Introduction of Letters on England by Voltaire, edited by Henry Moley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Cheyenne Arosmith. Letters on England by Voltaire. Introduction by Henry Moley. François-Marie Arouet, who called himself Voltaire, was the son of François Arouet of Poitreau, who lived in Paris, had given up his office of notary two years before the birth of his third son, and obtained some years afterwards a treasurer's office in the Chambre des Comptes. Voltaire was born in the year 1694. He lived until within 10 or 11 years of the outbreak of the Great French Revolution, and was a chief leader in a movement of thought that preceded the revolution. Though he lived to his 84th year, Voltaire was born with a weak body. His brother Armand, eight years his senior, became a Johnsonist. Voltaire, when ten years old, was placed with the Jesuits in the Collège Louis-le-Garrant. There he was taught during seven years, and his genius was encouraged in its bent for literature. Skill in speaking and in writing being especially fostered in the system of education, which the Jesuits had planned to produce capable men who by voice and a pen could give a reason for the faith they held. Verses written for an invalid soldier at the age of 11 won for young Voltaire the friendship of Nino L'Enclos, who encouraged him to go on writing verses. She died soon afterwards, and remembered him with a legacy of 2,000 livres for purchase of books. He wrote in his lively school days a tragedy that afterward he burnt. At the age of 17, he left the Collège Louis-le-Garrant, where he said afterwards that he had been taught nothing but Latin and the stupidities. He was then sent to the law schools and saw life in Paris as a gay young poet who with all his brilliant liveliness had an aptitude for looking on the tragic side of things, and one of whose first poems was an old on the misfortunes of life. His mother died when he was 20. Voltaire's father thought him a fool for his versifying and attached him as secretary to the marquee of Chateau-Neuve when he went as an ambassador to the Hague. In December 1713, he was dismissed for his irregularities. In Paris, his unsteadiness and his addiction to literature caused his father to rejoice in getting him housed in a country Chateau with Monsieur de Courmardin. Monsieur de Courmardin's father talked with such enthusiasm of Henry IV and the sully that Voltaire planned the writing of what became his on-heat and his history of the age of Louis XIV, who died on the 1st of September 1715. Under the regency that followed, Voltaire got into trouble again and again through the sharpness of his pen and at last accused of verse that satirized the regent. He was locked up on the 17th of May 1717 in the Bastille. There he wrote the first two books of his on-heat and finished a play on Oedipus, which he had begun at the age of 18. He did not obtain full liberty until the 12th of April 1718 and it was at this time with a clearly formed design to associate the name he took with work of high attempt in literature that François-Marie Arrouet, aged 24, first called himself Voltaire. Voltaire's Oedip was played with success in November 1718. A few months later he was again banished from Paris and finished the on-heat in his retirement, as well as another play, Arithymith, that was acted in February 1720. Other plays followed. In December 1721 Voltaire visited Lord Bollingbroke, who was then an exile from England at the Chateau of La Source. There was now constant literary activity. From July to October 1722 Voltaire visited Holland with Madame de Raubelmond. After a serious attack of smallpox in November 1723, Voltaire was active as a poet about the court. He was then in receipt of a pension of 2,000 livres from the king and had inherited more than twice as much by the death of his father in January 1722. But in December 1725, a quarrel fastened upon him by the Chevalier de Roi who had him relayed and beaten caused him to send a challenge. For this he was arrested and lodged once more in April 1726 in the Bastille. There he was detained a month, and his first act when he was released was to ask for a passport to England. Voltaire left France, reached London in August 1726, went as guest to the house of a rich merchant at Wandsworth, and remained three years in this country from the age of 32 to the age of 35. He was here when George I died and George II became king. He published here his Enquillard. He wrote here his history of Charles XII. He read the Galliviers travels as a new book and might have been presented the first night of the Beggar's opera. He was here when Sir Isaac Newton died. In 1731 he published at the Hohen the Lettre sur les Anglais which appeared in England in 1733 in the volume from which they are here reprinted. End of introduction. Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith. Letter 1 of Letters on England by Voltaire edited by Henry Moley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith. Letters on England by Voltaire. Letter 1 on the Quakers. I was of opinion that the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a people were worthy the attention of the curious. To acquaint myself with them I made a visit to one of the most eminent Quakers in England who after having traded thirty years had the wisdom to prescribe limits to his fortune and to his desires and was settled in a little solitude not far from London. Being coming to it I perceived a small but regularly built house, vastly neat but without the least upon poor furniture. The Quaker who owned it was a hell, ruddy complexion the old man who had never been afflicted with sickness he had always been insensible to passions and a perfect stranger to intemperance. I never in my life saw a more noble or a more engaging aspect than his. He was dressed like those of his persuasion in a plain coat without pleats in the sides or buttons on the pockets and sleeves and had on a beaver the brims of which were horizontal like those of our clergy. He did not uncover himself when I appeared and advanced towards me without once stooping his body. There appeared more politeness in the open humane air of his continents then in the custom of drawing one leg behind the other and taking that from the head which is made to cover it. Friend, says he to me, I perceive thou art a stranger but if I can do anything for thee only tell me. Sir, said I to him, bending forwards and advancing as usual with us, one leg towards him I flatter myself that my just curiosity will not give you the least offence and that you will do me the honour to inform me of the particulars of your religion. The people of thy country replied quicker are too full of their bows and compliments but I never yet met with one of them who had so much curiosity as thyself coming and let us first dine together. I still continued to make some very unseasonable ceremonies it not being easy to disengage oneself at once from habits we have been long used to and after taking part in a frugal meal which began and ended with a prayer to God I began to question my courteous host and opened with that which good Catholics have more than once made to Huguenots. My dear sir, said I, were you ever baptised? I never was, replied Quaker, nor any of my brethren. Zanz, said I to him, you are not Christians then? Friend, replies the old man in a softer tunnel of voice swear not, we are Christians an endeavour to be good Christians and we are not of opinion that the sprinkling water on the child's head makes him a Christian Heavens, say I, shocks at his impiety you have then forgot that Christ was baptised by Saint John Friend, replies the mild Quaker once again swear not, Christ indeed was baptised by John but he himself never baptised anyone we are the disciples of Christ and not of John I pitied very much the sincerity of my worthy Quaker and was absolutely for forcing him to get himself christened Were that all? replied he very gravely we would submit chairfully to baptism purely in compliance with thy weakness for we don't condemn any person who uses it but then we think that those who profess a religion of so holy, so spiritual a nature profess that of Christ or to upstain to the utmost of their power from the Jewish ceremonies O unaccountable, said I, what baptism a Jewish ceremony? Yes, my friend, said he, so truly Jewish that a great many Jews use the baptism of John to this day look into Asian authors and thou wilt find that John only revived this practice and that it had been used by the Hebrews long before his time, in like a manner as the Mohammedans imitated Ishmaelites in their pilgrimage to Mecca Jesus indeed submitted to the baptism of John as he had suffered himself to be circumcised but circumcision and the washing with water ought to be abolished by the baptism of Christ that baptism of the spirit, that ablution of the soul which is the salvation of mankind thus the foreigner said and indeed a baptised you with water onto repentance but he that cometh after me is mightier than I whose shoes I am not worthy to bear he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire likewise Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles writes as follows to the Corinthians Christ sent me not to baptise but to preach the gospel and indeed Paul never baptised but two persons with water and that very much again is his inclinations he circumcised his disciple Timothy and the other disciples likewise circumcised all who were willing to submit to that carnal ordinance but art thou circumcised added he I am not the honour to be so said I well friend continues the Quaker thou art a Christian without being circumcised and I am one without being baptised thus did this pious man make a wrong but very specious application of four or five texts of scripture which seemed to favour the tenets of his sect but at the same time forgot very sincerely and hundred texts which made it directly against them I had more sense then to contact with him since there is no possibility of convincing an enthusiast a man should never pretend to inform a lover of his mistresses' faults no more than one who is at law of the badness of his cause nor attempt to wing over a phonetic by strength of reasoning accordingly a waived subject well I said I to him what sort of a communion have you we have none like that thou chintis to Adam on us replied he how no communion said I only that spiritual one replied he of a heart he then began again to throw out his texts of scripture and preached a most eloquent sermon against that ordinance he harangued in a tongue as though he had been inspired to prove that the sacraments were merely of human invention and that the word sacrament was not once mentioned in the Gospel excuse said he my ignorance for I have not employed a hundredth part of the arguments which