling in one paper, a character upon which he had lately bestowed much incense in another. This the gentleman happened to remember, though it was several days before, and knowing him, asked him, how could so much late merit deserve so much present satire. How! says the author; have you not heard the news? He has (naming a very honourable person, and cursing him,) "He has taken a place, and we "are all just where we were.' He meant, besides himself, many other candidates for places, who had long inveighed at all placemen, in hopes to remove and succeed them.

This is another shameless practice of such unfair and passionate writers, to represent all places as odious and even criminal, whilst they themselves are thirsting after them, and only rail at them because they cannot get them. This is always a proper answer to such malignant railers, and ought to be a constant antidote against their malignity. Nor can there be a greater disgrace to their readers, than to be at all influenced by such ridiculous prejudices and railing. Without the establishment of employments, of places and distinction, no human society can be established, no more than without magistracy and laws. Both these imply places as well as priority and none but a mere mob, nor even a mob without intoxication, can dream of subsisting without the degrees of higher and lower, without places and inequality, and without government, or dream of preserving government without governors, without men in place and office; for the chief governor does but hold the chief place. Where there are laws, they must be executed; where there is authority, it must be administered; nor can either be done without hands, without ministers and officers, nor are these to be had without support, without places and recompences.

All this is so plain, that it is almost a shame to prove it; but it is a greater shame to those who make it necessary, and no small one to such as want such proof.

Human passions are too powerful for the human understanding. Where disgusts are strong, reason is weak. When we are brought to dislike the persons of men, we dilike their good fortune. When we come to envy their fortune, we dislike their persons; and whatever they have, whatever they do, we are apt to hate, when we hate them. In this unhappy turn and imbecility in human nature, lies the great encour agement and strength of libellers. They perceive how easy it is to make men think ill of one another; how natural it is to wish ill where we think ill, and to fall into the strongest prejudices for the silliest

reasons.

An ancient baronet in Lincolnshire, who was fond of Nottingham ale beyond all other liquors, though no enemy to any, yet would never taste a drop of it, nor bear to hear it proposed, after the Lord Chancellor Finch, who bad made a very just decree in his disfavour, was created Earl of Nottingham. From that moment and for ever, he conceived an inveterate aversion to that ale and that place, and, whenever he men tioned it, he called it in spite Snottingham; therefore often mentioned it

We ought to be the more upon our guard against hasty censure and unreasonable piques, as we are prone to them. We ought to judge of men and their conduct with the more caution, because we are apt to do it with prejudice. This is the voice of humanity; this is but Christian charity. We should read all writers with caution, but cannot arm ourselves with too much, when we read party-writer, or too scrupulously consider their drift and motives.

Every reader of those warm orators should ask himself, whether they do not speak from the passions as well as to the passions; whether men in a flame can reason candidly, or see clearly; whether an angry man can represent fairly; whether what gives most offence, would give any, if it came from a different quarter and different men. Whether public complaints be not often breathed from griefs which the public does not feel, and might not be removed by a remedy which would not make the public easier. Whether one who gets a penny, by censuring the ministry, or hopes for a place by a change of ministers, knows state affairs better, or would conduct them better, than they, or would lose a penny by praising them, though they ever so manifestly deserved his praise. Whether one who collects news knows more of the condition of Christendom, than the secretary of state; where either the dealer in news or in politics, would hurt bis paper by generous truth and observation, or would not rather promote it by misrepresentations, and by ill natured and random censure?

Whoever is the author of slander and invective, usurps the place of justice, awards judgment, and inflicts personal punishment; a most unnatural judge, governed by his own evidence, decreeing in wrath, and condemning without hearing! Cicero observing and censuring the scandalous, personal invectives allowed at Athens, even upon the stage, says, it was perbaps excusable thus to lash popular incendiaries, and the sons of sedition ;* though it had been still better to have left them to the judgment of the tribunal, than that of a satirist. But to suffer such invectives against men in authority, was unpardonable." He mentions Pericles, who held the chief. The same great author says, that to vilify and depreciate such as were intrusted with the administration of the Roman senate, was an attack upon the state itself, and consequently liable to the same construction and punishinent.†

These scandalous scurrilities upon the persons of men, intolerable in any state, could not be always borne even in that of Athens. Even the Athenians, fond of licentiousness beyond any civilized nation, were forced to restrain it by a law. Horace, no enemy to just satire, observes, that its excesses upon the stage were so violent, as to require such restraint, as the natural effect and cure of liberty abused. this law, then and therefore made by the Areopagus, cramped the spirit of the comic and other writers, whom had they to thank but themselves?

Populares homines, improbos, in Repub. seditiosos.

