To the K-'s most excellent My. The humble petition of P***E, Sheweth, principles, your petitioner did not join him, as unquestionably he might have done, had he been so inclined; but, on the contrary, raised, at the public expence, sixteen companies, of one hundred men each, in defence of your Ma HAT your petitioner being jesty's undoubted right to the im less and inefficient, as most of his cotemporaries are by nature, hopes, in common with them, to share your Majesty's royal favour and bounty, whereby he may be enabled to save or spend, as he may think proper, a great deal more than he possibly can at present. That your petitioner having had the honour to serve your Majesty in several very lucrative employ ments, seems thereby entitled to a lucrative retreat from business, and to enjoy otium cum dignitate, that is, leisure and a large pension. "Your petitioner humbly apprehends that he has a justifiable claim to a considerable pension, as he neither wants, nor deserves, but only desires, and (pardon, dread Sir, an expression you are pretty much used to insists upon it. : Your petitioner is little apt, and always unwilling, to speak advan. tageously of himself; but as some degree of justice is due to one's self, as well as to others, he begs leave to represent, that his loyalty to your Majesty has always been unshaken, even in the worst of times that particularly, in the late unnatural rebellion, when the young Pretender had advanced as far as Derby, at the head of an army of at least three thousand men, composed of the flower of the Scotch nobility and gentry, who had virtue enough to avow, and courage enough to venture their lives in support of their real which service remains to this hour unrewarded. Your petitioner is well aware, that your Majesty's civil list must necessarily be in a very weak and languid condition, after the various and profuse evacuations it has undergone; but, at the same time, he humbly hopes, that an argument which does not seem to have been urged against any other person whatsoever, will not, in a singular manner, be urged against him, especially as he has some rea. sons to believe, that the deficiencies of the pension fund will by no means be the last to be made good by parliament. Your petitioner begs leave to ob serve that a small pension is disgraceful, as it intimates oppro brious indigence on the part of the receiver, and a degrading sort of dole or charity on the part of the giver; but that a great one implies dignity and affluence on the one side, on the other esteem and consideration; which doubtless your Majesty must entertain in the highest degree for those great personages, whose reputable names glare in capitals upon your eleemosynary list. Your petitioner humbly flatters himself, that upon this principle, less than three thousand pounds a year will not be proposed to him, and if made gold, the more agreeable. Your petitioner persuades him. self, that your Majesty will not imBb4 pute pute this his humble application to any mean interested motive, of which he has always had the utmost abhorrence. No, Sir! he confesses his weakness--Honour alone is his object, honour is his passion-that honour, which is sacred to him as a peer, and tender to him as a gentleman; that honour, in short, to which he has sacrificed all other considerations. It is upon this single principle, that your petitioner solicits an honour, which at present in so extraordinary a manner adorns the British peerage, and which, in the most shining periods of ancient Greece, distinguished the greatest men, who were fed in the Prytaneum at the expence of the public. Upon this honour, far dearer to your petitioner than his life, he begs leave in the most solemn manner to assure your majesty, that in case, you shall be pleased to grant this his most modest request, he will honourably support and promote, to the utmost of his abilities, the very worst measures that the very worst ministers can suggest; but at the same time should he un. fortunately, and, in a singular manner, be branded by a refusal, he thinks himself obliged in honour to declare, that he will, with the utmost acrimony, oppose the very best measures which your majesty yourself shall ever propose or promote. To the Rt R d the D-n and Cr of W ****, the humble petition of POSTE RITY, Sherweth, THAT your petitioners humbly apprehend your reverences are no other than trustees for us your petitioners, in the same manner as your predecessors were trustees for the times succeeding them. That your petitioners observe with great concern the late immo. derate increase of funeral monu ments within your abbey and the precincts thereof, to the great encouragement of family vanity, historical falsehood, jobbing articles, and ignorant statuaries; as well as to the disgrace of national taste, and the destruction of various kinds of marble, which ought to have remained in the bowels of the earth for the use of your petitioners, who hope to employ the art of sculpture with more credit to their country. That your