acted.

the people ought to choose their pastor: their equity by which the lands are possessed. It is, conscience tells them, that they ought not to im- in effect, part of the manor, and protected by pose upon a congregation a minister ungrateful the same laws with every other privilege. Let and unacceptable to his auditors. Conscience us suppose an estate forfeited by treason, and is nothing more than a conviction felt by our-granted by the Crown to a new family. With selves of something to be done, or something to the lands were forfeited all the rights appendant be avoided: and in questions of simple unper- to those lands; by the same power that grants plexed morality, conscience is very often a guide the lands, the rights also are granted. The right that may be trusted. But before conscience can lost to the patron falls not to the people, but is determine, the state of the question is supposed either retained by the Crown, or, what to the to be completely known. In questions of law, people is the same thing, is by the Crown given or of fact, conscience is very often confounded away. Let it change hands ever so often, it is with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him possessed by him that receives it with the same the rights of another man; they must be known right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like by rational investigation or historical inquiry.-all our possessions, be forcibly seized or frauduOpinion, which he that holds it may call his con- lently obtained. But no injury is still done to science, may teach some men that religion would the people; for what they never had, they have be promoted, and quiet preserved, by granting never lost. Caius may usurp the right of Titius, to the people universally the choice of their mi- but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people; nisters. But it is a conscience very ill informed and no man's conscience, however tender or that violates the rights of one man, for the con- however active, can prompt him to restore what venience of another. Religion cannot be pro- may be proved to have been never taken away. moted by injustice: and it was never yet found Supposing, what I think cannot be proved, that that a popular election was very quietly trans- a popular election of ministers were to be desired, our desires are not the measure of equity. "That justice would be violated by transfer-It were to be desired that power should be only ring to the people the right of patronage, is apparent to all who know whence that right had its original. The right of patronage was not at first a privilege torn by power from unresisting poverty. It is not an authority at first usurped in times of ignorance, and established only by succession and by precedents. It is not a grant capriciously made from a higher tyrant to a lower. It is a right dearly purchased by the first possessors, and justly inherited by those that succeed them. When christianity was established in this island, a regular mode of worship was prescribed. Public worship requires a public place; and the proprietors of lands, as they were converted, built churches for their families and their vassals. For the maintenance of ministers they settled a certain portion of their lands; and a district, through which each minister was required to extend his care, was, by that circumscription, constituted a parish. This is a position so generally received in England, that the extent of a manor and of a parish are regularly received for each other. The churches which the proprietors of lands had thus built and thus endowed, they justly thought themselves entitled to provide with ministers; and where the episcopal government prevails, the bishop has no power to reject a man nominated by the patron, but for some crime that might exclude him from the priesthood. For the endowment of the church being the gift of the landlord, he was consequently at liberty to give it according to his choice, to any man capable of performing the holy offices. The people did not choose him, because the people did not pay him.

"We hear it sometimes urged, that this original right is passed out of memory, and is obliterated and obscured by many translations of property and changes of government; that scarce any church is now in the hands of the heirs of the builders; and that the present persons have entered subsequently upon the pretended rights by a thousand accidental and unknown causes.Much of this, perhaps, is true. But how is the right of patronage extinguished? If the right followed the lands, it is possessed by the same

in the hands of the merciful, and riches in the possession of the generous; but the law must leave both riches and power where it finds them; and must often leave riches with the covetous, and power with the cruel. Convenience may be a rule in little things, where no other rule has been established. But as the great end of government is to give every man his own, no inconvenience is greater than that of making right uncertain. Nor is any man more an enemy to public peace, than he who fills weak heads with imaginary claims, and breaks the series of civil subordination, by inciting the lower classes of mankind to encroach upon the higher.

