no reparation could be made.-Let any man of letters, arrived, as I am, to near the age of sixty, consider what must have been my accumulation of curious papers of various kinds, from the variety and extent of my pursuits, (greater, unquestionably, than those of most men now living,) and think what I could not but have felt for their loss, and their dispersion into such hands as they fell into, and who make, as I hear, the most indecent and improper use of them. This makes the case much worse than that of mere plunder, and the destruction of books and papers by Goths and Vandals, who could not read any of them. It was, however, no small satisfaction to me, to think that my enemies, having the freest access to every paper I had, might be convinced that I had carried on no treasonable correspondence, and that I had nothing to be concerned about besides the effects of their impertinent curiosity.

The destruction of my library did not affect me so much on account of the money I had expended upon it, as the choice of the books; having had particular objects of study, and having collected them with great care, as opportunity served, in the course of many years. It had also been my custom to read almost every book with a pencil in my hand, marking the passages that I wished to look back to, and of which I proposed to make any particular use; and I frequently made an index to such passages on a blank leaf at the end of the book. In consequence of this, other sets of the same work would not, by any means, be of the same value to me; for I have not only lost the books, but the chief fruit of my labour and judgment in reading them.

Also my laboratory not only contained a set of the most valuable and useful instruments of every kind, and original substances for experiments, but other substances, the results of numerous processes, reserved for farther experiments, as every experienced chymist will suppose; and these cannot be replaced without repeating the processes of many years. No money can repair damages of this kind. Also, several of my instruments were either wholly or in part of my

mean to make any public use of them, I do not much regret their loss, viz. a large course of Lectures on the Constitution and Laws of England, and another on the History of England, which I had read when I was tutor at Warrington, and of which a syllabus may be seen in the former editious of my Essay on Education. [1765.] In the same class of manuscripts, not much to be regretted, I place a great variety of miscellaneous juvenile compositions and collections, of which I occasionally made some, though not much, use.

XIII. My Last Will, Receipts and Accounts. (P.)

own construction, and such as cannot be purchased any where.

Notwithstanding this destruction of my manuscripts, I do not know that such a calamity could have happened at a more convenient time, in the course of the last ten years. Had it been during the composition of my " History of Early Opinions concerning Christ," that of my Church His tory, or the New Edition of my Philosophical Works, I could never have completed or resumed them; nor without the books which I then had, could I have undertaken what I have done since. Very happily also, I had finished a long course of experiments on the doctrine of phlogiston, and the composition of water, and my last paper on the subject was just printed for the Philosophical Transactions.

One of the most mortifying circumstances in this calamity, was the dispersion of a great number of letters from my private friends, from the earliest period of my correspondence, into the hands of persons wholly destitute of generosity or honour. These letters I had carefully arranged, so that I could immediately turn to any of them, when I wished to look back to them, as a memorial of former friendships, or for any other purpose. But they were kept in a box which was ordered by my last will to be burned without inspection. Now, however, letters which I did not wish even my executors to see, were exposed, without mercy or shame, to all the world. No person of honour will even look into a letter not directed to himself. But mine have not only been exposed to every curious, impertinent eye, but, as I am informed, are eagerly perused, commented upon, and their sense perverted, in order to find out something against me.

Some of my private papers are said to have been sent to the secretary of state. But secretaries of state, I presume, are gentlemen, and consider themselves as bound by the same rules of justice and honour that are acknowledged to bind other men, and therefore, if this be the case, these papers will certainly be returned to me.

Of this kind of ill usage, I do not accuse the illiterate mob, who made the devastation; for few of them, I suppose, could read, but those persons of better education into whose hands the papers afterwards came. Had persons of this class interposed, and exerted themselves, they might, no doubt, have saved the greatest part of this, to me most valuable property, for the loss of which (but more especially for the ungenerous use that was made of it) no compensation can be made me.

My numerous correspondents in different countries of Europe, but more especially those who wrote to me in confidence in this country, will be as much affected by this catastrophe as myself. I might, no doubt, have destroyed those letters and other private papers myself. But I could not foresee that men would act the part of brutes, without the least regard to law, to common equity, humanity, or decency; and that an event should happen at the close of the eighteenth century, of which it will not be easy to find a parallel for three centuries before. For the persecutions of Christians by Heathens, and of Protestants by Papists, were generally conducted by some rule; and in matters of policy and religion some decent regard was still paid to a man's private concerns, in which the state had no interest. Not to feel such losses as these, and such usage as this, would be not to be a man. But I am a Christian, and I hope I bear them as such, acknowledging the hand of God, as well as that of man, in all events.