petitioners observe with concern, the vast profusion of money which the present war re. quires, and apprehend that when it shall be their turn to serve their country, nothing will remain for their rewards but honorary monu ments; and it is with the greatest regret they see the pavement and walls of your abbey already possest by names of Generals, never known but by their preferments; Poets never mentioned, but for their dul. ness; Patriots never heard of, but by their posts; and Orators never known to pronounce a significant, word but the monosyllables, aye and no. Your petitioners, therefore, apprehensive that the revenue of fame may be as much anticipated within your abbey, as that of money is in an adjoining chapel; and that therefore they may be re. duced to the melancholy condition of neither being rewarded while living, nor remembered when dead; most humbly beg leave to represent to your reverences this their un comfortable prospect, Your Your petitioners are the more emboldened to make this application, as they are fully sensible and ashamed of the cowardice and mismanagement of their present-predecessors, and are resolved to do all they can to efface the memory of their misdeeds, by a sincere attach. ment to the service of their country; and therefore your petitioners must be the more sensible of the mortification and disgrace to which they must be reduced, by their being obliged to mingle their dust, or their names, or both, with such company as are already in possession of walls and your pavements; tho' your petitioners acknowledge, that many of them are such as your petitioners propose as models for their own conduct. That your petitioners observe, with great concern, many heathen deities have been introduced within your walls, to adorn the tombs of those who were strangers to all heathen virtues; and as your peti tioners are not ashamed of their re solution to live and die christians, they hope your reverences will have some regard to the tenderness of their consciences in this respect, especially as there is a sufficiency of christian attributes to serve, if ingeniously and properly applied, all the purposes of sculpture, in embellishing the monuments of the christian dead. Your petitioners beg leave farther to represent to your reverences, that the wisest nations of antiquity looked upon the conferring monumental honours as a public concern, and the noblest incitement to vir. tuous deeds; and that as soon as they ceased to be frugal of those honours, when they prostituted them to flattery, or sold them for lucre, their public spirit fled; and though your petitioners have tho highest opinion of the disinterest... edness and judgment of your reve rences, yet they think they cannot be too watchful in a matter that so highly concerns them, especially, (according to what your petitioners have hinted above) as this will pro.. bably be the only return our coun try will be able to give them for their services. And your petitioners shall ever pray, &c. A remarkable dying speech of Mr. Caffe, secretary to the Earl of Essex, who was executed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, for the same offence which brought his master to the block. Am here adjudged to die for acting an act never plotted, for plotting a plot never acted. Justice will have her course; accusers must be heard; greatness will have the victory; scholars and martialists (though learning and valour should have the pre-eminence) in England must die like dogs, and be hanged. To mislike this, were but folly: to dispute it, but time lost : to al ter it, impossible: but to endure it, is manly and to scorn it, magna. nimity. The Queen is displeased, the lawyers injurious, and death terrible but I crave pardon of the Queen; forgive the lawyers, and the world; desire to be forgiven; and welcome death. : AS My Lord, S neither nature nor custom ever made me a man of compliment, so now I shall have less will than ever for to use such ceremonies, when I have left with Martha to be sollicitus circa multa, and believe with Mary unum sufficit. But it is no compliment or ceremony, but a real and necessary duty that one friend oweth to another in ab. sence, and especially at their leave. taking, when in man's reason many accidents may keep them long divided, or perhaps bar them ever meeting till they meet in another world; for then shall I think that my friend, whose honour, whose person, and whose fortune is dear unto me, shall prosper and be hap. py, wherever he goes, and whatever he takes in hand, when he is in the favour of that God, under whose protection there is only safety, and in whose service there is only true happiness to be found. What I think of your natural gifts or ability in this age, or in this state, to give glory to God, and to win honour to yourself, if you employ the talents you have received to their best use, I will now tell you; it sufficeth, that when I was farthest of all times from dissembling, I spake truly, and have witness enough but these things enly I will put