"Having thus shown that the right of patronage, being originally purchased, may be legally transferred, and that it is now in the hands of lawful possessors, at least as certainly as any other right ::-we have left the advocates of the people no other plea than that of convenience. Let us, therefore, now consider what the people would really gain by a general abolition of the right of patronage. What is most to be desired by such a change is, that the country should be supplied with better ministers. But why should we suppose that the parish will make a wiser choice than the patron? If we suppose mankind actuated by interest, the patron is more likely to choose with caution, because he will suffer more by choosing wrong. By the deficiencies of his minister, or by his vices, he is equally offended with the rest of the congregation; but he will have this reason more to lament them, that they will be imputed to his absurdity or corruption. The qualifications of a minister are well known to be learning and piety. Of his learning the patron is probably the only judge in the parish; and of his piety not less a judge than others; and is more likely to inquire minutely and dili. gently before he gives a presentation, than one of the parochial rabble, who can give nothing but a vote. It may be urged, that though the parish might not choose better ministers, they would at least choose ministers whom they like better, and who would therefore officiate with greater efficacy. That ignorance and perverse

ministers of that place on account of a supposed allusion to him in one of his sermons. Upon this the minister, on a subsequent Sunday, arraigned him by name from the pulpit with some severity; and the agent, after the sermon was over, rose up and asked the minister aloud, "What bribe he had received for telling so many lies from the chair of verity?" The person arraigned, and his father and brother, who also had a share both of the reproof from the pulpit, and in the retaliation, brought an action against Mr. Thomson, in the Court of Session, for defamation and damages, and the court decided against the reverend defendant. Dr. Johnson was satisfied that this judgment was wrong, and dictated to Mr. Boswell, who was one of the defendant's counsel, the following argument in confutation of it.]

"Of the censure pronounced from the pulpit, our determination must be formed, as in other cases, by a consideration of the act itself, and the particular circumstances with which it is in

ness should always obtain what they like, was never considered as the end of government; of which it is the great and standing benefit, that the wise see for the simple, and the regular act for the capricious. But that this argument supposes the people capable of judging, and resolute to act according to their best judgments, though this be sufficiently absurd, it is not all its absurdity. It supposes not only wisdom, but unanimity in those, who upon no other occasions are unanimous or wise. If by some strange concurrence all the voices of a parish should unite in the choice of any single man, though I could not charge the patron with injustice for presenting a minister, I should censure him as unkind and injudicious. But it is evident, that as in all other popular elections there will be contrariety of judgment and acrimony of passion, a parish upon every vacancy would break into factions, and the contest for the choice of a minister would set neighbours at variance, and bring discord into families. The minister would be taught all the arts of a candidate, would flat-vested. ter some, and bribe others; and the electors, as "The right of censure and rebuke seems nein all other cases, would call for holidays and cessarily appendant to the pastoral office. He, ale, and break the heads of each other during to whom the care of a congregation is entrusted, the jollity of the canvass. The time must, how is considered as the shepherd of a flock, as the ever, come at last, when one of the factions must teacher of a school, as the father of a family.— prevail, and one of the ministers get possession As a shepherd tending not his own sheep, but of the church. On what terms does he enter those of his master, he is answerable for those upon his ministry but those of enmity with half that stray, and that lose themselves by straying. his parish? By what prudence or what dili-But no man can be answerable for losses which gence can he hope to conciliate the affections of that party by whose defeat he has obtained his living? Every man who voted against him will enter the church with hanging head and downcast eyes, afraid to encounter that neighbour by whose vote and influence he has been overpowered. He will hate his neighbour for opposing him, and his minister for having prospered by the opposition; and as he will never see him but with pain, he will never see him but with hatred. Of a minister presented by the patron, the parish has seldom any thing worse to say than that they do not know him. Of a minister chosen by a popular contest, all those who do not favour him, have nursed up in their bosoms principles of hatred and reasons of rejection.Anger is excited principally by pride. The pride of a common man is very little exasperated by the supposed usurpation of an acknowledged superior. He bears only his little share of a general evil, and suffers in common with the whole parish; but when the contest is between equals, the defeat has many aggravations, and he that is defeated by his next neighbour, is seldom satisfied without some revenge; and it is hard to say what bitterness of malignity would prevail in a parish where these elections should happen to be frequent, and the enmity of opposition should be rekindled before it had cooled."