might be brought to prove the truth of our religion but these thou thyself miest to peruse in the exposition of our faith written by Robert Barclay it is one of the best pieces that ever was penned by man and as our adversaries confess it to be of dangerous tendency the arguments in it must necessarily be very convincing I promised to peruse this piece and my Quaker imagined he had already made a convert of me he afterwards gave me an accounting few words of some singularities which make this sect to contempt of others confess said he that it was very difficult for thee to refrain from laughter when answered all thy civilities without uncovering my head and at the same time said thee and thou to thee however thou appearest to me too well read not to know that in Christ time no nation was so ridiculous as to put the plural number for the singular Augustus Caesar himself was spoken to in such phrases at these I love thee, I beseech thee, I thank thee but he did not allow any person to call him domain, sir it was not till many ages after that man would have the word you as though they were double instead of thou employed in speaking to them and you served the flattering titles of lordship of eminence and of holiness which mere worms bestow on other worms by assuring them that they are with a most profound respect and in famous falsehood their most obedient humble servants it is to secure ourselves more strongly from such a shameless traffic of lies and flattery that we, thee and thou, are king with the same freedom as we do a beggar and salute no person we owe nothing to mankind but charity and to the laws respect and obedience our apparel is also somewhat different from that of others and this purely that it may be a perpetual warning to us not to imitate them others wear the badges and the marks of their several dignities and we those of Christian humility we fly from all assemblies of pleasure from diversions of every kind and from places where gaming is practised and indeed our case would be very deplorable should we feel with such levities as those I have mentioned the heart which ought to be the habitation of God we never swear not even in a court of justice being of opinion that the most holy name of God ought not to be prostituted in the miserable contests between a man and a man when we are obliged to appear before a magistrate upon other people's account for lawsuits are unknown among the friends we give evidence to the truth by sealing it with our yay or nay and the judges believe us on our bare affirmation while as the so many other Christians for swear themselves on the holy gospel we never war or fighting any case but it is not that we are afraid for so far from shuddering at thoughts of death we on the contrary bless the moment which unites us with the being of beings and the reason of our not using the outward sword is that we are neither wolves tigers nor mastiffs but man and Christians our God who has commanded us to love our enemies and to suffer without repining would certainly not permit us to cross the seas merely because murderers clothed in scarlet and wearing caps two foot high enlisted citizens by the noise made with two little sticks on an ass sking extended and when after a victory is gained the whole city of London is illuminated when a sky is in a place with fireworks and a noise is heard in the air of thanksgivings of bells of organs and of the cannon we groan in silence and are deeply affected with sadness of spirit and brokenness of heart for the sad havoc which is the occasion of those public rejoicings End of letter one Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter two of Letters on England by Voltaire edited by Henry Morley This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letters on England by Voltaire Letter two on the Quakers Such was the substance of the conversation I had with this very singular person but I was greatly surprised to see him come the Sunday following and take me with him to the Quakers meeting There are several of these in London but that which he carried me to stands near the famous pillar called the Monument The brethren were already assembled at my entering it with my guide There might be about 400 men and 300 women in the meeting The women hid their faces behind their fans and a man were covered with their broad brimmed hats All were seated and the silence was universal I parts through them but did not perceive so much as one lift up his eyes to look at me This silence lasted a quarter of an hour when at last one of them rose up took off his hat and after making a variety of rye faces and groaning in a most lamentable manner he, partly from his nose and partly from his mouth a strange confused jumble of words borrowed as he imagined from the Gospel which neither himself nor any of his hearers understood When this distorter had ended his beautiful soliloquy and that the stupid but greatly edified congregation were separated I asked my friend how it was possible for the judicious part of their assembly to suffer such a babbling We are obliged, says he, to suffer it because no one knows when a man rises up to hold forth whether he will be moved by the spirit or by folly In this doubt and uncertainty we listen patiently to everyone we even allow our women to hold forth Two or three of these are often inspired at one and the same time and it is then that a most charming noise is heard in the