AC. IMP. PETROP. R. PARIS. HOLM. TAURIN. ITAL. HARLEM. AUREL. MED. PARIS. CANTAB, AMERIC. ET PHILAD. SOC. Eloquence may exist without a proportionable degree of wisdom. Mr. Burke's Reflections, p. 245. Steady independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind, as GOVERNMENT, under their contemplation, will disdain to affume the part of fatyrifts and declaimers. Ibid. p. 187. BIRMINGHAM, PRINTED BY THOMAS PEARSON; AND SOLD BY J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, LONDON. MDCCXCI. (PRICE TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE.) English 1-4-33 27334 THE PREFA C E. OF the numerous readers, and anfwerers, of Mr. Burke's long expected Reflec tions on the Revolution in France, the attention of the greater part will be chiefly drawn to those paffages which more immediately relate to the civil conftitution of that kingdom. These I have not neglected. But, what I have more particularly replied to, is what he has advanced on civil eftablishments of religion, which makes no small figure in his performance, and which appears to be a subject not generally underftood. It is with very fenfible regret that I find Mr. Burke and myself on the two opposite fides of any important queftion, and efpecially that I must now no longer clafs him the friends of what I deem to be among the cause of liberty, civil or religious, after having, in a pleasing occafional intercourse of many years, confidered him in this refpectable light. In the course of his public life, he has been greatly befriended by the Diffenters, many of whom were enthusiastically attached to him; and we always imagined that he was one on whom we could depend, efpecially as he fpoke in our favour in the business of subfcription, and he made a common caufe with us in zealously patronizing the liberty of America. That an avowed friend of the American revolution fhould be an enemy to that of the French, which arofe from the fame general principles, and in a great measure fprung from it, is to me unaccountable. Nor is it much less difficult to conceive how any perfon, who has had America in his eye fo long as Mr. Burke muft neceffarily have contemplated it, could be fo impreffed, as he appears to be, in favour of ecclefiaftical establishments. That country he sees to flou |