extravagant light the very innocent object of the application of the Dissenters to parliament for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and they intimate, that so far from giving us more liberty, it were to be wished that we could be deprived of some of the privileges that we now enjoy. Mr. Madan alarms the public by calling the business of this application a great constitutional cause." The possession of offices, which we plead our right to a participation in, he says, would be "incompatible with the safety of our civil government;" and he speaks of our third application as "an extraordinary subject, now a third time obtruded upon the legislature."*

Dr. Croft says, "It would be fatal to religion, if the legislature should by any act of indulgence declare all opinions innocent."+"It is unfortunate," he says, "that the right of voting at elections, and of sitting in parliament, cannot be taken from the Dissenters." "It would be desirable to exclude from the British senate all those who are led away by their plausible arguments, and to caution every British youth against their civil and religious maxims of government." He particularly says, that "if the Unitarians were restricted from speaking indecently of the doctrine of the Trinity, and if they were enjoined upon certain pains and penalties, it might be deemed persecution by them, but could not be thought a hardship by others." Mr. Madan also says, "Are we not justly upbraided with a passive and supine conduct, in a cause of the most interesting and sacred nature?"¶

66

Of my own character nothing more injurious could be insinuated than was done by Mr. Madan. He describes me as a man of extraordinary talents, indeed, but as actuated by malevolence; and how else would he have described Satan himself? "When I see," he says, your blindness in any point of history, I much suspect it to be wilful;"** which is to represent the worst principle of my conduct as, in all cases, more probable than any other. What must the inhabitants of Birmingham, who justly respected Mr. Madan more than any other clergyman in the town, think of the Dissenters in general, and of myself in particular, when we were described in this manner, and when the account was introduced with such uncommon solemnity, as given "from

the settled principles of his heart, as he hoped for mercy from the God of truth"?*

To what can we compare this conduct of the clergy, but (to adopt that metaphor of mine which has been so much carped at and misrepresented) laying gunpowder, not grain by grain, but by handfuls, in that magazine which exploded on the 14th of July? For what outrage must not many of the common people, who read none of my writings, but heard them spoken of by the clergy as highly dangerous and unfit to be read by them, have been prepared, when for years together they heard the Unitarian Dissenters in general, and myself in particular, pointed at as the enemies of their country, ready on the first opportunity to overturn the government under which we lived, and even to imbrue our hands in the blood of our sovereign? Could they help concluding that the persons who described us in this manner wished to have us destroyed, that it was even meritorious to destroy us? And when in any case the end is thought to be just in itself, the propriety of the means will be less attended to. If violence be employed to gain any end, there are thousands in all parts of this country ready to join in it, without any regard to the end, but merely for the sake of mischief and plunder. It is an army ready to act on the side of any whom they think they can serve with impunity to themselves.

It is, therefore, in this sense, though in this only, that I accuse the clergy of Birmingham, and especially Mr. Madan, as having been the promoters of the Riot; and if it should terminate in that destruction with which I am still threatened, I shall charge them with being the cause of my death. †

Mr. M.'s Sermon, p. 2. (P.) See supra, p. 139.

The methods that were taken to excite the populace of Birmingham against the Dissenters, previous to the Riot, were various, and but too successful. Among others I shall only mention one, as a specimen of ingenuity as well as of the malignant party-spirit which prevailed in the place, while nothing was done by us but what was calculated to allay it. The following paper was much circulated in Birmingham two years before the Riot:

"To those factious and republican spirits, who are at this time insidiously endeavouring to undermine the grand bulwark of our most excellent constitution, a plate of their Coat of Arms is dedicated, by a friend to Church and King.

Blazoning of the Dissenters' Coat of Arms.

"Field sable. A Dissenting magistrate sits with a table before him, holding in his right hand a pen, in his left hand a serpent. On his shoulder sits a toad dictating to him. Over his head is a pair of scales broken, Or within, and argent. One hornet and six wasps, representing the seven united congregations. Crest, the head of Janus, party per pale, sable and or, before a thorn and a thistle, issuing proper. Motto, To him we owe our power.

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Supporters.

"Fraud represented with the body of a woman, with a double face, young and

SECTION V.

Circumstances previous to the Riot, and more immediately connected with the Cause of it.

SEVERAL circumstances, previous to the Riot, shew that some such thing was expected by the high-church party, while no Dissenter, though exposed to the mischief, apprehended any such matter. A clergyman dining at the Anchor, at Worcester, July 13, said, that "if there was any dinner at Birmingham the next day, something would shew itself at night, and that it was then brewing." A person of Birmingham said, "There will be the devil to pay at the hotel to-day. There are about two hundred Présbyterians met there, but we are ready for them, and shall be their masters yet.

