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Untitled Article
ihat the reign has been upon the whole prosperous and happy . Are alii : the reverend divines , whose names will appear on , our pages , prepared to affirm and to prove this ? It might , one should think , have abated their political zeal , if they had reflected , as Christians , with ttheir hands upon the Bible , that the present reign has been
pre-eminently a warlike one ; and is war a fit subject for Christian eulogy ? Even if our joyful preachers believed that all the wars in which Britain has been engaged for these past fifty years were just and necessary , still , it would surely have become their profession to have deplored the htird necessity , and to have mourned over , whilst they acknowledged , the justness , of spilling such rivers of human blood ! Some few tears were surelv due to humanity ! Some regrets , some
lamentations , to Christianity ! These reflections are enforced by the consideration of the situation in which the Jubiiee-day found the country ! Large armies Wasting away by disease in the marshes of Holland and Spain ; the administration divided , and two of its leaders outraging decency and morality by seeking each other ' s life ; the burden of taxation pressing so heavily upon the middle classes of society , as to leave the best
part of the community little to hope and every thing to fear ; all confidence in our public ' men extinguished ; and the power of an enemy , determined upon destroying our independence , increased to a degree which has no example in history , and which no prudent man can contemplate without dre ^ d ! Was this a time for national
boasting ? this a condition to make merry in ? We know but of one Jubilee celebrated under similar circumstances , and we pray God tlae parallel may not prove complete . May those that , amidst the ' drinking of wine before the thousand , and the shouts of O King live for ever , fancied that they saw cm hand- writing upon the wall , appear , in the issue , to have been mistaken !
But the king s personal virtues justify all the Jubilee eulogiums . Be it admitted , that sincerity , chastity , generosity and piety , distinguish the personage in question ; we should Jh ^ ve thought that they were the virtues of the magistrate , rather than of the man , tliat were to be considered in connection with his extended reign . It is virtual
dispraise to a prince to be panegyrized only or chiefly as a faithful husband , a wise father , a libera . 1 master and a steady religionist . One would almost think that some of the orators of the 25 th of October , had intended an affront to the reigning monarch , by applaudiftg him for the very virtue which was so praised in the imbecile Henry Iff . the first of the only two English kings , besides the present , who held the throne for a full Jubilee period . Ci This prince , * ' says Hum , e , u was noted for his piety and devotion , and his regular
attendance on oubllc worshio : " " though he savs . at the same time * tendance on public worship ; though he says , at the same time , that u the most obvious circumstance of Henry ' s character is , his incapacity for government . '' Now , as no good subject would invidiously adopt the latter part of the comparison , wt humbly suggest to the ^ eulogists of the 25 th of October , that the selection of the former conveys at best only ambiguous praise .
Untitled Article
Jubilee Sermons . 685
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1809, page 685, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1743/page/35/
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