REVIEW OF FOUR LETTERS FROM SIR ISAAC
NEWTON TO DR. BENTLEY,

CONTAINING SOME ARGUMENTS IN PROOF OF A DEITY.

or it had been once coalesced in masses, and afterwards been diffused. Whatever state was first must have been from eternity, and what had been from eternity could not be changed,

FROM THE LITERARY MAGAZINE, VOL. I. p. 89, but by a cause beginning to act as it had never

1756.

Ir will certainly be required, that notice should be taken of a book, however small, written on such a subject, by such an author. Yet I know not whether these Letters will be very satisfactory for they are answers to inquiries not published; and therefore, though they contain many positions of great importance, are, in some parts, imperfect and obscure, by their reference to Dr. Bentley's Letters.

Sir Isaac declares, that what he has done is due to nothing but industry and patient thought; and indeed long consideration is so necessary in such abstruse inquiries, that it is always dangerous to publish the productions of great men, which are not known to have been designed for the press, and of which it is uncertain whether much patience and thought have been bestowed upon them. The principal question of these Letters gives occasion to observe how even the mind of Newton gains ground gradually upon darkness.

acted before, that is, by the voluntary act of some external power. If matter infinitely and evenly diffused was a moment without coalition, it could never coalesce at all by its own power. If matter originally tended to coalesce, it could never be evenly diffused through infinite space. Matter being supposed eternal, there never was a time when it could be diffused before its conglobation, or conglobated before its diffusion. This Sir Isaac seems by degrees to have understood: for he says in his second Letter, "The reason why matter evenly scattered through a finite space would convene in the midst, you conceive the same with me; but that there should be a central particle, so accurately placed in the middle, as to be always equally attracted on all sides, and thereby continue without motion, seems to me a supposition fully as hard as to make the sharpest needle stand upright upon its point on a looking-glass. For if the very mathematical centre of the central particle be not accurately in the very mathematical centre of the attractive power of the whole mass, the particle will not be attracted equally on all sides. And much harder is it to suppose all the particles in an infinite space should be so accurately poised one among another, as to stand still in perfect equilibrium. For I reckon this as hard as to make not one needle only, but an infinite number of them (so many as there are particles in an infinite space) stand accurately poised upon their points. Yet I grant possi ble, at least by a divine power; and if they were once to be placed, I agree with you that they would continue in that posture, without motion, for ever, unless put into new motion by the same power. When therefore I said, that matter evenly spread through all space, would convene by its gravity into one or more great masses, I understand it of matter not resting in an accurate poise."

"As to your first query," says he, "it seems to me, that if the matter of our sun and planets, and all the matter of the universe, were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest, and the whole space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite; the matter on the outside of this space would by its gravity tend towards all the matter on the inside, and by consequence fall down into the middle of the whole space, and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was evenly disposed throughout an infinite space, it could never convene into one mass, but some of it would convene into one mass, and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one to another throughout all that infinite space. And thus might the sun and fixed stars be form- Let not it be thought irreverence to this great ed, supposing the matter were of a lucid nature.name if I observe, that by matter evenly spread But how the matter should divide itself into two through infinite space, he now finds it necessary sorts, and that part of it which is fit to compose to mean matter not evenly spread. Matter not a shining body, should fall down into one mass evenly spread will indeed convene, but it will and make a sun, and the rest which is fit to convene as soon as it exists. And, in my opicompose an opaque body, should coalesce, not nion, this puzzling question about matter is only into one great body like the shining matter, but how that could be that never could have been, or into many little ones; or if the sun at first were what a man thinks on when he thinks of noan opaque body like the planets, or the planets thing. lucid bodies like the sun, how he alone should be changed into a shining body, whilst all they continue opaque, or all they be changed into opaque ones whilst he remains unchanged, I do not think more explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent."

The hypothesis of matter evenly disposed through infinite space, seems to labour with such difficulties, as makes it almost a contradictory supposition, or a supposition destructive of itself.

Matter evenly disposed through infinite space, is either created or eternal; if it was created, it infers a Creator: if it was eternal, it had been from eternity evenly spread through infinite space;

Turn matter on all sides, make it eternal, or of late production, fmite or infinite, there can be no regular system produced but by a voluntary and meaning agent. This the great Newton always asserted, and this he asserts in the third letter: but proves in another manner, in a manner perhaps more happy and conclusive.