ON PULPIT CENSURE.

he has not power to prevent, or for vagrancy which he has not authority to restrain.

"As a teacher giving instruction for wages, and liable to reproach, if those whom he undertakes to inform make no proficiency, he must have the power of enforcing attendance, of awakening negligence, and repressing contra diction.

"As a father, he possesses the paternal au thority of admonition, rebuke, and punishment. He cannot, without reducing his office to an empty name, be hindered from the exercise of any practice necessary to stimulate the idle, to reform the vicious, to check the petulant, and correct the stubborn.

"If we inquire into the practice of the primitive church, we shall, I believe, find the ministers of the word exercising the whole authority of this complicated character. We shall find them not only encouraging the good by exhortation, but terrifying the wicked by reproof and denun ciation. In the earliest ages of the church, while religion was yet pure from secular advantages, the punishment of sinners was public censure, and open penance: penalties inflicted merely by ecclesiastical authority, at a time when the church had yet no help from the civil power: while the hand of the magistrate lifted only the rod of persecution; and when governors were ready to afford a refuge to all those who fled from clerical authority.

"That the church, therefore, had once a power of public censure is evident, because that power was frequently exercised. That it borrowed not its power from the civil authority, is likewise certain, because civil authority was at that time its enemy.

[In 1776, in the course of a contested election for the borough of Dumfermline, one of the agents for a candidate who was charged with having been unfaithful to his employer, and with having deserted to the opposite party for a pecu- "The hour came at length, when, after three niary reward, attacked very rudely in a news-hundred years of struggle and distress, Truth paper the Rev. Mr. James Thomson, one of the took possession of imperial power, and the civil

laws lent their aid to the ecclesiastical constitutions. The magistrate from that time co-operated with the priest, and clerical sentences were made efficacious by secular force. But the state, when it came to the assistance of the church, had no intention to diminish its authority. Those rebukes and those censures which were lawful before, were lawful still. But they had hitherto operated only upon voluntary submission. The refractory and contemptuous were at first in no danger of temporal severities, except what they might suffer from the reproaches of conscience, or the detestation of their fellow christians. When religion obtained the support of law, if admonitions and censures had no effect, they were seconded by the magistrates with coercion and punishment.

at once, or public by degrees, is the only question. And of a sudden and solemn publication the impression is deeper, and the warning more effectual.

"It may easily be urged, if a minister be thus left at liberty to delate sinners from the pulpit, and to publish at will the crimes of a parishioner, he may often blast the innocent and distress the timorous. He may be suspicious, and condemn without evidence: he may be rash, and judge without examination: he may be severe, and treat slight offences with too much harshness: he may be malignant and partial, and gratify his private interest or resentment under the shelter of his pastoral character.

"Of all this there is possibility, and of all this there is danger. But if possibility of evil "It therefore appears from ecclesiastical his-be to exclude good, no good ever can be done.— tory, that the right of inflicting shame by public censure, has been always considered as inherent in the church: and that this right was not conferred by the civil power; for it was exercised when the civil power operated against it. By the civil power it was never taken away; for the christian magistrate interposed his office, not to rescue sinners from censure, but to supply more powerful means of reformation; to add pain where shame was insufficient; and when men were proclaimed unworthy of the society of the faithful, to restrain them by imprisonment, from spreading abroad the contagion of wickedness.