Lord's house You have then no priests? said I to him No, no friend replies the Quaker to our great happiness Then opening one of the friend's books as he called it he read the following words in an emphatic tone God forbid we should presume to ordain anyone to receive the Holy Spirit on the Lord's Day to the Prejudice of the rest of the brethren Thanks to the Almighty we are the only people upon earth that have no priests Good is that thou deprives of so happy a distinction why should we abandon our babe to mercenary nurses when we ourselves have milk enough for it These mercenary creatures would soon domineer in our houses and destroy both the mother and the babe God has said freely you have received freely give Shall we, after these words, cheapen as it were the Gospel sell the Holy Ghost and make of an assembly of Christians a mere shop of traders We don't pay a set of men clothed in black to assist our poor to bury our dead or to preach to the brethren These officers are all of too tender a nature for us ever to entrust them to others But how is it possible for you said I with some warmth to know whether your discourse is really inspired by the Almighty Whosoever says he shall employ Christ to enlighten him and shall publish the Gospel truth he may feel inwardly such and one may be assured that he is inspired by the Lord He then poured forth a numberless multitude of scripture texts which proved, as he imagined, that there is no such thing as Christianity without an immediate revelation and added these remarkable words When thou movest one of thy limbs is it moved by thy own power? Certainly not For this limb is often sensible to involuntary motions Consequently, he who created thy body gives motion to this earthly tabernacle And are there several ideas of which thy soul receives the impression formed by thyself? Much less are they since these pouring upon thy mind whether thou wilt or know Consequently, thou receivest thy ideas from him who created thy soul But, as he leaves thy affections at full liberty he gives thy mind such ideas as thy affections may deserve If thou livest in God thou actest thou thinkest in God After this, thou needest only but open thy eyes to that light which enlightens all mankind And it is then thou wilt perceive the truth and make others perceive it By this, said I, is Malbranche's doctrine to a titel? I am acquainted with thy Malbranche, said he He had something of the friend in him but was not enough so These are the most considerable particulars I learned concerning the doctrine of the Quakers In my next letter I shall acquaint you with their history which you will find more singular than their opinions Letters 3 of Letters on England by Voltaire edited by Henry Morley This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letters on England by Voltaire Letter 3 on the Quakers You have already heard that the Quakers date from Christ who according to them was the first of Quaker Religions, say these was corrupted a little after his death and remained in that state of corruption about 1600 years But there were always a few Quakers concealed in the world who carefully preserved the sacred fire which was extinguished in all but themselves until at last this light spread itself in England in 1642 It was at a time when Great Britain was torn to pieces by the intestine wars which three or four sects had raised in the name of God that one George Fox, born in Leicestershire and son to a silk weaver took it into his head to preach and as he pretended with all the requisites of a true apostle that is without being able either to read or write He was about 25 years of age irreproachable in his life and conduct and a holy madman He was equipped in leather from head to foot and travelled from one village to another exclaiming against the war and clergy Had his invectives being levelled against the soldiery only he would have been safe enough but he invaded against eglossiastics Fox was seized at Derby and being carried before a justice of peace he did not once offer to pull off his leaven hat upon which an officer gave him a great box of the year and cried to him Don't you know you are to appear uncovered before his warship Fox presented his other cheek to the officer and begged him to give him another box for God's sake the justice would have had him swam before he asked him any questions No, friend, says Fox to him that I never swear the justice observing he veered and thouled him sent him to the house of correction in Derby with orders that he should be whipped there Fox praised the Lord all the way he went to the house of correction where the justice's order was executed with the utmost severity the man who whipped his enthousiast were greatly surprised to hear him beseech them to give him a few more lashes for the good of his soul There was no need of entreating these people the lashes were repeated for which Fox thanked them very cordially and began to preach At first the spectators fell laughing but they afterwards listened to him and as enthusiasm is an epidemical distemper many were persuaded and those who scourged him became his first disciples Being set at liberty he ran up and down the country with a dozen proselytes at his heels still declaiming against the clergy and was whipped from time to time Being one day set in the pillory he rang the crowd in so strong and moving amena that fifty of the auditors became his converts and