your Lordship in mind of: that : First, That you have nothing you have not received. Secondly, That you possess them not as lord,over them, but as an accomptant for them. Thirdly, If you employ them to serve this world, or your own worldly delights (which the prince of this world will seek to entertain you with) it is ingratitude, it is injustice, yea, it is perfidious trea chery; for what would you think of such a servant of yours, that should convert your goods, com mitted to his charge, to the advantage or service of your greatest enemy; and what do you less than this with God, since you have all from him, and know that the world, and princes thereof, are at a continual enmity with him? And therefore, if ever the admonition of your truest friend shall be heard by you, or if your country, which you may serve in so great and many things, be dear unto you; if your God, whom you must (if you deal truly with yourself) acknowledge to be powerful over all, and just in all, be feared by you; yea, if you be dear unto yourself, and prefer an everlasting happiness before a pleasant dream, which you must shortly awake out of, and then repent in the bitterness of your soul; if any of these things be regarded by you, then I say, call yourself to account for what is past, cancel all the leagues you have made without the warrant of a religious con. science, make a resolute covenant with your God, to serve him with all your natural and spiritual, inward and outward gifts and abili. ties, and then, he that is faithful (and cannot lie) hath promised to honour them that honour him; he will give you that inward peace of soul, and true joy of heart, which till you have, you shall never rest, and which, when you have, you shall never be shaken, and which you can never attain to any other way than this that I have shewed you. I know your lordship may say to yourself, and object to me, this is but a vapour of melancholy, and the style of a prisoner, and that I was far enough from it, when I lived in the world as you do now, and may be so again, when my fetters be taken from me. I answer, though your lordship should think so, yet cannot I distrust the goodness of my God, that his mercy will fail me, or his grace forsake me; I have so deeply engaged myself, that I should be one of the most miserable apostates that ever was: I have so avowed my profes. sion, and called so many from time to time to witness it, and to be watchmen over me, that I should be the hollowest hypocrite that ever was born: but though I should perish in my own sin, and draw onon myself my own damnation, should not you take hold of the grace and mercy in God, which is offered unto you, and make your profit of my fearful and wretched example? I was longer a slave and servant to the world, and the corruptions of it, than you have been, and therefore could hardly be drawn from it. I had many calls, and answered some of them slowly, thinking a soft pace fast enough to come to Christ, and myself forward enough when I saw the end of my journey, though I arrived not at it; and therefore I have been, by God's providence, violently pulled, hauled, and dragged to the marriage feast, as the world hath seen. was just with God to afflict me in this world, that he might give me joy in another. I had too much knowledge when I performed too little obedience, and was therefore to be beaten with double stripes: God grant your lordship may feel the comfort I now enjoy in my unfeigned conversion, but that you may never feel the torments I have suf fered for my too long delaying it. I had none but divines to call upon me, to whom I said, if my ambi. It tion could have entered into their narrow hearts, they would not have been so humble; or if my delights had been tasted by them, they could not have seen so precise: but your lordship hath one to call upon you, that knows what it is you now enjoy, and what the greatest fruit and end is of all the contentments that this world can afford. Think therefore, dear Earl, that I have stated and buoyed all the ways of pleasure to you, and left them as sea-marks for you to keep the channel of religious virtue; fór shut your eyes never so long, they must be open at last; and then you must say with me, there is no peace to the wicked. I will make a covenant with my soul, not to suffer my eyes to sleep in the night, nor my thoughts to attend the first business of the day, till I have prayed to my God, that your Lordship may believe and make profit of this plain, but faithful admonition; and then I know your country and friends shall be happy in you, and yourself successful in all you take in hand which shall be an unspeakable comfort to Your Lordship's cousin, whom no worldly cause An extraordinary sermon having appeared, entituled, Conjugal Love and Duty: A discourse upon Heb. xiii. 4. Preached at St. Ann's, in Dublin, Sept. 11, 1757, by Dr. Brett; with a dedication to the right honourable Lady Caroline Russel, asserting the prero gative of beauty, and vindicating the privileges of the fair sex; an |