[184] To understand some of the allusions, in these two political tracts, it is necessary to remember that, in 1772, a petition was presented to parliament, signed by about 250 of the clergy, and a considerable number of the members of the professions of civil law and physic, praying to be relieved from the necessity of subscribing to the thirty-nine articles of the Established Church; and that a bill was passed, in the House of Commons, annulling that part of the Act of Toleration which authorised the infliction of heavy penalties upon the ministers, schoolmasters, and private tutors of Dissenters, unless they subscribed to all the _doctrinal_ parts of the thirty-nine articles. The bill passed the Commons triumphantly; the Lords, by a _large majority_, rejected it! 1773. Age 70 The year 1773 will always be memorable in English annals. It was now that the embryo rebellion in the American colonies broke out into overt acts. Insults were offered to the British flag; a British ship of war was boarded and burnt; and the cargoes of tea, which Lord North had allowed to be exported from England, duty free, were seized by rioters and sham Indians, and were discharged into the ocean with the utmost jubilation. Endless debates took place in the English parliament; and fearful fights were fought on the coasts, and in the wilds and prairies of America. George Washington was made commander in chief; and “The Congress of the Thirteen United Colonies” was organised. For long years, the one great absorbing care of the British parliament was the war in the western world. Wesley’s health was still seriously affected; and, hence, he spent his leisure hours, in the beginning of 1773, in examining his letters and other manuscripts, so as to determine what he should leave behind him. He writes: “I made an end of revising my letters; and could not but make one remark,--that, for above these forty years, of all the friends who were once the most closely united, and afterwards separated from me, every one had separated himself! He left me, not I him. And from both mine and their own letters, the steps whereby they did this are clear and undeniable.” We have already seen, that Wesley thought of making Fletcher of Madeley his literary executor; but he now did more than this. Hence the following letter, sent to Fletcher in January 1773, and written at Shoreham, doubtless at the venerable Perronet’s, with whom Wesley had gone to take counsel.