he won the rest so much in his favour that his head being freed tumultuously from the hole where it was fastened The populace went and searched for the Church of England clergyman who had been chiefly instrumental in bringing him to this punishment and set him on the same pillory where Fox had stood Fox was bold enough to convert some of Oliver Cromwell soldiers who thereupon quitted the service and refused to take the oaths Oliver having as greater contempt for a sect which would not allow its members to fight as Sixtus Quintus had for another sector Dovindon C. Chiamaba began to persecute these new converts The prisons were crowded with them but persecution seldom has any other effect than to increase the number of proselytes These came therefore from their confinement more strongly confirmed in the principles they had imbibed and followed by their jailers whom they had brought over to their belief But the circumstances which contributed chiefly to the spreading of this sect were as follows Fox thought himself inspired and consequently was of opinion that he must speak in a manner He thereupon began to writhe his body to screw up his face to hold in his breath and to exhale it in a forcible manner in so much that the priestess of the Pythium God at Delphus could not have acted her part to better advantage Inspiration soon became so habituated to him that he could scarce deliver himself in any other manner This was the first gift he communicated to his disciples These abbed very sincerely their masters several grimaces and shooking every limb the instant the fit of inspiration came upon them whence they were called Quakers The Volga attempted to mimic them They trembled, they sparked through the nose they quaked and fancied themselves inspired by the Holy Ghost The only thing now wanting was a few miracles and accordingly they rolled them Fox, this modern patriarch spoke thus to a justice of peace before a large assembly of people Friend, take care what thou dost God will soon punish thee for persecuting his saints This magistrate, being one who besotted himself every day with bad bienn brandy died often a popex two days after the moment he had assigned a minimus for imprisoning some Quakers The sudden death with which this justice was seized was not ascribed to his intemperance but was universally looked upon as the effect of the Holy Man's predictions so that this accident made more converts to Quakerism than a thousand sermons and as many shaking fits could have done Oliver finding them increased daily was desirous of bringing them over to his party and for that purpose attempted to bribe them by money However, they were incorruptible which made him one day declare that this religion was the only one he had ever met with that had resisted the charms of gold The Quakers were several times persecuted under Charles II not upon a religious account but for refusing to pay the tithes for theing and thowing the magistrates and for refusing to take the oaths enacted by the laws At last Robert Barclay, a native of Scotland, presented to the king in 1675 his Apology for the Quakers a work as well drawn up as the subject could possibly admit the dedication to Charles II is not filled with mean flattering incommunist but are bound with bold touches in favour of truth and with the wisest consuls Thou hast tasted says he to the king at the close of his epistle dedicatory of prosperity and adversity is to what it is to be banished thy native country to be overruled as well as to rule and sit upon the throne and being oppressed Thou hast reason to know how hateful the oppressor is both to God and a man If after all these warnings and advertisements Thou dost not turn on to the Lord with all thy heart but forget him who remember the thee in thy distress to follow lust and vanity surely great will be thy condemnation again is to which snare as well as the temptation of those that may or do feed thee and prompt thee to evil the most excellent and prevalent remedy will be to apply thyself to that light of Christ which shineth in thy conscience which neither can nor will flatter thee nor suffer thee to be at ease in thy sings but dost and will deal plainly and faithfully with thee as those that our followers thereof have plainly done thy faithful friend and subject Robert Barclay A more surprising circumstance is that this episode written by a private man of no figure was so happy in its effect as to put a stop to the persecution End of Letter 3 by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter 4 by Voltaire edited by Henry Morley This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter Song England by Voltaire Letter 4 on the Quakers About this time William arose the illustrious William Penn who established the power of the Quakers in America and would have made them appear venerable in the eyes of the Europeans where it possible for mankind to respect virtue when revealed in a ridiculous light He was the only son of Vice Admiral Penn favourite of the Duke of York afterwards King James II William Penn at a 20 years of age happening to meet with a Quaker in Cork whom he had known at Oxford This man made a proselyte of him and William being a spritely youth and naturally eloquent having a winning aspect he soon gained over some of his intimates He carried matters so far that he formed by insensible degrees a society of young Quakers who met at his house so that he