misses his friend Stone. Notwithstanding this vile miscreant was one of his flock (or rather herd) at Hackney; notwithstanding his revolutionary turn of mind was a merit quite sufficient to recommend him to the Doctor as a correspondent; and nowithstanding he writes as to a brother in iniquity, the Doctor has the effrontery to say-" But I am not answerable for what he, or any other person, may think proper to write to me."

Very true, most learned Jesuit; it is obvious enough, that you could not prevent Stone, though your friend and penitent, from writing treason to you. We know very well, that the letters are not sufficient to hang you. But, because such a defence would save your neck before a judge, administering justice according to laws, which are so tender of the life of even the most murderous of villains, do you imagine that it will save, or that it ought to save your reputation before the tribunal of the public?

I cannot help remarking here on the strict resemblance between the Doctor's explanation, and the Vindication of Randolph, on an occasion somewhat similar. Randolph began by a complaint against General Washington, for not keeping Fauchet's Intercepted Letters a secret from all the world, and this he followed up, like the Doctor, with asserting, with a great deal of truth, that he could not help what Citizen Fauchet chose to write. To this Mifflin and Dallas cried, Amen!

But what said the public to this laconic exculpation? They said, that there must be something of truth in what the Frenchman had written, for that mere invention never could have furnished him with a chain of facts so probable and so connected; and they now say, with respect to the letters of the traitor Stone, that they never would have been addressed to one, whose sentiments the writer was not well a ssured

assured were in perfect unison with those he expressed, whose secrecy he could not depend on, and, in short, whose treasonable disposition he was not thoroughly convinced was every way equal to his

own.

When traitors feel a call to congregate (whether at Hackney or any where else), though they know each other to be such, neither of them does, all at once, open his mind to another. They begin by dark hints, equivocal expressions, and half jokes, till, by degrees, they come to an explicit avowal of their hellish principles and designs; then they throw off all reserve. They speak and write to each other in the true traitor style; and in that stile it is that Stone writes to Priestley. His manner is as free as his sentiments are foul: the former proves that the Doctor possesses his confidence, and the latter proves him to be worthy of it.

Nor is it true, in an unqualified sense, that Priestley is not answerable for the contents of these letters. It is, indeed, true, that he could not help Stone's addressing his wicked sentiments to him; for the wretch might have addressed them to me, or to any of my friends; but, though I could not have prevented his doing this, and, of course, should not have looked upon myself as answerable for it; yet I should certainly have been answerable for his sentiments, unless I had used my utmost exertions to expose them, if the letter had come to hand; or (if they had been intercepted and published) unless I had publicly disclaimed the villain's friendship, and disavowed his sentiments, which Priestley has been very careful not to do.

Had he been the inoffensive man he wishes to appear; had he not approved of the sentiments of his miscreant correspondent, I appeal to any honest man, whether, instead of taking shelter under a miserable subterfuge, he would not have come for

ward with a declaration something like this :-" "Tis 66 true, Stone and I have lived in habits of intimacy, "and even friendship, for many years, which suf"ficiently accounts for his writing to me; but, as

to the profligate and detestable sentiments con"tained in his Intercepted Letter, and particularly "those relative to America, I not only disavow, "but I most unequivocally express my abhorrence "of them; and I am astonished that the villain "should dare, in such an unreserved manner, to "communicate them to me, who had assuredly never given him the least encouragement to "make me the confident of his profligacy or his "treason."

66

Confident, as every one must be, that such a declaration would have gone very far towards removing the suspicions, which the Intercepted Letters had excited respecting the Doctor, it may, to some persons, seem matter of wonder, that he did not, though it would have been a falsehood, make use of it; and, I am aware that many will be ready to conclude, that, if this act of self denial does not prove his innocence as to the charge of being a spy, it, at least, proves his inviolable attachment to truth; since he scorns to disclaim his connections, or belie his sentiments, even when reputation and every thing else are at stake.

There is something in inflexible consistency, which, even in traitors, men are apt to admire; but those who ascribe this inflexibility to the Doctor in the present instance, forget, or are totally ignorant of, the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed.

Amongst the innumerable horde of malecontents, whom a covetous and short-sighted policy has encouraged to crowd to these States, no one ever experienced disappointment equal to this ambitious Sectary. He expected to be hailed from afar, to be met with acclamations of joy, to be led from

caress

caress to caress; to be revered, consulted, and obeyed; in short, to be loaded with favours and with honours, without measure, and without end. Alas! how soon he was undeceived! Welcomed indeed he was; but he was not so far blinded by his self-conceit as not to perceive that his welcomers consisted of no more than two or three clubs, the members of which were, if possible, more despicable than the British and Irish conspirators, whose "affectionate farewell" had served him as a passport of civism to these shores of liberty.

There were, amongst the American clergy, men whose sentiments perfectly agreed with those of the Doctor; but they dared not show him the countenance he expected. He found all the pulpits barred against him, with as much caution as they could have been against Satan himself; and, when he was at last seen haranguing from the tottering stage in that shabby-looking shell, called the Universalist's Church, he had the mortification to reflect, that he was only permitted to hold forth, as mountebanks and other diverting mendicants are, on condition of giving up a share of the pence which he was able to draw out of the pockets of his hearers.

He did not, as he pretended, retire to Northumberland. The swamps and rocks which he calls land, and the shed which he dignifies with the name of house, were not a voluntary retreat from the fatiguing attention and applause of the city, but a refuge from its almost unaniinous contempt.

Thus fallen to a state from which he must look upward with inexpressible shame and anguish, it was not to be expected that so restless a spirit would remain in contentment. Accordingly, every part of his conduct, every thing we see or hear of him, tends to prove, that he waits wth the utmost impatience, for an opportunity of exchanging this embarrassed and degraded situation for one better

adapted to his necessities, and more gratifying to his ambition; that he regards this country as a temporary resting place, and that, for patrons, and for a home, for future consequence, and future subsistence, he looks to the republic of France.*

If, then, he be thus circumstanced (as I think nobody in America will deny he is), his forbearing to justify himself, by expressing his abhorrence of the sentiments of Stone, and of the conduct of his despotic employers, can no longer appear wonderful. Instead of ascribing his forbearance to candour, consistency, or an unshaken adherence to truth, we ought to ascribe it, first, to a well-grounded. fear of offending the humane and enlightened patrons, on whom he depends as the only remaining anchor of his shattered fortune and fame; and, secondly, to an apprehension of rousing the resentment of the rancorous traitor Stone, who, by way of revenge for his pusillanimous defection, would undoubtedly have produced other parts of the correspondence between him and his ghostly confessor, which might, perhaps, have changed presumptive into positive proof.

His son Joseph, but a few days ago, told a gentleman in this city, that his father thought of leaving the country in a very little time. He said he did not like it; it was not fit for bim to live in.

The Doctor, is, on all occasions, the defender of the French revolution. A gentleman told him, a little while ago, that, "to defend that event, after having been a witness of its consequences, "be must either be a FOOL or a KNAVE." I think he is both; and I think very little can be said in defence of those who admit him into the circle of their acquaintance.

In all Priestley's writings, he takes special care to let people know, that he is a Citizen of France. Though he wrangles like a dog with Volney, he tells him, he is glad to be able to embrace him cordially as a fellow Citizen of France. He might, I believe, have embraced him with full as much propriety as a brother spy.

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