conviction and determination, but from example; and many were merely driven round in Tom Paine’s political mill, without any comprehension of the tendency and effects of the labours in which they were employed. They declaimed against the usurpation of establishments, merely because others did so before them. These pretended investigators of human right, and explainers of human happiness, considered the Rights of Man, merely because the consideration was fashionable; and if the doctrines of the Pope’s supremacy had been in vogue, would have been the ardent partizans of a Guise, a Lorrain, and an Alva, and would have praised the massacres of August 24th, 1572, as readily as of August 10th, 1792. In literature, indeed, aristocracy is very prevalent; there are chieftains, and there are numerous tribes of retainers, whose intellectual nourishment is derived from some lord paramount. At this time, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Priestley, were the liege lords of many literary vassals, while Paine and others acted as the trumpeters to collect the powers, and summon them to the charge. The vassals did not enquire into the justice of the cause, they deemed it their chief glory to swell the muster-roll of their commanding officer. Hence there was such a number of combatants on the side of the innovating champions. The leaders of subversion attacked the bulwarks and defenders of our political fortress, because they wished to lay it prostrate; the followers, because their commanders prompted and encouraged their efforts. Helvetius, or Price, fought for victory, their humble coadjutors for Helvetius, or for Price--_Principes pro victoria pugnant; comites pro principe_. In the same way it was in the reign of Anne, and George I. some eminent writers took to poetry and criticism, and many scores took to poetry and criticism after them, and humbly tried to ape their betters, as waiting-maids and milliners, footmen or hair dressers, endeavouring to imitate the deportment of ladies or of gentlemen, and would have you suppose them to be persons of fashion. Lord Bacon has observed, that as people that have no substance of their own, and are unable or unwilling to labour, must either beg or steal from somebody else, so must those who undertake to deliver judgment, or write books without a knowledge of the subject; and if persons do steal, they will certainly try to lay their hands on the goods that may be most readily disposed of among the receivers of their stolen commodities. Tom Paine stole many of his materials from the French writers, and some from their able co-operators in England; but Tom was really so dexterous a manufacturer, that he made his political pieces have the appearance of originals. But most of his successors merely copied and repeated his sayings. Whitfield hitting the temper of the times, framed a new theory of religion, which found many votaries: Whitfield had genius, but a hundred speakers and writers retailed his