to you for seeming to think anything at all necessary to be said upon this matter.  The calumny is fitter to be scrawled with the midnight chalk of incendiaries, with “No Popery,” on walls and doors of devoted houses, than to be mentioned in any civilized company.  I had heard that the spirit of discontent on that subject was very prevalent here.  With pleasure I find that I have been grossly misinformed.  If it exists at all in this city, the laws have crushed its exertions, and our morals have shamed its appearance in daylight.  I have pursued this spirit wherever I could trace it; but it still fled from me.  It was a ghost which all had heard of, but none had seen.  None would acknowledge that he thought the public proceeding with regard to our Catholic dissenters to be blamable; but several were sorry it had made an ill impression upon others, and that my interest was hurt by my share in the business.  I find with satisfaction and pride, that not above four or five in this city (and I dare say these misled by some gross misrepresentation) have signed that symbol of delusion and bond of sedition, that libel on the national religion and English character, the Protestant Association.  It is, therefore, Gentlemen, not by way of cure, but of prevention, and lest the arts of wicked men may prevail over the integrity of any one amongst us, that I think it necessary to open to you the merits of this transaction pretty much at large; and I beg your patience upon it:  for, although the reasonings that have been used to depreciate the act are of little force, and though the authority of the men concerned in this ill design is not very imposing, yet the audaciousness of these conspirators against the national honor, and the extensive wickedness of their attempts, have raised persons of little importance to a degree of evil eminence, and imparted a sort of sinister dignity to proceedings that had their origin in only the meanest and blindest malice.

In explaining to you the proceedings of Parliament which have been complained of, I will state to you,—­first, the thing that was done,—­next, the persons who did it,—­and lastly, the grounds and reasons upon which the legislature proceeded in this deliberate act of public justice and public prudence.

Gentlemen, the condition of our nature is such that we buy our blessings at a price.  The Reformation, one of the greatest periods of human improvement, was a time of trouble and confusion.  The vast structure of superstition and tyranny which had been for ages in rearing, and which was combined with the interest of the great and of the many, which was moulded into the laws, the manners, and civil institutions of nations, and blended with the frame and policy of states, could not be brought to the ground without a fearful struggle; nor could it fall without a violent concussion of itself and all about it.  When this great revolution was attempted in a more regular mode by government, it was opposed by plots and seditions