I hear on all hands that a cabal calling itself philosophic
receives the glory of many of the late proceedings, and that their
opinions and systems are the true actuating spirit of the whole of
them. I have heard of no party in England, literary or political, at
any time, known by such a description. It is not with you composed
of those men, is it, whom the vulgar in their blunt, homely style
commonly call atheists and infidels? If it be, I admit that we, too,
have had writers of that description who made some noise in their day.
At present they repose in lasting oblivion. Who, born within the
last forty years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and
Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole race who called
themselves Freethinkers? Who now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read
him through? Ask the booksellers of London what is become of all these
lights of the world. In as few years their few successors will go to
the family vault of "all the Capulets". But whatever they were, or
are, with us, they were and are wholly unconnected individuals. With
us they kept the common nature of their kind and were not
gregarious. They never acted in corps or were known as a faction in
the state, nor presumed to influence in that name or character, or for
the purposes of such a faction, on any of our public concerns. Whether
they ought so to exist and so be permitted to act is another question.
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