the event of his adventure. Another, instead of employing. his stock in trade, rents a garret, and makes it his business, by false intelligence and chimerical alarms, to raise and sink the price of tickets alternately, and takes advantage of the lies which he has himself invented.

Such, my lords, is the traffic that is produced by this scheme of getting money; nor were these inconveniences unknown to the present ministers in the time of their predecessors, whom they never ceased to pursue with the loudest clamors whenever the exigencies of the government reduced them to a lottery.

If I, my lords, might presume to recommend to our ministers the most probable method of raising a large sum for the payment of the troops of the Electorate, I should, instead of the tax and lottery now proposed, advise them to establish a certain number of licensed wheelbarrows on which the laudble trade of thimble and button might be carried on for the support of the war, and shoe-boys might contribute to the defence of the house of Austria by raffling for apples.

Having now, my lords, examined, with the utmost candor, all the reasons which have been offered in defence of the bill, I cannot conceal the result of my inquiry. The arguments have had so little effect upon my understanding, that, as every man judges of others by himself, I cannot believe that they have any influence even upon those that offer them, and therefore I am convinced that this bill must be the result of considerations which have been hitherto concealed, and is intended to promote designs which are never to be discovered by the authors before their execution.

With regard to these motives and designs, however artfully concealed, every lord in this House is at liberty to offer his conjectures.

When I consider, my lords, the tendency of this bill, I find

it calculated only for the propagation of diseases, the suppression of industry, and the destruction of mankind. I find it the most fatal engine that ever was pointed at a people; an engine by which those who are not killed will be disabled, and those who preserve their limbs will be deprived of their

senses.

This bill, therefore, appears to be designed only to thin the ranks of mankind, and to disburden the world of the multitudes that inhabit it; and is perhaps the strongest proof of political sagacity that our new ministers have yet exhibited. They well know, my lords, that they are universally detested, and that, whenever a Briton is destroyed, they are freed from an enemy; they have therefore opened the flood-gates of gin upon the nation, that, when it is less numerous, it may be more easily governed.

Other ministers, my lords, who had not attained to so great a knowledge in the art of making war upon their country, when they found their enemies clamorous and bold, used to awe them with prosecutions and penalties, or destroy them like burglars, with prisons and with gibbets. But every age, my lords, produces some improvement; and every nation, however degenerate, gives birth, at some happy period of time, to men of great and enterprising genius. It is our fortune to be witnesses of a new discovery in politics. We may congratulate ourselves upon being contemporaries with those men who have shown that hangmen and halters are unnecessary in a state; and that ministers may escape the reproach of destroying their enemies by inciting them to destroy themselves.

This new method may, indeed, have upon different constitutions a different operation; it may destroy the lives of some and the senses of others; but either of these effects will answer the purposes of the ministry, to whom it is indifferent, pro

vided the nation becomes insensible, whether pestilence or lunacy prevails among them. Either mad or dead the greatest part of the people must quickly be, or there is no hope of the continuance of the present ministry.

For this purpose, my lords, what could have been invented more efficacious than an establishment of a certain number of shops at which poison may be vended-poison so prepared as to please the palate while it wastes the strength, and only kills by intoxication? From the first instant that any of the enemies of the ministry shall grow clamorous and turbulent, a crafty hireling may lead him to the ministerial slaughter-house and ply him with their wonder-working liquor till he is no longer able to speak or think; and, my lords, no man can be more agreeable to our ministers than he that can neither speak nor think, except those who speak without thinking.

But, my lords, the ministers ought to reflect that though all the people of the present age are their enemies yet they have made no trial of the temper and inclinations of posterity. Our successors may be of opinions very different from ours. They may perhaps approve of wars on the Continent, while our plantations are insulted and our trade obstructed; they may think the support of the house of Austria of more importance to us than our own defence; and may perhaps so far differ from their fathers as to imagine the treasures of Britain very properly employed in supporting the troops and increasing the splendor of a foreign Electorate.

WESLEY

JOH

as

OHN WESLEY, the founder of Methodism, was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire, where his father was rector, June 28, 1703. He was educated at the Charterhouse School and Christ Church College, Oxford, and after his ordination as a clergyman was for a time curate to his father. He presently returned to Oxford as Fellow of Lincoln College, and at the University he and his brother Charles were scoffingly known "Methodists," on account of their strict performance of religious duties. In 1735 he went to Georgia as a missionary and was for some little time rector of Christ Church, Savannah, in which office he was noted for his extreme High Church views. He returned to England in 1738 and shortly afterwards visited Count Zinzendorf on the Continent and carefully studied Moravian methods. On account of his exclusion from the churches of the Establishment in 1739, by reason of his supposed heretical opinions, he began preaching in the fields and private houses, and in November of that year he opened an old foundry in Moorfields, London, for preaching Bervices. Thenceforward his life was devoted to preaching, forming new societies and providing them with ministers. He instituted class meetings in 1742 and two years later held his first conference at the Foundry Chapel. In 1748 he opened Kingswood School at Bristol, the first institution of learning among the Methodists. His followers separated themselves from the Calvinistic Methodist party of Whitefield in 1770, but Wesley himself resisted as long as possible the desire of his followers to establish themselves as a denomination independent of the Anglican Church. Methodism made great strides during his lifetime throughout England and America, and in 1770 Wesley was obliged to send Asbury and others to take charge of the Methodist societies in the colonies. His death occurred in London, November 2, 1791. He is said to have preached 40,000 sermons and travelled 250,000 miles during his long and active career. Many editions of his works have been issued, consisting of sermons, journals, correspondence, controversial treatises, and Biblical commentaries.

SERMON: GOD'S LOVE TO FALLEN MAN

"Not as the transgression, so is the free gift."-Romans v, 15.

H

OW exceedingly common and how bitter is the outcry

against our first parent for the mischief which he

not only brought upon himself, but entailed upon his latest posterity! It was by his wilful rebellion against God "that sin entered into the world." "By one man's

disobedience," as the Apostle observes, the many, as many as were then in the loins of their forefathers, were made, or constituted sinners: not only deprived of the favor of God, but also of his image, of all virtue, righteousness, and true holiness, and sunk partly into the image of the devil, in pride, malice, and all other diabolical tempers; partly into the image of the brute, being fallen under the dominion of brutal passions and grovelling appetites. Hence also death entered into the world with all its forerunners and attendants; pain, sickness, and a whole train of uneasy as well as unholy passions and tempers.

"For all this we may thank Adam" has been echoed down from generation to generation. The self-same charge has been repeated in every age and every nation where the oracles of God are known, in which alone this grand and important event has been discovered to the children of men. Has not your heart, and probably your lips, too, joined in the general charge? How few are there of those who believe the scriptural relation of the fall of man that have not entertained the same thought concerning our first parent, severely condemning him that, through wilful disobedience to the sole command of his Creator,

Nay, it were well if the charge rested here: but it is certain it does not. It cannot be denied that it frequently glances from Adam to his Creator. Have not thousands, even of those that are called Christians, taken the liberty to call his mercy, if not his justice also, into question, on this very account? Some indeed have done this a little more modestly, in an oblique and indirect manner: but others have thrown aside the mask and asked, "Did not God foresee that Adam would abuse his liberty? And did he not know the baneful