And, to say truth, the way practised by several parishes in and about this town of maintaining their clergy by voluntary subscriptions is not only an indignity to the character, but has many pernicious consequences attending it; such a precarious dependence subjecting a clergyman, who has not more than ordinary spirit and resolution, to many inconveniences, which are obvious to imagine; but this defect will, no doubt, be remedied by the wisdom and piety of the present parliament, and a tax laid upon every house in a parish for the support of their pastor. Neither, indeed, can it be conceived, why a house, whose purchase is not reckoned above onethird less than land of the same yearly rent, should not pay a twentieth part annually (which is half tithe) to the support of the minister. One thing I could wish, that, in fixing the maintenance to the several ministers in these new intended parishes, no determinate sum of money may be named; which, in all perpetuities, ought, by any means, to be avoided; but rather a tax in proportion to the rent of each house, although it be but a twentieth, or even a thirtieth part. The contrary of this, I am told, was done in several parishes of the city after the fire, where the incumbent and his successors were to receive for ever a certain sum; for example, one or two hundred pounds a-year. But the lawgivers did not consider, that what we call at present one hundred pounds, will not, in process of time, have the intrinsic value of twenty; as twenty pounds now are hardly equal to forty shillings three hundred years ago. There are a thousand instances of this all over England, in reserved rents applied to hospitals, in old chiefries, and even among the clergy themselves, in those payments which, I think, they call a modus.

As no prince had ever better dispositions than her present majesty for the advancement of true religion, so there never was any age that produced greater occasions to employ them on. It is an unspeakable misfortune, that any design of so excellent a queen should be checked by the necessities of a long and ruinous war, which the folly or corruption of modern politicians have involved us in, against all the maxims whereby our country flourished so many hundred years; else her majesty's care of religion would certainly have reached even to her American plantations. Those noble countries, stocked by numbers from hence, whereof too many are in no very great reputation for faith or morals, will be a perpetual reproach to us, until some better care be taken for cultivating Christianity among them. If the governors of those several colonies were obliged, at certain times, to transmit an exact representation of the state of religion in their several districts, and the legislature here would, in a time of leisure, take that affair under their consideration, it might be perfected with little difficulty, and be a great addition to the glories of her majesty's reign.

But, to wave farther speculations upon so remote a scene, while we have subjects enough to employ them on at home; it is to be hoped the clergy will not let slip any proper opportunity of improving the pious dispositions of the queen and kingdom, for the advantage of the church; when, by the example of times past, they consider how rarely such conjunctures are likely to happen. What if some method were thought on toward the repairing of churches; for which there is likely to be too frequent occasion, those ancient Gothic structures throughout this kingdom going every year to decay?

That expedient of repairing or rebuilding them by charitable collections, seems, in my opinion, not very suitable either to the dignity and usefulness of the work, or to the honour of our country; since it might be so easily done, with very little charge to the public, in a much more decent and honourable manner, while parliaments are so frequently called. But these, and other regulations, must be left to a time of peace, which I shall humbly presume to wish may soon be our share, however offensive it may be to any, either abroad or at home, who are gainers by the war.

No. XLIII.

THURSDAY, MAY 31, 1711.

Scilicet, ut posses curvo dignoscere rectum.

That hence you may distinguish right from wrong.

HAVING been forced in my papers to use the cant words of Whig and Tory, which have so often varied their significations for twenty years past, I think it necessary to say something of the several changes those two terms have undergone since that period; and then to tell the reader what I have always understood by each of them, since I undertook this work. I reckon that these sorts of conceited appellations are usually invented by the vulgar; who, not troubling themselves to examine thoroughly the merits of a cause, are consequently the most violent partisans of what they espouse,

and in their quarrels usually proceed to their beloved argument of calling names, until at length they light upon one which is sure to stick and, in time, each party grows proud of that appellation, which their adversaries at first intended for a reproach. Of this kind were the Prasini and Veneti, * the Guelfs and Gibelines, Huguenots and Papists, Roundheads and Cavaliers, with many others of ancient and modern date. Among us, of late, there seems to have been a barrenness of invention in this point; the words Whig and Tory, although they be not much above thirty years old, having been pressed to the service of many successions of parties, with very different ideas fastened to them. This distinction, I think, began toward the latter part of King Charles the Second's reign, was dropped during that of his successor, and then revived at the Revolution; since which it has perpetually flourished, although applied to very different kinds of principles and persons. In that convention of Lords and Commons, some of both Houses were for a regency to the Prince of Orange, with a reservation of style and title to the absent king, which should be made use of in all public acts others, when they were brought to allow the

* In the lower ages of the empire.

+ In Florence.

Whig-a-more was a nick-name given to the western peasantry of Scotland, from their using the words frequently in driving strings of horses. Hence, as connected with calvinistical principles in religion, and republican doctrines in policy, it was given as a term of reproach to the opposition party in the latter years of Charles II. These retorted upon the courtiers the word Tory, signifying an Irish freebooter, and particularly applicable to the Roman Catholic followers of the Duke of York. At length, both parties acknowledged, and prided themselves on the distinctions, originally meant to convey reproach and disgrace.

throne vacant, thought the succession should immediately go to the next heir, according to the fundamental laws of the kingdom, as if the last king were actually dead. And although the dissenting lords (in whose House the chief opposition was) did at last yield both those points, took the oaths to the new king, and, many of them, employments, yet they were looked upon with an evil eye by the warm zealots of the other side; neither did the court ever heartily favour any of them, although some of them were of the most eminent for abilities and virtue, and served that prince, both in his councils and his army, with untainted faith. It was apprehended at the same time, and perhaps it might have been true, that many of the clergy would have been better pleased with the scheme of a regency, or at least an uninterrupted lineal succession, for the sake of those whose consciences were truly scrupulous; and they thought there were some circumstances in the case of the deprived bishops, that looked a little hard, or at least deserved commiseration.

These, and other the like reflections, did, as I conceive, revive the denominations of Whig and Tory.

Some time after the Revolution, the distinction of high and low church came in, which was raised by the dissenters, in order to break the church party by dividing the members into high and low; and the opinions raised, that the high joined with the Papists, inclined the low to fall in with the dissenters.

And here I shall take leave to produce some principles, which, in the several periods of the late reign, served to denote a man of one or the other party. To be against a standing army in time of peace, was all high-church, Tory, and Tantivy ; to differ from a majo