I was also much consoled by the Addresses I received, not only from particular persons, but from various bodies of men, who interested themselves in my sufferings. Some, if not all of them, I shall insert in the Appendix; as they may serve to encourage other persons in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue, notwithstanding the utmost malice of their enemies. I need not say, that I received the greatest consolation from the addresses of my congregation, and especially those of the younger part of it, to whom I had given particular attention.

REFLECTIONS.†

AFTER the preceding detail of facts, I now proceed to lay before my readers a series of Reflections to which they have given occasion, and I hope they are such as will not be without their use; and then, great as my loss has been stated to be, it will not be the subject of any regret.

See supra, p. 355, Note.

+ The first article of the Reflections is copied from the Preface to the "Letters to the Members of the New Jerusalem Church," which was the first of my publications after the Riots. That work will not fall into many hands, and if it ever be reprinted, that part of the Preface will be omitted. (P.)

SECTION I.

Of the Power of Resentment to prevent Compassion.

I CANNOT help observing on this occasion, as on a thousand others, how much the least cause of resentment tends to stifle every emotion of sympathy and compassion.

Had any person whatever spent a great part of his life in the merely innocent employment of collecting medals, watching with the utmost anxiety every opportunity of completing his suite; had another given the same time to a collection of shells, fossils, prints, or books of any particular class, without any farther view than that of amusing himself and his friends; and any of his neighbours, who knew in what manner, and how long, he had been employed, had come and destroyed the labours of his life in an hour, there are few persons, I believe, who would not have felt for the injury. For every man's labours are of value to himself; and every man has a natural right to enjoy the fruit of his labours, provided they do not interfere with the enjoyments of others. An injury of this kind would be considered as an injury done to society itself, which engages for the protection of every individual in the quiet enjoyment of his innocent gratifications and pursuits, whatever they be. Every person would have made the case his own, and have considered what he himself would have felt, not after having spent his life in the same pursuits, (because for them he might have had no particular taste,) but in any pursuit equally pleasing to him, and would have resented the injury with the greatest sensibility.

Had this person's pursuits been of acknowledged utility to the public, and in the eye of the world done credit to his country and to his age; had they been the labours of a Boyle, a Newton, or a Franklin, or those of a Pope, an Addison, or a Locke, that had been thus wantonly and maliciously destroyed, all the world in a manner, and his country in particular, would have taken fire at the injury, and have thought no punishment too great for it.

But let politics or religion be concerned; let the curious collector, the naturalist, the poet, or the philosopher, be suspected to be of an unpopular party in either, and the very circumstance that would have filled his countrymen with compassion for him, and with rage against his plunderers, would make many rejoice in the mischief; and

without the least regard to the innocence or public merit of his pursuits, they would receive a gratification from the idea of their hereby having it in their power to give him and his friends the more sensible pain. Nay, provided they conceived that any advantage would accrue from it to their party, they would take a savage pleasure in destroying him and his labours together.

Such has been the scene exhibited at Birmingham, and I wish it may prove an instructive lesson to mankind. I do not say what I have been, or what I have done. But had I been a Boyle, a Newton, or a Franklin, or had I had ten times the merit of each, or of all of them, I am confident, from what I have heard and observed, that this circumstance would only have been an excitement to my enemies to the mischief they have done me. The higher I had stood in the good opinion of my friends, or of the public, the greater pleasure would they have taken in pulling me down.

This has, moreover, been done by persons who do not want private virtue, by persons of honour, justice and feeling, in common life; and who, if I had not been obnoxious to them on account of my opinions, would have relieved me in distress, and have done me any kindness in their power; nay, who, if they had had any knowledge of literature or science, might perhaps have been proud of having me for a townsman and acquaintance, and have taken a pleasure in shewing strangers the place where I lived.

Had I been a clergyman of the Church of England, of little or no reputation, and the injury been done by Dissenters, no punishment would have been thought sufficient for the perpetrators of so much wickedness; and in the eyes of the nation, the whole sect would have been thought deserving of extirpation. Like the death of Charles I., the guilt of it would have been entailed upon our latest posterity.

I was forcibly struck with this idea on seeing a most ingenious imitation of plants in paper, cut and painted so like to nature, that, at a very small distance, no eye could have perceived the difference; and by this means they were capable of being preserved from the attacks of insects, so as to be greatly preferable to any hortus siccus. It appeared to me that weeks, and in some cases months, must have been employed on some single plants, so exquisitively were they finished.

What would this ingenious and deserving young lady have felt, how would her family and friends, how would all botanists, though they should only have heard of the inge

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