professional men, but rich livings are often bestowed upon blockheads, and besides, clergy who are not able to rise by their abilities, and have not interest to compensate the deficiency, have a never-failing resource in becoming masters of academies. Another reservoir, that for many years has diffused plentiful supplies of authors, is dissent from the established church. Scarcely a dissenting minister is to be found, who is not a professed author. Of these, two were very able and learned men, and a few others respectable, but much the greater number are far from having any pretensions to genius and erudition, and most of them, whether able or weak, the votaries of visionary reveries, instead of solid and substantial wisdom; and no one class has been so productive of incapable, illiterate, and trifling authors, as the non-conformists. In addition to these, were your sentimental writers, who regarded the supreme happiness of mankind, as consisting in the possession and gratification of fine sensibility, who decried all restraint as irksome to the feelings; these figured away in plays and novels, and poems and fables and tales, abounded in prettinesses and pathos, and many other qualities, and merely wanted sense, virtue, and piety. Instances of these and many other kinds, will readily suggest themselves, and scarcely one of the literary quacks, but had knots of admirers, who regarded him or her as a shining light, and implicitly followed as a guide. In such a predisposition for the reception of nonsense, and especially innovating nonsense, Tom Paine’s book was wonderfully adapted for circulation.