"The hypothesis of deriving the frame of the world by mechanical principles from matter evenly spread through the heavens, being inconsistent with my system, I had considered it very little before your letter put me upon it, and therefore trouble you with a line or two more about it, if this comes not too late for your use.

"In my former I represented that the diurnal rotations of the planets could not be derived from

596

gravity, but required a divine arm to impress | fascinating plant, whose kettle has scarcely time them. And though gravity might give the to cool, who with tea amuses the evening, with planets a motion of descent towards the sun, tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes either directly, or with some little obliquity, yet the morning. He begins by refuting a popular notion, that the transverse motions by which they revolve in their several orbs, required the divine arn to im- bohea and green tea are leaves of the same press them according to the tangents of their shrub, gathered at different times of the year. orbs. I would now add, that the hypothesis of He is of opinion that they are produced by difmatter being at first evenly spread through the ferent shrubs. The leaves of tea are gathered in heavens, is, in my opinion, inconsistent with the dry weather; then dried and curled over the fire hypothesis of innate gravity, without a super- in copper pans. The Chinese use little green natural power to reconcile them, and therefore tea, imagining that it hinders digestion and exit infers a Deity. For if there be innate gravity, cites fevers. How it should have either effect is it is impossible now for the matter of the earth, not easily discovered; and if we consider the and all the planets and stars, to fly up from them, innumerable prejudices which prevail concerning and become evenly spread throughout all the our own plants, we shall very little regard these heavens, without a supernatural power; and cer- opinions of the Chinese vulgar, which experience tainly that which can never be hereafter without does not confirm. a supernatural power, could never be heretofore without the same power."

REVIEW OF A JOURNAL OF EIGHT DAYS'
JOURNEY,

FROM PORTSMOUTH TO KINGSTON UPON THAMES, THROUGH
SOUTHAMPTON, WILTSHIRE, &C. WITH MISCELLANEOUS
THOUGHTS, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS; IN SIXTY-FOUR
LETTERS, ADDRESSED TO TWO LADIES OF THE PARTY.

TO WHICH IS ADDED, AN ESSAY ON TEA, CONSIDERED
AS FERNICIOUS TO HEALTH, OBSTRUCTING INDUSTRY,
AND IMPOVERISHING THE NATION WITH AN ACCOUNT

OF ITS GROWTH, AND GREAT CONSUMPTION IN THESE
KINGDOMS; WITH SEVERAL POLITICAL REFLECTIONS

AND THOUGHTS

IN THIRTY-TWO
ON PUBLIC LOVE:
BY MR. H*****.
LETTERS TO TWO LADIES.

FROM THE LITERARY MAGAZINE, VOL. II. NO. XIII. 1757.

OUR readers may perhaps remember that we gave them a short account of this book, with a fetter extracted from it, in November, 1756. The author then sent us an injunction to forbear his work till a second edition should appear: this prohibition was rather too magisterial; for an author is no longer the sole master of a book which he has given to the public; yet he has been punctually obeyed; we had no desire to offend him, and if his character may be estimated by his book, he is a man whose failings may well be pardoned for his virtues.

The second edition is now sent into the world, corrected and enlarged, and yielded up by the author to the attacks of criticism. But he shall We wish, find in us no malignity of censure. indeed, that among other corrections he had submitted his pages to the inspection of a grammarian, that the elegances of one line might not have been disgraced by the improprieties of a degree another; but with us to mean well of merit which overbalances much greater errors than impurity of style.

We have already given in our collections one of the letters, in which Mr. Hanway endeavours to show, that the consumption of tea is injurious to the interest of our country. We shall now endeavour to follow him regularly through all his observations on this modern luxury; but it can scarcely be candid, not to make a previous declaration, that he is to expect little justice from the author of this extract, a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this

When the Chisese drink tea they infuse it slightly, and extract only the more volatile parts; but though this seems to require great quantities at a time, yet the author believes, perhaps only because he has an inclination to believe it, that the English and Dutch use more than all the inhabitants of that extensive empire. The Chinese drink it sometimes with acids, seldom with sugar; and this practice our author, Who has no intention to find any thing right at home, recommends to his countrymen.

The history of the rise and progress of teadrinking is truly curious. Tea was first imported from Holland by the Earls of Arlington Its price was and Ossory, in 1666; from their ladies the wo men of quality learned its use. then three pounds a pound, and continued the same to 1707. In 1715, we began to useen tea, and the practice of drinking it descended to the lower class of the people. In 1720, the French began to send it hither by a clandestine

commerce.

