Wesley was now one of the most conspicuous men in England; and, perhaps, no ecclesiastical personage of the realm swayed a wider influence over the masses, on questions involving religious interests. Hence, the publication of his “Calm Address” produced an unparalleled sensation; and this was the greater, because it was known that, up to this period, Wesley had sympathised with the colonists rather than otherwise. Indeed, he had declared five years before, in his “Free Thoughts on Public Affairs”: “I do not defend the measures which have been taken with regard to America; I doubt whether any man can defend them, either on the foot of law, equity, or prudence.” Of course, Wesley had a perfect right to change his opinions, which he says he did on reading Johnson’s “Taxation no Tyranny”; but when a public man like Wesley does that, he can hardly escape criticism of an unfriendly nature. The world dislikes changelings, and hesitates to trust them. Wesley, in the teeth of former sentiments, now made Johnson’s sentiments his own, contending not only that the English parliament had power to tax the American colonies, but also that it was a reasonable thing for the colonists to reimburse the mother country for some part of the large expense that had been incurred in defending the colonial rights, and that the whole of the present agitation was promoted by a few men in England, who were determined enemies to monarchy, and who wished to establish a republican form of government, which, of all others, was the most despotic. The result was, Wesley was at once pounced upon as a plagiarist and a renegade of the worst description. Countless pamphlets were published, only a few of which can be noticed here. One of his principal antagonists was the Rev. Caleb Evans, then a baptist minister at Broadmead, Bristol, and in the thirty-seventh year of his age,--a man of good sense, a diligent student, a faithful pastor, and extensively useful; but a rampant advocate of what was called liberty, and, therefore, a well wisher to the republican rebellion across the Atlantic. Evans’s first publication was “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, occasioned by his ‘Calm Address’”: 12mo, 24 pages. He taunts Wesley with having so suddenly changed his opinions; with having, at the late election, advised the Bristol Methodists to vote for the “_American candidate_”; and with having, at no remote period, recommended a book entitled, “An Argument in Defence of the exclusive right claimed by the Colonies to tax themselves.” Wesley’s reply to this was the republication of his “Calm Address,” with a preface prefixed, in which he acknowledges that the “Address” was an extract “of the chief arguments from ‘Taxation no Tyranny,’” with “an application” of his own “to those whom it most concerned.” In a page and a half he answers Evans’s objections, and says that all “the arguments in his tract may be contained in a nutshell.”