Ut viderunt Vulcanum per domos ministrantem.
[326]. The Men without a God—one of the new sects. Their religion is intended to consist in the adoration of a Great Book, in which all the virtuous actions of the society are to be entered and registered. “In times of civil commotion they are to come forward to exhort the citizens to unanimity, and to read them a chapter out of the Great Book. When oppressed or proscribed, they are to retire to a burying-ground, to wrap themselves up in their great-coats, and wait the approach of death,” &c.
[327]. The Reader is at liberty to fill up the blanks according to his own opinion, and after the chances and changes of the times. It would be highly unfair to hand down to posterity as followers of Leviathan, the names of men who may, and probably will soon, grow ashamed of their leader.
Though the yeasty sea
Consume and swallow navigation up. Macbeth.
[Applied to S. Whitbread, M.P., the Brewer.—Ed.]
[329]. i.e. Perhaps a member of the Whig Club—a society that has presumed to monopolize to itself a title to which it never had any claim, but from the character of those who have now withdrawn themselves from it. “Perhaps” signifies that even the Whig Club sometimes rejects a candidate whose PRINCIPLES (risum teneatis) it affects to disapprove. [Referring to the secession of the Duke of Portland and others from the Whig Club in consequence of their not approving of all the proceedings of Fox and his more violent adherents. Sheridan met with so much opposition to his entrance into the Whig Club, that he succeeded in getting admitted only by stratagem.—Ed.]
[330]. “It is notorious that the French Directory have newspapers in their pay, not only in America, but in every country in Europe. That there should exist such MERCENARY TRAITORS AS TO RECEIVE THE PAY OF REGICIDES AND ASSASSINS is still less astonishing than that there should be found men in the different countries, and men of rank, too, so base, so degenerate, and so foolish, as to give encouragement to their treasonable productions” (p. [57]). The author speaks truth; there is at least one newspaper of this description in London, which is encouraged—to their shame be it spoken!—by men of rank, and by members of the Legislature—Representans du Peuple Souverain!—who even degrade themselves so far as to associate with the profligate miscreants who compose its inflammatory pages.—Reviewer.
[331]. “See Bache of 11 February, 1795.”