Mr. Burn represents the dinner at the hotel, and the handbill published a few days before, as the true causes of the Riot. "The promoters of the dinner," he says, "were chiefly Dissenters; and as the design of that meeting was strongly suspected, those gentlemen became the object of popular resentment.”* But that both the dinner and the hand-bill were the mere pretences for the violences that were committed, is evident from the cry of the time, which had no relation to the dinner. Had the sufferers been obnoxious, as having been concerned in the dinner, those of the Church of England who joined in it, would have been doubly so, as men who had deserted their friends and joined their enemies; but no member of the Establishment, though present at the dinner, suffered at all; and the only sufferers were that very description of men against whom the popular resentment had been excited several years before, viz. the Unitarian Dissenters in general, and myself in particular, whether we were present at the dinner, or concerned in promoting it,

or not.

Of the principal sufferers, who were ten in all, only three

old, presenting the most fascinating to the unwary objects her prey. Her attributes are an angle rod, with a fish caught, and in her left a serpent. She is always described with the legs and claws of a vulture, and the tail of a scorpion. Deceit is represented by an elderly matron gaily dressed, holds a mask before her face, and on her breast two hearts, black and red, denoting the necessity of an external appearance to cover the designs of a corrupt mind.”

N. B. There is some incorrectness in this copy; but I have not seen any other. (P.) See Appendix, No. XIX.

Reply, p. 51. (P.)

were at the dinner, and their houses were the last that were destroyed. On these striking facts no comment favourable to Mr. Burn's hypothesis can be made.

Mr. Burn says, that "the effect which the hand-bill might produce on the lower orders, was very justly and seriously apprehended."* Now it is to the last degree improbable that any serious effect was ever apprehended from it. All that it invited to was the celebration of the

French Revolution; yet he strangely says, "The object of it was, in the apprehension of the populace, nothing less than the immediate overthrow both of church and state." t This famous hand-bill is still extant, and has been published a thousand times more by the enemies of the Dissenters than by their friends; and if it had really been calculated to do much mischief, it must have appeared long before this time.

for

At any time before the Riot it was exceedingly difficult any Dissenter to procure a copy of the hand-bill, while it was circulated with great industry among church people. If the magistrates really apprehended a riot from the effects either of the hand-bill, which few Dissenters had seen, or from the dinner, which, however, few proposed to attend, why did they not prepare to oppose it by swearing more constables, and using other precautions directed in the Riot Act?

If the governors of this country had really thought this hand-bill capable of doing any harm, would they not have sent soldiers to Birmingham to be in readiness for the occasion? A copy of the hand-bill was in the Secretary of State's office three days before the dinner, and that was time enough for the purpose. Would it have been published at full length in the Gazette? Or would Mr. Dundas § have recited it in the House of Commons? This publication, and many other publications of it, clearly shews that no body ever apprehended any danger from it, and that the stir that was made about it was only to throw an odium upon Dissenters, who were represented as the authors of it.

A letter of Dr. Tatham's, in which the anniversary of the French Revolution was called an illegal and unconstitutional act, and which was eagerly circulated in Birmingham before the dinner, contributed much more to the Riot than this hand-bill.

Reply, p. 52. (P.)

† Ibid. p. 47. (P.) + See Appendix, No. VIL

§ Afterwards Lord Melville.
Probably on Mr. Whitbread's motion, May 21, 1793.

Note.

See Vol. XV. p. 522,

The suspicion of the fabrication of this hand-bill has now generally fallen upon the person alluded to by Mr. Burn and Mr. Dundas. It is well known to all our friends that I had no connexion with that person, and that he was least of all likely to be governed by my advice. This, however, I will say for him, that though he thought freely on the subjects of government and religion, he was as far from any thing properly seditious as Mr. Burn himself. I believe him to be an honest and well-meaning man, though I never thought him the most prudent. It is to the disgrace of this country that such a person was under the necessity of leaving it.

At the time of my writing the Appeal, [Part I.,] I had not the least suspicion of this person being the author of the hand-bill, and, therefore, thought it as probable that it might be written by some of the high-church party, for the use that they actually made of it, as by the Dissenters who suffered in consequence of it. And certainly they who forged letters for the purpose of exciting the Rioters to do us mischief, were capable of doing this with the same view. The one was not more wicked than the other. Admitting, however, that a Dissenter wrote this celebrated hand-bill, and that it was as heinous a thing as our enemies represent it; it was only the work of one man, for whose conduct no other person is responsible. No person concerned in the dinner had the least knowledge or suspicion of it at the time, as appears by their public advertisement.

Depending upon such accounts as were given me, with respect to transactions at which I could not be present myself, I had said that, besides the dinner at the hotel, there were other dinners on that day, of persons of better condition, who did not rise so soon or so sober as those who celebrated the French Revolution, and that the Riot commenced at the breaking up of these companies. “This," says Mr. Burn, "is, to say the least, an idle fiction "* "The magistrates," he says, "dined at one of our inns on that day, and for the express purpose of being on the spot in case their interference should be found necessary in order to keep the peace."†

Now, I do not find, on farther inquiry, that there was more than one such dinner as I have described, viz. of persons of better condition, the rest being of the lower orders, though not all of the lowest, whose assembling, whose horrid execrations, and whose intoxication Mr. Burn cannot