If nothing is to be attempted in which there is danger, we must all sink into hopeless inactivity. The evils that may be feared from this practice arise not from any defect in the institution, but from the infirmities of human nature. Power, in whatever hands it is placed, will be sometimes improperly exerted; yet courts of law must judge, though they will sometimes judge amiss. A father must instruct his children, though he may often want instruction. A minister must censure sinners, though his censure may be sometimes erroneous by want of judg ment, and sometimes unjust by want of ho

"It is not improbable that from this acknow-nesty. ledged power of public censure, grew in time the practice of auricular confession. Those who dreaded the blast of public reprehension, were willing to submit themselves to the priest, by a private accusation of themselves; and to obtain a reconciliation with the church by a kind of clandestine absolution, and invisible penance; conditions with which the priest would in times of ignorance and corruption easily comply, as they increased his influence, by adding the knowledge of secret sins to that of notorious of fences, and enlarged his authority, by making him the sole arbiter of the terms of reconcile

ment.

"If we examine the circumstances of the present case, we shall find the sentence neither erroneous nor unjust: we shall find no breach of private confidence, no intrusions into secret transactions. The fact was notorious and indubitable; so easy to be proved, that no proof was desired. The act was base and treacherous, the perpetration insolent and open, and the example naturally mischievous. The minister, however, being retired and recluse, had not yet heard what was publicly known throughout the parish; and on occasion of a public election, warned his people, according to his duty, against the crimes which public elections frequently pro"From this bondage the Reformation set us duce. His warning was felt by one of his pafree. The minister has no longer power to press rishioners, as pointed particularly at himself.— into the retirements of conscience, or torture us But instead of producing, as might be wished, by interrogatories, or put himself in possession private compunction and immediate reformation, of our secrets and our lives. But though we it kindled only rage and resentment. He charg have thus controlled his usurpations, his just and ed his minister, in a public paper, with scandal, original power remains unimpaired. He may defamation, and falsehood. The minister, thus still see, though he may not pry: he may yet reproached, had his own character to vindicate, hear, though he may not question. And that upon which his pastoral authority must necessaknowledge which his eyes and ears force upon rily depend. To be charged with a defamatory him it is still his duty to use, for the benefit of lie, is an injury which no man patiently endures his flock. A father who lives near a wicked in common life. To be charged with polluting neighbour, may forbid a son to frequent his the pastoral office with scandal and falsehood, company. A minister who has in his congre- was a violation of character still more atrocious, gation a man of open and scandalous wicked- as it affected not only his personal but his cleriness, may warn his parishioners to shun his cal veracity. His indignation naturally rose in conversation. To warn them is not only law-proportion to his honesty, and with all the fortiful, but not to warn them would be criminal.-tude of injured honesty, he dared his calumniaHe may warn them one by one in friendly con- tor in the church, and at once exonerated himverse, or by a parochial visitation. But if he warn each man singly, what shall forbid him to warn them altogether? Of that which is to be made known to all, how is there any difference whether it be communicated to each singly, or to all together? What is known to all, must necessarily be public; whether it shall be public

self from censure, and rescued his flock from deception and from danger. The man whom he accuses pretends not to be innocent: or at least only pretends; for he declines a trial. The crime of which he is accused has frequent opportunities and strong temptations. It has already spread far, with much depravation of private morals,

and much injury to public happiness. To warn | rected against a breach of morality, against an the people, therefore, against it, was not wanton act which no man justifies. The man who apand officious, but necessary and pastoral. propriated this censure to himself, is evidently "What then is the fault with which this wor- and notoriously guilty. His consciousness of thy minister is charged? He has usurped no his own wickedness incited him to attack his dominion over conscience. He has exerted no faithful reprover with open insolence and printed authority in support of doubtful and controverted accusations. Such an attack made defence neopinions. He has not dragged into light a bash-cessary; and we hope it will be at last decided ful and corrigible sinner. His censure was di- that the means of defence were just and lawful.”

REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS.

LETTER ON DU HALDE'S HISTORY OF
CHINA, 1738.

