The army of Charles Edward was now increasing daily; and, in consequence of the reports which were circulated in the metropolis, a panic spread there, of which no estimate can be made without consulting the newspapers of that time. Among other writers who employed their talents in inveighing against the cause of James Stuart, was the celebrated Henry Fielding, whose papers in the _True Patriot_ upon the subject present a curious insight into those transient states of public feeling, which perished almost as soon as expressed. The rapidity of the progress made by the insurgents is declared by his powerful pen to have been unprecedented. "Can History," he writes, "produce an instance parallel to this,--of six or seven men landing in a powerful nation, in opposition to the inclination of the people, in defiance of a vast and mighty army? (For, though the greater part of this army was not then in the kingdom, it was so nearly within call, that every man of them might, within the compass of a few days, or weeks at farthest, have been brought home and landed in any part of it.) If we consider, I say, this handful of men landing in the most desolate corner, among a set of poor, naked, hungry, disarmed slaves, abiding there with impunity till they had, as it were, in the face of a large body of his Majesty's troops collected a kind of army, or rather rabble, together, it will be extremely difficult to assign any adequate cause whatsoever, for this unexampled success, without recurring to one, of whose great efficacy we have frequent instances in sacred history: I mean, the just judgment of God against an offending people." The state of public morals, Fielding considers, to have drawn down upon society this signal visitation of Providence. "Indeed, such monstrous impieties and iniquities have I both seen and heard of, within these last three years, during my sojourning in what is called the world, particularly the last winter, while I tarried in the great city, that, while I verily believe we are the silliest people under Heaven in every other light, we are wiser than Sodom in wickedness."[53] The consternation of the sister kingdom had now, indeed, become general; on the slightest report of foreign ships being seen in the Downs, the dismay of the London citizens was extreme: and such was the liberality, or such were the fears of the inhabitants of the county of York, the capital of which may almost have been deemed, in those days, a northern metropolis, that forty thousand pounds were subscribed for its defence, after a grave and mournful address of the archbishop of that diocese.[54]