you rejoice me, not my vanity, by telling me my idea of a mechanic succedaneum to the labour of negroes is not visionary, but thought practicable.  Oh! how I wish I understood sugar ploughs, and could marry them!  Alas!  I understand nothing useful.  My head is as un-mechanic as it is un-arithmetic, un-geometric, un-metaphysic, uncommercial; but will not some one of those superior heads to whom you have talked on my indigested hint reduce it to practicability’!  How a feasible scheme would stun those who call humanity romantic, and show, from the books of the Custom-house, that murder is a great improvement of the revenue!  Even the present situation of France is favourable.  Could not Mr. Wilberforce obtain to have the enfranchisement of the negroes started there?  The Jews are claiming their natural rights there; and blacks are certainly not so great defaulters as the Hebrews, though they too have undergone ample persecutions.  Methinks, as Lord George Gordon is in correspondence with the `Etats, he has been a little remiss in not signing the petition of those of his new communion.

The `Etats are detestable and despicable; and, in fact, guilty of the outrages of the Parisian and provincial mobs.  The mob of twelve hundred, not legislators, but dissolvers of all law, unchained the mastiffs that had been tied up, and were sure to worry all who fell in their way.  To annihilate all laws, however bad, and to have none ready to replace them, was proclaiming anarchy.  What should one think of a mad-doctor, who should let loose a lunatic, suffer him to burn Bedlam, chop off the heads of the keepers, and then consult with some students in physic on the gentlest mode of treating delirium?  By a late vote I see that the twelve hundred praters are reduced to five hundred:  Vive la reine Billingsgate! the Thalestris who has succeeded Louis Quatorze!  A committee of those Amazons stopped the Duke of Orleans, who, to use their style, I believe is not a barrel the better herring.

Your reflections on Vertot’s passion for revolutions are admirable,(685) and yet it is natural for an historian to like to describe times of action.  Halcyon days do not furnish matter for talents; they are like the virtuous couple in a comedy, a little insipid.  Mr. Manly and Lady Grace, Mellefont and Cynthia, do not interest one much.  Indeed, in a tragedy where they are unhappy, they give the audience full satisfaction, and no envy.  The newspapers, no doubt, thought Dr. Priestley could not do better than to espouse you.(686) He certainly would be very judicious, could he obtain your consent; but, alas! you would squabble about Socinianism, or some of those isms.  To tell you the truth, I hate all those Constantinopolitan jargons, that set people together by the ears about pedantic terms.  When you apply scholastic phrases as happily and genteelly as you do in your Bas Bleu, they are delightful; but don’t muddify your charming simplicity with controversial distinctions, that will sour your sweet piety.  Sects are the bane of charity, and have deluged the world with blood.