From 1717 to 1726, we imported annually seven hundred thousand pounds. From 1732 to 1742, a million and two hundred thou sand pounds were every year brought to London; in some years afterwards three millions; and in 1755, near four millions of pounds, or two thou sand tons, in which we are not to reckon that which is surreptitiously introduced, which per haps is nearly as much. Such quantities are indeed sufficient to alarm us: it is at least worth inquiry to know what are the qualities of such a plant, and what the consequence of such a trade.

He then proceeds to enumerate the mischiefs of tea, and seems willing to charge upon it every mischief that he can find. He begins, however, by questioning the virtues ascribed to it, and denies that the crews of the Chinese ships are About this report I have preserved in their voyage homewards from the scurvy by tea. made some inquiry, and though I cannot find that these crews are wholly exempt from scorbutic maladies, they seem to suffer them less than other mariners in any course of equal length. This I ascribe to the tea, not as possessing any medicinal qualities, but as tempting them to drink more water, to dilute their salt food more copiously, and perhaps to forbear punch, or other strong liquors.

He then proceeds in the pathetic strain, to tell the ladies how, by drinking tea, they injure their health, and what is yet more dear, their beauty.

"You see I confess my weakness without reserve; but those who are very fond of tea, if their digestion is weak, and they find themselves disordered, they generally ascribe it to any cause except the true one. I am aware that the effect just mentioned is imputed to the hot water; let it be so, and my argument is still good; but who pretends to say it is not partly owing to parOf these dreadful effects, some are perhaps ticular kinds of tea? perhaps such as partake of imaginary, and some may have another cause. copperas, which there is cause to apprehend is That there is less beauty in the present race of sometimes the case: if we judge from the manfemales, than in those who entered the world ner in which it is said to be cured, together with with us, all of us are inclined to think on whom its ordinary effects, there is some foundation for beauty has ceased to smile; but our fathers and this opinion. Put a drop of strong tea, either grandfathers made the same complaint before us; green or bohea, but chiefly the former, on the and our posterity will still find beauties irresis-blade of a knife, though it is not corrosive in the tibly powerful.

That the diseases commonly called nervous, tremors, fits, habitual depression, and all the maladies which proceed from laxity and debility, He afterwards quotes Paulli to prove that tea are more frequent than in any former time, is, I is a desiccative, and ought not to be used after the believe, true, however deplorable. But this new fortieth year. I have then long exceeded the race of evils will not be expelled by the prohi-limits of permission, but I comfort myself, that bition of tea. This general languor is the effect of general luxury, of general idleness. If it be most to be found among tea-drinkers, the reason is, that tea is one of the stated amusements of the idle and luxurious. The whole mode of life is changed; every kind of voluntary labour, every exercise that strengthened the nerves and hardened the muscles, is fallen into disuse. The inhabitants are crowded together in populous cities, so that no occasion of life requires much

matter and astringent vegetable, as it is gene- | temperate, religious, and industrious even to a rally made of galls and copperas.

From tea the writer digresses to spirituous liquors, about which he will have no controversy with the "Literary Magazine:" we shall therefore insert almost his whole letter, and add to it one testimony, that the mischiefs arising on every side, from this compendious mode of drunkenness, are enormous and insupportable; equally to be found among the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet and distraction; harder to be borne as it cannot be mentioned; and overwhelming multitudes with incurable diseases and unpitied poverty.

proverb. We should soon see the ponderous burden of the poor's rate decrease, and the beauty and strength of the land rejuvenate. Schools, workhouses and hospitals, might then be sufficient to clear our streets of distress and misery, which never will be the case whilst the love of poison prevails, and the means of ruin is sold in above one thousand houses in the city of London, two thousand two hundred in Westminster, and one thousand nine hundred and thirty in Holborn and St. Giles's.

"But if other uses still demand liquid fire, I would really propose, that it should be sold only quart bottles, sealed up with the king's seal, with a very high duty, and none sold without being mixed with a strong emetic.

'Many become objects of charity by their intemperance, and this excludes others who are such by the unavoidable accidents of life, or who cannot by any means support themselves.Hence it appears, that the introducing new habits of life, is the most substantial charity; and that the regulation of charity-schools, hospitals, and workhouses, not the augmentation of their number, can make them answer the wise ends for which they were instituted.

