He was a man of singular modesty and bravery, and had lost an eye by the palsy during the hardship of his service; but being allied to Admiral Byng, not the least notice was taken of him by the King. An army of near 95,000 British troops, and near 7000 foreigners, were voted, and above twelve millions of money raised for the service of the ensuing year; an enormous sum to be furnished by a country no larger than and so indebted as England, but exceeded by the great benefits to which it contributed. I mention these things in gross, and very cursorily; they will be found at large in all our common histories. Were I master of them, I should touch on them with reluctance. The system of money, the great engine on which all modern affairs turn, is become of so complicated a nature, and labours with such ungracious intricacies, that no beauties of style, scarce any clearness of expression, can reconcile it to a reader of common indolence. How such systems would have perplexed the elegance of Roman or Greek historians! what eloquent periods could they have formed, encumbered with three per-cents, discounts, premiums, South-sea annuities, and East India bonds! Nov. 28th, Dr. Shebbear, author of several letters to the people of England, having been tried for many treasonable expressions in the sixth of them, was sentenced by the King’s Bench to stand in the pillory, to be imprisoned for three years, and then to find security of 1000_l._ for his good behaviour for seven years following--the latter part of the sentence importing in effect perpetual imprisonment, for both the fortune and character of the man were at the lowest ebb. Though he had been the most open champion of the Jacobite cause, though his libel tended to point out the mischiefs entailed on this country by union with Hanover,[30] and though the bitterest parts of the work were a satire on King William and King George the First, his venom by no means flowed from principle. He had long declared that he would write himself into a place or the pillory, the latter of which proved his fate, as Mr. Pelham, the purchaser of opponents, was dead, and as Shebbear’s pen, though not without force, could not find the way to be hired by the Duke of Newcastle. The most remarkable part of this trial was the Chief Justice Mansfield laying down for law, that satires even on dead Kings were punishable. Whatever obsolete statutes may pronounce, can any thing be more foreign to the genius of English constitution, nay, to the practice even of arbitrary countries? Why are tyrants sacred, when once dead? Adieu! veracity and history, if the King’s Bench is to appreciate your expressions! If the dead are not to be censured, it is only pronouncing history a libel, and the annals of Britain shall grow as civil things as the sermons at St. James’s.