THERE are few nations in the world more talked of, or less known, than the Chinese. The confused and imperfect account which travellers have given of their grandeur, their sciences, and their policy, have hitherto excited admiration, but have not been sufficient to satisfy even a superficial curiosity. I therefore return you my thanks for having undertaken, at so great an expense, to convey to English readers the most copious and accurate account, yet published, of that remote and celebrated people, whose antiquity, magnificence, power, wisdom, peculiar customs, and excellent constitution, undoubtedly deserve the attention of the public.

can afford, when he becomes acquainted with the Chinese government and constitution; he will be amazed to find that there is a country where nobility and knowledge are the same, where men advance in rank as they advance in learning, and promotion is the effect of virtuous industry, where no man thinks ignorance a mark of greatness, or laziness the privilege of high birth.

they have been addressed in this manner, have neither stormed, nor threatened, nor kicked their ministers, nor thought it majestic to be obstinate in the wrong: but have, with a greatness of mind worthy of a Chinese monarch, brought their actions willingly to the test of reason, law, and morality, and scorned to exert their power in defence of that which they could not support by argument.

His surprise will be still heightened by the relations he will there meet with of honest ministers, who, however incredible it may seem, have been seen more than once in that monarchy, and have adventured to admonish the emperors of any deviation from the laws of their country, or any error in their conduct, that has endangered As the satisfaction found in reading descrip- either their own safety, or the happiness of their tions of distant countries arises from a compari-people. He will read of emperors, who, when son which every reader naturally makes, between the ideas which he receives from the relation, and those which were familiar to him before; or, in other words, between the countries with which he is acquainted, and that which the author displays to his imagination; so it varies according to the likeness or dissimilitude of the manners of the two nations. Any custom or law unheard and unthought of before, strikes us with that surprise which is the effect of novelty; I must confess my wonder at these relations but a practice conformable to our own pleases was very great, and had been much greater, had us, because it flatters our self-love, by showing I not often entertained my imagination with an us that our opinions are approved by the general instance of the like conduct in a prince of Engconcurrence of mankind. Of these two plea- land, on an occasion that happened not quite a sures, the first is more violent, the other more century ago, and which I shall relate, that so lasting; the first seems to partake more of in- remarkable an example of spirit and firmness in stinct than reason, and is not easily to be ex- a subject, and of conviction and compliance in a plained, or defined; the latter has its founda-prince, may not be forgotten. And I hope that tion in good sense and reflection, and evidently depends on the same principles with most human passions.

An attentive reader will frequently feel each of these agreeable emotions in the perusal of Du Halde. He will find a calm, peaceful satisfaction, when he reads the moral precepts and wise instructions of the Chinese sages; he will find that virtue is in every place the same, and will look with new contempt on those wild reasoners, who affirm that morality is merely ideal, and that the distinctions between good and ill are wholly chimerical.

you will look upon this letter as intended to do honour to my country, and not to serve your in terest by promoting your undertaking.

The prince, at the christening of his first son, had appointed a noble duke to stand as proxy for the father of the princess, without regard to the claim of a marquis, (heir apparent to a higher title,) to whom, as lord of the bedchamber then in waiting, that honour properly belonged.-The marquis was wholly unacquainted with the affair, till he heard at dinner the duke's health drunk by the name of the prince he was that evening to represent. This he took an opportunity after But he will enjoy all the pleasure that novelty | dinner of inquiring the reason of, and was in

It is, however, to be remembered, that the parent of all Memoirs, is the ambition of being distinguished from the herd of mankind, and the fear of either infamy or oblivion, passions which cannot but have some degree of influence, and which may at least affect the writer's choice of facts, though they may not prevail upon him to advance known falsehoods. He may aggravate or extenuate particular circumstances, though he preserves the general transaction; as the general likeness may be preserved in painting, though a blemis his hid, or a beauty improved.