was ahead of a sect when a little above 20 Being returned after his leaving Cork to device Admiral his father instead of falling upon his knees to ask his blessing he went up to him with his hat on and said friend I am very glad to see thee in good health Device Admiral imagined his son to be crazy but soon finding he was turned Quaker He employed all the methods that prudence could suggest to engage him to behave and act like other people The youth made no other answer to his father than by exhorting him to term Quaker also at last his father confined himself to a request namely that he should wait upon the king and the Duke of York with his hat under his arm and should not thee endow them William answered that he could not do these things for conscience's sake which exasperated his father to such a degree that he turned him out of doors young Penn gave God thanks for permitting him to suffer so early in his cause after which he went into the city where he held forth and made a greater number of converts The Church of England clergy found their congregations dwindle away daily and the Penn being young, handsome and of a graceful stature the court as well as the city ladies flocked very devoutly to his meeting The Patriarch George Fox hearing of his great repetition came to London though the journey was very long purely to see and converse with him both resolved to go upon missions into foreign countries and accordingly they embarked for Holland after having left labourers sufficient to take care of the London vineyard Their labourers were crowned with success in Amsterdam but a circumstance which reflected the greatest honour on them and at the same time put their humility to the greatest trial was the reception they met with from Elizabeth the Princess Palatine and to George I of Great Britain a lady conspicuous for her genius and knowledge and to whom Descartes had dedicated his philosophical romance She was then retired to The Hague where she received these friends for so the Quakers were at that time called in Holland This princess had several conferences with them in her palace and she had last entertained a so favourable an opinion of Quakerism that they confessed she was not far from the kingdom of heaven The friends sold likewise the good seed in Germany but reaped very little fruit Seeing and Thowing was not approved of in a country where a man is perpetually obliged to employ the titles of Highness and Excellency William Penn returned soon to England upon hearing of his father's sickness in order to see him before he died The Vice Admiral was reconciled to his son and though of a different persuasion embraced him tenderly William made a fruitless exhortation to his father not to receive the sacrament and a good old man entreated his son William to wear buttons on his sleeves and a crepe hatband in his beaver but all to no purpose William Penn inherited very large possessions part of which consisted in crowned debts due to the Vice Admiral for sums he had advanced for the sea service No money were at that time more insecure than those owning from the King Penn was obliged to go more than once and thee and thou King Charles were ministers in order to recover the debt and at the last instead of a species the government invested him with the right and sovereignty of a province of America to the south of Maryland thus was a Quaker raised to sovereign power Penn set sail for his new dominions with two ships freighted with Quakers who followed his fortune the country was then called Pennsylvania from William Penn who there founded Philadelphia in that country the first step he took was to enter into an alliance with his American neighbors and this is the only treaty between those people and the Christians that was not ratified by Reynolds and was never infringed the new sovereign was at the same time the legislator of Pennsylvania and enacted very wise and prudent laws none of which have ever been changed since his time the first is to injure a no person upon a religious account as brethren all those who believe in one God he had no sooner settled his government but several American merchants came and peep-holed this colony the natives of the country instead of lying into the woods cultivated by insensible degrees a friendship with the peaceable Quakers they loved those foreigners as much as they detested the other Christians who had conquered and laid waste America in a little time a greater number of those savages charmed with the mild and gentle disposition of their neighbors came in crowds to William Penn and besought him to admit them into the number of his vassals it was very rare and uncommon for a soul ring to be lead and avowed by the meanest of his subjects who never took their hats off when they came into his presence and as singular for a government to be without one priest in it and for a people to be without arms either offensive or defensive it was the duty of citizens to be absolutely undistinguished but by the public employment and for neighbors not to entertain the least jealousy one against the other William Penn might glory in having brought down upon earth the so much boasted golden age which in all probability never existed but in Pennsylvania he returned to England to settle some affairs relating to his new dominance after the death of King Charles II King James who had loved the father indulged the same affection to the son and no longer