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Untitled Article
The letter , at which the ministry affected so much alarm , referred only to a list of sinecures which Mr . Tooke was to select from the Court Calendar , and to prepare for publication : such a list might kowever be more formidable to them than the plot of an insurrection .
Mr . Joyce ' s conduct before the Privy Council was truly admirable ; the same unpretending firmness would have characterized him on the scaffold , had Mr . Pitt succeeded in the scheme for his destruction .
From the Privy Council he was carried to the Tower , where he was held in close confinement , as a state prisoner , twenty-three weeks . At the eud of that period he was removed to Newgate for trial ; but the successive acquittals of Hardy , Tooke and Thelwall forced the ministers to abandon
their prey , and Mr . Joyce , with others , wa 9 set free without an opportunity of vindicating" his innocence or the power of obtaining indemnity for his wrong's . He was supported ,
however , by the consciousness 6 f honest patriotism and the sympathy of friends , worthy of the name . On his ' liberatioo , he addressed the public ^ iu an appendix to an excellent sermon which he
had preached before his acquittal , and his account of his prosecution cannot be read , at this distance of time , without strong indignation at the " treasonable practices" of his persecutors , and high admiration of his fortitude and spirit . He vindicated and gloried
in the part which he had acted , and challenged his adversaries , with all the aid of warrants for ransacking desks and of spies without numher , to specify one act of his political life
which was inconsistent with his professions or disallowed by the constitution of his country . On his acquittal , Lord Stanhope &av © a splendid entertainment at Chevening House to celebrate the event .
He himself hew recorded his grati-Seri * s of iutervag ^ taries , whera tbere i& ** o specific kargey nor even accusationy i& Kunely to surrender a right , which no Ppwer can wrest from the meanest indi-* £ ¦* " *! . Many illustrious characters hare TJ ^^ M y suflWed every oppression rather £ *** om th « means of iat rod ere ing- a system Uri •? * " k ar * * trary governments are « us-
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tude " to the Rev . Thomas Belsham , of Hackney , and the Rev . George Lewis , afternoon preacher at Carter Lane , for the handsome and generous mamier in which they brought him again before the public , by inviting him , immediately after his acquittal , to preach to their respective congregations . " * His sermon at the Gravel Pit , which was afterwards printed , was on the Christian miracles , and
was thought , at the time , to exhibit some new views of divine miraculous agency . Having displayed in this discourse the advantages derived from a well-established Christian faith ,
particularly in the hope , so well calculated to support and elevate the mind , which it affords in times of calamity and persecution , he concluded in the following passage , appropriate to h » own circumstances :
•* Surrounded /* said he , as we are , with all the advantages which Q . oW from a well-grounded hope of immortality , we shall be highly to blame if we do not cultivate every opportunity in fortifying our minds with these principles , that if the hour of adversity should arrive , we may be prepared
to meet it with firmness and dignity . If , as has sometimes happened , of which history informs all , a man be snatched suddenly from all the intercourse of social life ; shut in the gloomy and grated cell ; denied the access of every friend j no longer indulged with the music of those voices in which he had been accustomed to
delight ; ignorant of what charges may or can be exhibited against him , but at the same time sufficiently aware that every moment is employed to his disadvantage ; and employed too with all the energy which wealth and
power can exert : when week after week , and month after month , pass their revolving circles without affording , as they move , any gleam of hope to the secluded prisoner : in such a situation a man may be happy in the consciousness of his own
innocence ; in the assurance that impartial investigation must convince his friends and the world that he haw suffered without a cause : but the prospects which Christianity affords will be a » additional means of his happiness in s * gloomy a situation . ¦ * Appendix to Sermon , p . M «
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Memoir of the late Rev . Jeremiah Joyce . 7 O 1
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1817, page 701, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2471/page/5/
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