"Though tea and gin have spread their bane-in ful influence over this island and his Majesty's other dominions, yet you may be well assured, that the governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost skill and vigilance to prevent the children under their care from being poisoned or enervated by one or the other. This, however, is not the case of workhouses; it is well known, to the shame of those who are charged with the care of them, that gin has been too often permitted to enter their gates: and the debauched appetites of the people who inhabit these houses, has been urged as a reason for it. "Desperate diseases require desperate reme- "The children of beggars should be also taken dies: if laws are rigidly executed against mur- from them, and bred up to labour, as children of derers in the highway, those who provide a the public. Thus the distressed might be reliev draught of gin, which we see is murderous, ought||ed at a sixth part of the present expense; the not to be countenanced. I am now informed, that in certain hospitals, where the number of the sick used to be about 5600 in 14 years,

"From 1704 to 1713, they increased to 8189; "From 1718 to 1734,still augmented to 12,710; "And from 1734 to 1749, multiplied to 38,147. "What a dreadful spectre does this exhibit? nor must we wonder, when satisfactory evidence was given before the great council of the nation, that near eight millions of gallons of distilled spirits, at the standard it is commonly reduced to for drinking, was actually consumed annually in drams! the shocking difference in the numbers of the sick, and we may presume of the dead also, was supposed to keep pace with gin: and the most ingenious and unprejudiced physicians ascribed it to this cause. What is to be done under these melancholy circumstances? Shall we still countenance the distillery, for the sake of the revenue; out of tenderness to the few who will suffer by its being abolished; for fear of the madness of the people; or that foreigners will run it in upon us? There can be no evil so great as that we now suffer, except the making the same consumption, and paying for it to foreigners in money, which I hope never will be the

case.

"As to the revenue, it certainly may be replaced by taxes upon the necessaries of life, even upon the bread we eat, or, in other words, upon the land, which is the great source of supply to the public and to individuals. Nor can I persuade myself, but that the people may be weaned from the habit of poisoning themselves. The difficulty of smuggling a bulky liquid, joined to the severity which ought to be exercised towards smugglers, whose illegal commerce is of so in fernal a nature, must in time produce the effect desired. Spirituous liquors being abolished, instead of having the most undisciplined and abandoned poor, we might soon boast a race of men,

idle be compelled to work or starve; and the mad be sent to Bedlam. We should not see human nature disgraced by the aged, the maimed, the sickly, and young children, begging their bread; nor would compassion be abused by those who have reduced it to an art to catch the unwary. Nothing is wanting but common sense and honesty in the execution of laws.

"To prevent such abuse in the streets, seems more practicable than to abolish bad habits within doors, where greater numbers perish. We see in many familiar instances the fatal effects of example. The careless spending of time among servants, who are charged with the care of infants, is often fatal; the nurse frequently destroys the child! the poor infant being left neglected, expires whilst she is sipping her tea! This may appear to you as rank prejudice, or jest; but I am assured, from the most indubitable evidence, that many very extraordinary cases of this kind have really happened among those whose duty does not permit of such kind of habits.

"It is partly from such causes, that nurses of the children of the public often forget themselves, and become impatient when infants cry: the next step to this, is using extraordinary means to quiet them. I have already mentioned the term killing nurse, as known in some workhouses: Venice treacle, poppy water, and Godfrey's cordial, have been the kind instruments of lulling the child to his everlasting rest. If these pious women could send up an ejaculation when the child expired, all was well, and no questions asked by the superiors. An ingenious friend of mine informs me, that this has been so often the case, in some workhouses, that Venice treacle has acquired the appellation of the Lord have mercy upon me, in allusion to the nurses' hackneyed expression of pretended grief when infants expire! Farewell!”

