tions, have grown into calamities which have severely exercised, as well the wisdom as the patience of mankind. In this light it is hoped the following petition will be considered. It was not drawn up barely to amuse your readers for five or six minutes, but with a view to very important consequences that may possibly be derived from it. Your labours sufficiently intimate that you consider your species as one great family, of which you are a member, and, consequently, under an obligation to countenance every thing that has a tendency to its advancement. It is for that reason application is made to you.

"I am, Sir,

"Your constant reader and humble servant."

THE HUMBLE PETITION OF ALL THE LETTERS IN THE ALPHABET, EXCEPT E AND 0.

'That your petitioners cannot, without great violence to their modesty, insist upon any thing that may reflect honour upon themselves; but the necessity of the case will plead their excuse; and therefore they beg leave most humbly to represent, that in conjunction with E and O, they have been for many ages, in a great part of the world, the only support of the whole intercourse of human life. By them men have been enabled to converse when they met, and to communicate their thoughts to each other at any distance. By them the social virtues exist, are multiplied and improved, to a degree not easily conceived by those who, either from ignorance, or a too constant familiarity, are apt to contract a sort of contempt for objects of the greatest use.

'The body which your petitioners almost entirely compose, is known to consist of but few individuals;

and the business they are employed in is infinite; yet no transaction has ever suffered from any defect in them. Under proper direction, they never fail to execute what is intended, though, in the course of their service, circumstances frequently occur of the nicest and most delicate nature. By their intervention contending princes dispute their claims of empire. Upon them depend divines, statesmen, lawyers, and physicians; all professions, all trades; and, with their assistance, the beggar asks his alms. An influence more extensive, more universal, is hardly to be imagined; so many and so great are the purposes answered by your petitioners; a society that does more honour to the species, than all others put together.

'But the utility and importance of your petitioners have, for their foundation, a perfect harmony and good understanding among themselves; inasmuch as the least dissension may prove of fatal consequence; for should any one of them withdraw his assistance from the rest, their activity, which qualifies them for all employments, would in a moment cease, and they must become, in the strictest sense of the words, dead letters.

'Nevertheless so it is, that certain persons, either through folly or perverseness, have opened a door to discord, an enemy ever upon the watch, and that must inevitably prevail, if a speedy and effectual stop be not put to a practice, which has, for many years, had its favourers in the greatest and most polite assembly of this metropolis. A thousand witnesses might be produced to prove, that at every ridotto, part of the company is seated at a round table, which has a hollow movable circle in the middle, with a declivity from the centre, and its circumference divided into little separate cavities or

cells, distinguished by the letters E and O, placed over them alternately; the hollow circle is put in motion, and a small ivory ball thrown upon it in a contrary direction; after several turns, the inclination of the surface carries the ball down towards the cavities prepared for its reception, in one of which, having rebounded several times, it at last rests, and the parties concerned in this interesting event succeed or fail, as they chance to have chosen, or not, the letter under which the ball happens to settle.

Now, Sir, the grievance complained of by your petitioners is, that the game should be wholly and absolutely governed by E and O, and derive its name from those letters alone. All impartial judges will acknowledge the preference to be an undue one, since all your petitioners are equally qualified for the service, ready to undertake it, and have spirit enough to claim a share in the honour.

'There is indeed, and there must of necessity be, a precedence in the order of the alphabet; but this has never yet been understood to denote any superior excellence; and granting it did, the two associates in power cannot avail themselves of that circumstance, because all who know their letters, and are capable of counting not quite twenty, will find the former of them in the fifth, and the latter in the fourteenth place. Like other favourites, therefore, they have been advanced, not for their merit, but altogether from caprice.

The disadvantages of this practice are evident to all. The few who are well established in reading, by a perpetual and close attention to E and O only, may entirely forget your petitioners, and, by that means, lose all the advantages of a learned education. As to the many, who have every thing to learn, the danger is, that not one of them will be prevailed on

to go a step beyond O, which must absolulely defeat those expectations which the public may have formed from the rising generation.

'The remedy for these evils is however easy and certain; it is only to have the letters over the cavities made to slide on and off, and to provide a complete alphabet of them; then, beginning with A and B, let them govern for a certain time; next C and Dare to preside, and, in this manner, a regular rotation is to take place. The use of this contrivance must be obvious to everybody, as a thousand things might be taught in this way, which it would be hopeless to attempt in any other whatsoever.

Your petitioners, submitting the premises to your consideration, humbly pray such relief, as to your great wisdom shall seem meet.

'A. B.

P. Q.

IT has been remarked by certain wise philosophers, that men are strangely apt to err in their notions of good and evil, virtue and vice. They tell us that we have no adequate idea of those words, but are continually mistaking and confounding them,

calling good evil, and evil good, virtue vice, and vice virtue. One of these philosophers has very lately discovered that the contentions, misfortunes, and miseries of mankind are wholly owing to government and laws, and that a state of anarchy and confusion, where the weak are at the mercy of the strong, and the simple of the cunning, is the only state of concord, security, and happiness.

Another of these philosophers, who seems rather inclined to new-model governments, than totally to subvert them, has proved, to the satisfaction of multitudes, that fraud, luxury, corruption, and all the catalogue of vices, as men are mistakenly pleased to call them, are the only means to make a community great, flourishing, and happy; and, on the contrary, that frugality, temperance, continence, and the like, which are vulgarly termed virtues, tend finally to its destruction.

For my own part, I was not philosopher enough in my youth to investigate these deep truths; and now I am old, I find myself so bigotted to former opinions, as not easily to perceive that rapes, murders, and adulteries are beneficial to society, or that a state of nature is better calculated for the preservation of property, or the ease, peace, and happiness of mankind, than government and laws. But lest it should be said of me, that, from the peevishness and obstinacy of age, I am shutting my eyes against the light, I will freely confess that I am lately become a convert to some other opinions, which I formerly held in equal disesteem. I had long accustomed myself to look on gaming as a vice; and as such I have frequently treated it in the course of these papers; but I am now fully convinced of my error, and that I ought to have considered it as a national virtue, and productive of more advantages to society