considered him as an obscure secretary but as a very great man the King's politics on this occasion agreed with his inclinations he was desirous of pleasing the Quakers by annulling the laws made against the non-conformists in order to have an opportunity by this universal toleration of establishing the Romish religion all the sectorists in England saw the snare that was laid for them but did not give into it they never failing to unite when the Romish religion, their common enemy is to be opposed but Penn did not think himself bound in any manner to renounce his principles merely to favour a protestant to whom he was odious in opposition to a king who loved him he had established a universal toleration with regard to conscience in America and would not have it thought that he intended to destroy it in Europe for which reason he adhered so inviably to King James that a report prevailed universally of his being a Jesuit this columnary affected him very strongly and he was obliged to justify himself in print however, the unfortunate King James II in whom as in most the princess of the Stuart family grandeur and weakness were equally blended and who, like them, as much overdid some things as he was short in others lost his kingdom in a manner that is hardly to be accounted for all the English sectorists accepted from William III and his parliament the toleration in indulgence which they had refused when offered by King James it was then the Quakers began to enjoy by virtue of the laws the several privileges they possessed at this time Penn, having at last seen Quakerism firmly established in his native country went back to Pennsylvania his own people and the Americans came with tears of joy as though he had been a father who was returned to visit his children all the laws had been religiously observed in his absence a circumstance in which no legislator had ever been happy but himself after having resided some years in Pennsylvania he left it but with great reluctance in order to return to England there to solicit some matters in favour of the commerce of Pennsylvania but he never saw it again he died in Ruscombe in Berkshire in 1718 I am not able to guess what fate Quakerism may have in America but I perceive it dwindles away daily in England in North countries where liberty of conscience is allowed the established religion will at last swallow up all the rest Quakers are disqualified from being members of parliament nor can they enjoy any post or preferment because an oath will always be taken on these occasions and they never swear they are therefore reduced to the necessity of subsisting upon traffic their children whom the industry of their parents has enriched are desirous of enjoying honours of wearing buttons and the ruffles and quite ashamed of being called Quakers they became converts to the church of England merely to be in the fashion End of Letter 4 Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter 5 of Letters on England by Voltaire edited by Henry Moley this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letters on England by Voltaire Letter 5 on the Church of England England is properly the country of secretaries Multisunt Magsionis in Domo Partilis May in my father's house are many mentions an Englishman as one to whom liberty is natural may go to heaven his own way nevertheless though everyone is permitted to serve God in whatever mode of fashion he thinks proper yet their true religion is the sect of Episcopalians or Churchmen called the Church of England or simply the Church by way of eminence no person can possess an employment either in England or Ireland unless he be ranked among the faithful that is possesses himself a member of the Church of England this reason which carries mathematical evidence with it has converted such numbers of dissenters of all persuasions that not a 20th part of the nation is out of the pale of the established church the English clergy have retained a greater number of the Romish ceremonies and especially that of receiving with a most scrupulous attention their tithes they also have the pious ambition to aim at superiority moreover they inspire very religiously their flock with a holy seal against the dissenters of all denominations this seal was pretty violent under the Tories in the four last years of Queen Anne but was productive of no greater mischief than breaking the windows of some meeting houses and demolishing of a few of them more religious rage seized in England with the civil wars and was no more under Queen Anne than the hollow noise of a sea which below still heaved though so long after the storm when the Wicks and the Tories laid a waste to their native country in the same manner as the Guavs and the Giebelins formally did theirs it was absolutely necessary for both parties to call in religion on this occasion the Tories declared for episcopacy and the Wicks as some imagined were for abolishing it however after these had got the upper hand they contented themselves with only abridging it at the time when the Earl of Oxford and the Lord Bolingbroke used to drink a health to the Tories the Church of England considered those noblemen as the defenders of its holy privilege the lower house of convocation a kind of house of commons composed the holy of the clergy was in some credit at that time at least the members of it had a liberty to meet to dispute on ecclesiastical matters to sentence