I know not upon what observation Mr. Hanway founds his confidence in the governors of the Foundling Hospital, men of whom I have not any knowledge, but whom I intreat to consider a little the minds as well as bodies of the children. I am inclined to believe irreligion equally pernicious with gin and tea, and therefore think it not unseasonable to mention, that when a few months ago I wandered through the Hospital, I found not a child that seemed to have heard of his creed or the commandments. To breed up children in this manner, is to rescue them from an early grave, that they may find employment for the gibbet; from dying in innocence, that they may perish by their crimes.

a tax on luxury, may be considered as of great utility to the state." The utility of this tax I cannot find; a tax on luxury is no better than another tax, unless it hinders luxury, which cannot be said of the impost upon tea, while it is thus used by the great and the mean, the rich and the poor. The truth is, that by the loss of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, we procure the means of shifting three hundred and sixty thousand, at best, only from one hand to another; but perhaps sometimes into hands by which it is not very honestly employed. Of the five or six hundred seamen sent to China, I am told that sometimes half, and commonly a third part, perish in the voyage; so that instead of Having considered the effects of tea upon the setting this navigation against the inconve health of the drinker, which, I think he has ag- niences already alleged, we may add to thein, the gravated in the vehemence of his zeal, and yearly loss of two hundred men in the prime of which, after soliciting them by this watery lux-life; and reckon, that the trade of China has ury, year after year, I have not yet felt: he pro- destroyed ten thousand men since the beginning ceeds to examine how it may be shown to affect of this century. our interest; and first calculates the national loss by the time spent in drinking tea. I have no desire to appear captious, and shall therefore readily admit, that tea is a liquor not proper for the lower classes of the people, as it supplies no strength to labour, or relief to disease, but gratifies the taste without nourishing the body. It is a barren superfluity, to which those who can hardly procure what nature requires, cannot prudently habituate themselves. Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence. That time is lost in this insipid entertainment, cannot be denied; many trifle away at the tea-table those moments which would be better spent; but that any national detriment can be inferred from this waste of time, does not evidently appear, because I know not that any work remains undone for want of hands. Our manufactures seem to be limited, not by the possibility of work, but by the possibility of sale.

If tea be thus pernicious, if it impoverishes our country, if it raises temptation, and gives opportunity to illicit commerce, which I have always looked on as one of the strongest evidences of the inefficacy of our law, the weakness of our government, and the corruption of our people, let us at once resolve to prohibit it for ever.

"If the question was, how to promote industry most advantageously, in lieu of our tea-trade, supposing every branch of our commerce to be already fully supplied with men and money? If a quarter the sum now spent in tea, were laid out annually in plantations, making public gardens, in paving and widening streets, in making roads, in rendering rivers navigable, erecting palaces, building bridges, or neat and convenient houses where are now only huts; draining lands, or rendering those which are now barren of some use; should we not be gainers, and provide more for health, pleasure, and long life, compared with the consequences of the tea-trade?"

Our riches would be much better employed to these purposes; but if this project does not please, let us first resolve to save our money, and we shall afterwards very easily find ways to spend it.

His next argument is more clear. He affirms, that one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in silver are paid to the Chinese annually, for three millions of pounds of tea, and that for two millions more brought clandestinely from the neighbouring coast, we pay, at twenty-pence a pound, one hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six pounds. The author justly conceives that this computation will waken us; for, REPLY TO A PAPER IN THE GAZETTEER says he, "The loss of health, the loss of time, OF MAY 26, 1757. the injury of morals, are not very sensibly felt by FROM THE LITERARY MAGAZINE, VOL. II. P. 253. some, who are alarmed when you talk of the loss of money." But he excuses the East-India Ir is observed in the sage Gil Blas, that an exCompany, as men not obliged to be political asperated author is not easily pacified. I have, arithmeticians, or to inquire so much what the therefore, very little hope of making my peace nation loses, as how themselves may grow rich. with the writer of the Eight Days' Journey: inIt is certain, that they who drink tea, have no deed so little, that I have long deliberated wheright to complain of those that import it; but if ther I should not rather sit silently down under Mr. Hanway's computation be just, the impor- his displeasure, than aggravate my misfortune tation and the use of it ought at once to be stop-by a defence of which my heart forbodes the ill ped by a penal law.

The author allows one slight argument in fayour of tea, which, in my opinion, might be with far greater justice urged both against that and many other parts of our naval trade. "The tea-trade employs (he tells us) six ships, and five or six hundred seamen, sent annually to China. It likewise brings in a revenue of three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, which, as

success. Deliberation is often useless. I am afraid that I have at last made the wrong choice; and that I might better have resigned my cause, without a struggle, to time and fortune, since ĺ shall run the hazard of a new offence by the necessity of asking him why he is angry?

Distress and terror often discover to us those faults with which we should never have reproached ourselves in a happy state. Yet, dejected as