LITMIR.BIZ

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      "Sheweth,

      "That whereas your petitioner is truly descended of the ancient family of the Chanticleers at Cock Hall near Romford in Essex, it has been his misfortune to come into the mercenary hands of a certain ill-disposed person, commonly called a 'higgler,' who, under the close confinement of a pannier, has conveyed him and many others up to London; but hearing by chance of your worship's great humanity towards robin-redbreasts and tom-tits,96 he is emboldened to beseech you to take his deplorable condition into your tender consideration, who otherwise must suffer (with many thousands more as innocent as himself) that inhumane barbarity of a Shrove Tuesday persecution.97 We humbly hope that our courage and vigilance may plead for us on this occasion.

      "Your poor petitioner most earnestly implores your immediate protection from the insolence of the rabble, the batteries of catsticks,98 and a painful lingering death.

      Upon delivery of this petition, the worthy gentleman who presented it, told me the customs of many wise nations of the East, through which he had travelled; that nothing was more frequent than to see a dervish lay out a whole year's income in the redemption of larks or linnets that had unhappily fallen into the hands of bird-catchers:99 that it was also usual to run between a dog and a bull to keep them from hurting one another, or to lose the use of a limb in parting a couple of furious mastiffs. He then insisted upon the ingratitude and disingenuity100 of treating in this manner a necessary and domestic animal, that has made the whole house keep good hours, and called up the cook maid for five years together. "What would a Turk say," continued he, "should he hear, that it is a common entertainment in a nation which pretends to be one of the most civilised of Europe, to tie an innocent animal to a stake, and put him to an ignominious death, who has perhaps been the guardian and proveditor of a poor family, as long as he was able to get eggs for his mistress?"

      I thought what this gentleman said was very reasonable; and have often wondered, that we do not lay aside a custom which makes us appear barbarous to nations much more rude and unpolished than ourselves. Some French writers have represented this diversion of the common people much to our disadvantage, and imputed it to natural fierceness and cruelty of temper; as they do some other entertainments peculiar to our nation: I mean those elegant diversions of bull-baiting and prize-fighting, with the like ingenious recreations of the bear-garden.101 I wish I knew how to answer this reproach which is cast upon us, and excuse the death of so many innocent cocks, bulls, dogs, and bears, as have been set together by the ears, or died untimely deaths only to make us sport.

      It will be said, that these are the entertainments of common people. It is true; but they are the entertainments of no other common people.102 Besides, I am afraid there is a tincture of the same savage spirit in the diversions of those of higher rank, and more refined relish. Rapin observes, that the English theatre very much delights in bloodshed, which he likewise represents as an indication of our tempers. I must own, there is something very horrid in the public executions of an English tragedy. Stabbing and poisoning, which are performed behind the scenes in other nations, must be done openly among us, to gratify the audience.103

      When poor Sandford104 was upon the stage, I have seen him groaning upon a wheel, stuck with daggers, impaled alive, calling his executioners, with a dying voice, cruel dogs and villains! And all this to please his judicious spectators, who were wonderfully delighted with seeing a man in torment so well acted. The truth of it is, the politeness of our English stage, in regard to decorum, is very extraordinary. We act murders to show our intrepidity, and adulteries to show our gallantry: both of them are frequent in our most taking plays, with this difference only, that the first are done in sight of the audience, and the other wrought up to such a height upon the stage, that they are almost put in execution before the actors can get behind the scenes.

      I would not have it thought, that there is just ground for those consequences which our enemies draw against us from these practices; but methinks one would be sorry for any manner of occasion for such misrepresentations of us. The virtues of tenderness, compassion and humanity, are those by which men are distinguished from brutes, as much as by reason itself; and it would be the greatest reproach to a nation to distinguish itself from all others by any defect in these particular virtues. For which reasons, I hope that my dear countrymen will no longer expose themselves by an effusion of blood, whether it be of theatrical heroes, cocks, or any other innocent animals, which we are not obliged to slaughter for our safety, convenience, or nourishment. Where any of these ends are not served in the destruction of a living creature, I cannot but pronounce it a great piece of cruelty, if not a kind of murder.

      No. 135

      Several letters which I have lately received give me information, that some well-disposed persons have taken offence at my using the word "freethinker" as a term of reproach. To set therefore this matter in a clear light, I must declare, that no one can have a greater veneration than myself for the freethinkers of antiquity, who acted the same part in those times, as the great men of the Reformation did in several nations of Europe, by exerting themselves against the idolatry and superstition of the times in which they lived. It was by this noble impulse that Socrates and his disciples, as well as all the philosophers of note in Greece, and Cicero, Seneca, with all the learned men of Rome, endeavoured to enlighten their contemporaries amidst the darkness and ignorance in which the world was then sunk and buried. The great points which these freethinkers endeavoured to establish and inculcate into the minds of men, were, the formation of the universe, the superintendency of Providence, the perfection of the divine nature, the immortality of the soul, and the future state of rewards and punishments. They all complied with the religion of their country, as much as possible, in such particulars as did not contradict and pervert these great and fundamental doctrines of mankind. On the contrary, the persons who now set up for freethinkers, are such as endeavour by a little trash of words and sophistry, to weaken and destroy those very principles, for the vindication of which, freedom of thought at first became laudable and heroic.105 These apostates, from reason and good sense, can look at the glorious frame of Nature, without paying an adoration to Him that raised it; can consider the great revolutions in the universe, without lifting up their minds to that Superior Power which hath the direction of it; can presume to censure the Deity in His ways towards men; can level mankind with the beasts that perish; can extinguish in their own minds all the pleasing hopes of a future state, and lull themselves into a stupid security against the terrors of it. If one were to take the word "priestcraft" out of the mouths of these shallow monsters, they would be immediately struck dumb. It is by the help of this single term that they endeavour to disappoint the good works of the most learned and venerable order of men, and harden the hearts of the ignorant against the very light of Nature, and the common received notions of mankind. We ought not to treat such miscreants as these upon the foot of fair disputants, but to pour out contempt upon them, and speak of them with scorn and infamy, as the pests of society, the revilers of human nature, and the blasphemers of a Being, whom a good man would rather die than hear dishonoured. Cicero, after having mentioned the great heroes of knowledge that recommended this divine doctrine of the immortality of the soul, calls those small pretenders to wisdom who declared against it, certain minute philosophers,106 using a diminutive

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