Every man that is solicitous about the esteem of others, is in a great degree desirous of his own, and makes by consequence his first apology for his conduct to himself; and when he has once deceived his own heart, which is for the greatest part to easy a task, he propagates the deceit in the world without reluctance or consciousness of falsehood.

formed by the prince's treasurer of his highness's | fence, discover often more impartiality, and less intention. The marquis immediately declared, contempt of evidence, than the advocates which that he thought his right invaded, and his honour faction or interest have raised in their favour. injured, which he could not bear without requiring satisfaction from the usurper of his privileges; nor would he longer serve a prince who paid no regard to his lawful pretensions. The treasurer could not deny that the marquis's claim was incontestable, and by his permission acquainted the prince with his resolution. The prince thereupon sending for the marquis, demanded, with a resentful and imperious air, how he could dispute his commands, and by what authority he presumed to control him in the management of his own family, and the christening of his own son. The marquis answered that he did not encroach upon the prince's right, but only defended his own: that he thought his honour concerned, and, as he was a young man, would not enter the world with the loss of his reputation. The prince, exasperated to a very high degree, repeated his commands; but the marquis, with a spirit and firmness not to be depressed or shaken, persisted in his determination to assert his claim, and concluded with declaring that he would do himself the justice that was denied him, and that not the prince himself should trample on his character. He was then ordered to withdraw, and the duke coming to him, assured him, that the honour was offered him unasked; that when he accepted it, he was not informed of his lordship's claim, and that now he very willingly resigned it. The marquis very gracefully acknowledged the civility of the duke's expressions, and declared himself satisfied with his grace's conduct; but thought it inconsistent with his honour to accept the representation as a cession of the duke, or on any other terms than as his own acknowledged night. The prince, being informed of the whole conversation, and having upon inquiry found all the precedents on the marquis's side, thought it below his dignity to persist in an error, and restoring the marquis to his right upon his own conditions, continued him in his favour, believing that he might safely trust his affairs in the hands of a man, who had so nice a sense of honour, and so much spirit to assert it.

EUBULUS.

But to what purpose, it may be asked, are such reflections, except to produce a general incredulity, and to make history of no use? The man who knows not the truth cannot, and he who knows it will not, tell it; what then remains, but to distrust every relation, and live in perpetual negligence of past events; or what is still more disagreeable, in perpetual suspense?

That by such remarks some incredulity is indeed produced, cannot be denied, but distrust is a necessary qualification of a student in history. Distrust quickens his discernment of different degrees of probability, animates his search after evidence, and perhaps heightens his pleasure at the discovery of truth; for truth, though not always obvious, is generally discoverable, nor is it any where more likely to be found than in private memoirs, which are generally published at a time when any gross falsehood may be detected by living witnesses, and which always contain a thousand incidents, of which the writer could not have acquired a certain knowledge, and which he has no reason for disguising.

Such is the account lately published by the Dutchess of Marlborough, of her own conduct, by which those who are very little concerned about the character which it is principally in

REVIEW OF THE ACCOUNT OF THE CONDUCT tended to preserve or to retrieve, may be enter

OF THE DUTCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

tained and instructed. By the perusal of this FROM THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, 1742. account, the inquirer into human nature may obtain an intimate acquaintance with the chaTHE universal regard which is paid by man-racters of those whose names have crowded the kind to such accounts of public transactions as latest histories, and discover the relation between have been written by those who were engaged their minds and their actions. The historian in them, may be, with great probability, ascribed may trace the progress of great transactions, and to that ardent love of truth, which nature has discover the secret causes of important events. kindled in the breast of man, and which remains And, to mention one use more, the polite writer even where every other laudable passion is ex- may learn an unaffected dignity of style, and an tinguished. We cannot but read such narratives artful simplicity of narration. with uncommon curiosity, because we consider The method of confirming her relation, by the writer as indubitably possesssed of the ability inserting at length the letters that every transto give us just representations, and do not al-action occasioned, has not only set the greatest ways reflect, that, very often, proportionate to the opportunities of knowing the truth, are the temptations to disguise it.

part of the work above the danger of confutation, but has added to the entertainment of the reader, who has now the satisfaction of forming to himself the characters of the actors, and judging how nearly such as have hitherto been given of them agree with those which they now give of

Authors of this kind have at least an incontestable superiority over those whose passions are the same, and whose knowledge is less. It is evident that those who write in their own de-themselves.