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has been an unnatural mother, but are we therefore to be unnatural children? Should we glory in a mother's shame?
Let me quote the warm language of a modern writer[1], whose bias lay in an opposite direction, and whose words come fresh from a conscience freeing itself from such ingratitude.
"The aboriginal Briton may dispute the gratitude which he owes to the church of Rome for his conversion; the Englishman, who derives his blood from Saxon veins, will be ungrateful if he be not ready to confess the debt which Christian Europe owes to Rome; and to profess, that whenever she shall cast off those inventions of men, which now cause a separation between us, we shall gladly pay her such honours as are due to the country which was instrumental in bringing us within the pale of the universal church of Jesus Christ."
There is one more evil desertion of truth, which I fear cannot be ascribed to any wish to "adorn your tale," although you have thereby been enabled to convey it in a form less manifestly offensive. You say,
"Another piece of advice which we shall give to you, (as we give it to all our Missionaries,) is, that you should adopt every means to undermine the influence of those whose writings hold out no hope that they may be won over to the true Church. They are, in truth, dangerous men, and you should represent them as such. Be not deceived by their apparent amiability, by their virtuous conduct, or by their extent of learning. These very circumstances render them the more to be dreaded. Suffer not such men to be the instructors of youth. Do not permit them to occupy those places which public spirit alone ought to make you anxious to occupy, even independently of any desire for your individual advancement." (p. 34.)
I can the less lay this to the account of the fiction, because it is manifestly the one object of your whole attack upon these writers; whether out of private friendship to Dr. Hampden, or of alarm for yourself, as a member of the same school—nam tua res agitur, cum proximus ardet Ucalegon—it is notorious that you imagined these writers to be the principal authors of the measures taken in consequence of that unhappy appointment, and that your avowed object was, to "effect a diversion[2]." Herein you were mistaken; since there prevailed