If

† Majestatem minuere, est de dignitate, aut amplitudine, aut potestate populi, aut eorum quibus populus potestatem dedit, aliquid derogare. Cic. de Invent. L. 2.

t-In vitium libertas excidit, et vim Dignam lege regi

Hor de Art. Poet.

It was high time to have recourse to such a check, when Alcibiades, for want of a redress from law, for an attack upon his character in the poems of Eupolis, redressed himself by drowning the poet: terrible vengeance, as unjustifiable as what provoked it, but not surprising from a man of his great spirit, great quality, and public dignity, exposed to public scorn in a wanton lampoon! Both acted arbitrarily Eupolis setting himself up for a judge and a doer of justice, assaulted the reputation of Alcibiades: just so reasoned Alcibiades,* and took away the life of Eupolis.

Thus ended the invective strains of the Greek poets; and ended in disgrace, as they had been exerted without mercy or bounds.† As their licentiousness had been extreme and shocking, the law was awful, and its penalties dreadful: by it the offenders were to be cudgelled; may, cudgelled to death.

Michiavel's distinction between public calumny and public accusation, will always be just. Accusation infers facts and proofs, and proceeds by them. Calumnly supposes every thing, and proves nothing: the less it demonstrates, the more it can invent, and charge the highest guilt upon the greatest innocence. It is generally addressed to the vulgar, and conceived in vulgar strains, such as none but the vulgar can approve or answer.

As the poor are apt to envy the rich, men of ambition to emulate men in power, the unfortunate such as flourish, 'tis natural for mean souls to bear spite to such as do not resemble them, and for bad characters to traduce good. This trade they easily monopolize. Such as they rival cannot rival them, and therefore they are unanswerable. Language like their own, which is the only proper language for them, is what no gentleman can return them. No well bred man is a match for a scold, nor will envy him the credit of excelling in his profession.

NUMBER 103.

The Subject of Libels continued.

THE first step to knoweledge is to be sensible that we want it; and we must perceive the use of it before we know its value. The first step to guard ourselves against prejudices, is to be sure that we are subject to them. The next reflection ought to be, that it is as unjust in us to bear prejudices against others, as it is in others to bear prejudices against us.

If none but benevolent thoughts were entertained, no malevolent courses would be followed. Neighbours would not treat neighbours

with odious names, nor charge those names and such who bear them, with criminal meanings, which are confidently imputed by one side, yet never owned by the other. Indeed, the whole drift of such names is to promote bitterness and strife. They are like weapons offensive, returning wound for wound, the reproach of fool for that of knave, and nickname for nickname. A tory is a guilty character to a whig; a whig is equally so to a tory; yet each is pleased with his own: they differ only in the construction, and are guarded by strong prejudices against making a true one, but so pleased with such prejudices, that they would be sorry to lose them. They find delight in hating the opposite characters, and in esteeming their own: a temper proper to perpetuate piques and feuds, and proof against all cure! The spirit of faction is civil rage not yet kindled into civil war, but ripe for it, supporting itself, and annoying its opponents by any means, however unfair and barbarous. So it do but succeed, it cares not how; and in order to it, its great aim will be to make the people hate and love improper objects upon false grounds.

It is a much easier task to raise a party spirit than to lay it, to inflame than to calm and extinguish. Very mean instruments serve to excite mutiny in an army, and discontents and sedition in a community, such as the ablest generals and the wisest magistrates cannot prevent not compose. Two common soldiers raised such a furious uproar in a Roman army, as threatened the destruction of the commanders, and even of the emperor; nor did it end without infinite cruelty and slaughter. Yet the incendiaries worked up the soldies to all this rage and disorder, chiefly by aggravating the common and necessary lot of soldiers, that "they were subject to duty and danger, and had no more pay than they were promised." Afterwards indeed, to feed their mad rage, they invented many calumnies, which all passed with the blind croud for truth and friendly information, and produced the murder of many of their officers, the ablest and most vigilant. Yet so many victims not satisfying the incendiaries, who still thirsted for more blood, especially that of the general, one of them openly charged him with the assassination of a dear brother, whom he never had and nothing but this discovery, that the assassination was all imaginary and framed, and that the brother was just created, as well as just killed, saved the general from a real one.*

All crouds, in cities as well as in camps, are credulous, violent, easily misled, hard to be undeceived. Whilst their seducer is their idol, any man who would disabuse them is considered as their enemy, and in danger of being their victim. Their prejudice is blind to both, and teaches them, that in all this folly and mischief they are well advised, and righteously employed./

The drunken mob, who demolished houses of public worship in the late queen's time, thought such brutal impiety the work of God, and the crazy ecclesiastic, whose phrenzy inspired them, God's best ambassador. They adored this wretched popular meteor, and hated as he did, and because he did, the most amiable names and characters then in being, all moderate men; nay, moderation itself.

* See Tacitus, Annal I.