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After she had been eating some sweet thing, a little of it happened to stick on her lips; a gentleman told her of it, and offered to lick it off; she said, No, sir, I thank you, I have a tongue of my own.

In the late king's time, a gentleman asked Jervas the painter, where he lived in London? he answered, next door to the king, for his house was near St. James's. The other wondering how that could be she said, you mistake Mr. Jervas, for he only means next door to the sign of a king.

A gentleman who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop A bishop sitting by comforted him; that he should be easy, because the child was gone to Heaven. No, my lord, said she, that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there.

Having seen some letters writ by a king in a very large hand, and some persons wondering at them, she said it confirmed the old saying, That kings had long hands.

Dr. Sheridan, famous for punning, intended to sell a bargain, said, he had made a very good pun. Some body asked, what it was? He answered, my a—. The other taking offence, she insisted the doctor was in the right, for every body knew that punning was his blind side.

When she was extremely ill, her physician said, Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up again. She answered, Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top.

A dull parson talking of a very smart thing, said to another parson as he came out of the pulpit, he was hammering

hammering a long time, but could not remember the jest; she being impatient said, I remember it very well, for I was there, and the words were these; Sir, you have been blundering at a story this half hour, and can neither make head nor tail of it.

A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartee, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty? He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, the doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.

A quaker apothecary sent her a vial corked; it had a broad brim, and a label of paper about its neck. What is that, said she, my apothecary's son? The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the question, set us all a laughing.

SOME

REASONS

AGAINST

THE BILL FOR SETTLING THE TITHE

OF

HEMP, FLAX, &c. BY A MODUS *.

THE clergy did little expect to have any cause of complaint against the present house of commons: who, in the last session, were pleased to throw out a bill sent them from the lords, which that reverend body apprehended would be very injurious to them, if it passed into a law: and who, in the present session, defeated the arts and endeavours of schismaticks to repeal the sacramental test.

For although it has been allowed on all hands, that the former of those bills might, by its necessary consequences, be very displeasing to the lay gentlemen

* Many eminent clergymen who opposed this scheme applied to Dr. Swift to write against it, to which he readily consented. upon their giving him some hints, and two days after the following Reasons were presented to several members of parliament, which had so good an effect that the bill was dropped.

For the bishops to divide livings.

of

of the kingdom, for many reasons purely secular; and that this last attempt for repealing the test did much more affect at present the temporal interest than the spiritual; yet the whole body of the lower clergy have, upon both those occasions, expressed equal gratitude to that honourable house for their justice and steadiness, as if the clergy alone were to receive the benefit.

It must needs be therefore a great addition to the clergy's grief, that such an assembly as the present house of commons, should now, with an expedition more than usual, agree to a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture, with a clause whereby the church is to lose two parts in three of the legal tithe in flax and hemp.

Some reasons why the clergy think such a law will be a great hardship upon them are, I conceive, those that follow. I shall venture to enumerate them, with all deference due to that honourable assembly.

First, the clergy suppose that they have not by any fault or demerit, incurred the displeasure of the nation's representatives: neither can the declared loyalty of the present set, from the highest prelate to the lowest vicar, be in the least disputed: because there are hardly ten clergymen through the whole kingdom, for more than nineteen years past, who have not been either preferred entirely upon account of their declared affection to the Hanover line, or higher promoted as the due reward of the same merit.

There is not a landlord in the whole kingdom residing some part of the year at his country seat, who is not in his own conscience fully convinced, that the tithes of his minister have gradually sunk for some years past one third, or at least one fourth, of their former value, exclusive of all nonsolvencies.

The

The payment of tithes in this kingdom is subject to so many frauds, brangles, and other difficulties, not only from papists and dissenters, but even from those who profess themselves protestants; that, by the expense, the trouble, and vexation of collecting or bargaining for them, they are, of all other rents, the most precarious, uncertain, and ill paid.

The landlords in most parishes expect, as a compliment, that they shall pay little more than half the value of the tithes for the lands they hold in their own hands; which often consist of large domains : and it is the minister's interest to make them easy upon that article, when he considers what influence those gentlemen have upon their tenants.

The clergy cannot but think it extremely severe, that in a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture, they alone must be the sufferers, who can least afford it. If, as I am told, there be a tax of three thousand pounds a year paid by the publick, for a farther encouragement to the said manufacture, are not the clergy equal sharers in the charge with the rest of their fellow subjects? What satisfactory reason can be therefore given, why they alone should bear the whole additional weight, unless it will be alleged that their property is not upon an equal foot with the properties of other men? They acquire their own small pittance, by at least as honest means, as their neighbours the landlords possess their estates; and have been always supposed, except in rebellious or fanatical times, to have as good a title for no families now in being can show a more ancient. Indeed if it be true, that some persons (I hope they were not many) were seen to laugh when the rights of the clery were mentioned; in this case, an opinion may

possibly

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