impious books from time to time to deflate that is books written against themselves the ministry which is now composed of Wicks does not so much as allow these gentlemen to assemble so that they are at this time reduced in the obscurity of their respective parishes to the melancholy occupation of preying for the prosperity of the government whose tranquility they would willingly disturb with regard to the bishops who are 26 in all they still have seats in house of lords in spite of the Wicks because the ancient abuse of considering them as barons subsists to this day there is a clause however in the oath which the government requires from these gentlemen that puts their Christian patients to a very great trial namely that they shall be of the Church of England as by law established there are few bishops deans or other dignitaries but imagine they are so eurydivinal it is consequently a great mortification to them to be obliged to confess that they owe their dignity to a pitiful law enacted by a settled profane layman I learned Monk, father Kuhayi wrote a book lately to prove the validity and succession of English ordinations this book was forbid in France but do you believe that the English ministry were pleased with it? far from it those wicked Wicks don't care a straw the Episcopal succession among them have been interrupted or not or whether Bishop Parker was consecrated as it is pretended in a tavern or a church for these Wicks are much better pleased that the bishops should derive their authority from the Parliament than from the Apostles the Lord Bollingbroke observed that this notion of divine right would only make so many tyrants in long sleeves but that the laws made so many citizens with the regard to the morals of the English clergy they are more regular than those of France and for this reason all the clergy are very few accepted are educated in universities of Oxford or Cambridge far from the deprivity and corruption which reign in a capital they are not called to dignities to very late at a time of life where men are sensible of no other passion than avarice that is when their ambition craves a supply Employments are here bestowed both in a church and the army as a reward for long services and we never see youngesters made bishops or kernels immediately upon their laying aside the academical gong and besides most of the clergy are married the stiff and awkward air contacted by them at the university and a little familiarity the men of this country have with the ladies commonly oblige a bishop to confine himself to and rest contented with his own clergymen sometimes take a glass at a tavern custom giving them a sanction on the occasion and if they fuddle themselves it is in a very serious manner and without giving the least a scandal that fable mix the kind of mortal not to be defined who is neither of the clergy nor of the laity in a word the thing called abbey in France is a specious quite annoying England or the clergy here are very much upon the reserve and most of them parents when these are told that in France young fellows famous for their disoluteness and raised to the highest dignities of the church by female intrigues address the fair publicly in an amorous way amuse themselves in writing tender love songs entertain their friends very splendidly every night at their own houses and after the banquet is ended withdraw to invoke the assistance of the Holy Ghost and call themselves boldly the successors of the apostles they bless God for their being protestants but these are shameless heretics who deserve to be blown hands through the flames to Old Nick as a harbour lee says and for this reason I do not trouble myself about them and of letter five recording by Cheyenne Arosmith letter six of letters on England by Voltaire edited by Henry Morley this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Cheyenne Arosmith letters on England by Voltaire letter six on the Presbyterians the Church of England is confined almost to the kingdom once it received its name and to Ireland for Presbyterianism is the established religion in Scotland this Presbyterianism is directly the same with Calvinism as it was established in France and is now professed at Geneva as the priests of this sect receive but very inconsiderable stipends from their churches and consequently cannot emulate the splendid luxury of bishops they exclaim very naturally against the honours which they can never attain to figure to yourself the haughty Dagenis trembling underfoot the pride of Plato the scourged Presbyterians are not very unlike that proud oh tattered reasoner Dagenis did not use Alexander half so impertinently as these treated King Charles II for when they took up arms in his cause in opposition to Oliver who had deceived them they forced that poor monarch to undergo the hearing of three or four sermons every day would not suffer him to play reduced him to a state of penitence and mortification so that Charles soon grew sick of these pedants and accordingly eloped from them with as much joy as a youth does from school a Church of England minister appears as another Cato in presence of a juvenile sprightly French graduate who bauls for a whole morning together in the divinity schools and hunts a song in chorus with ladies in evening but this Cato is a very spark when before a scourged Presbyterian the latter affects a series gate puts on a sour look wears a vastly broad brimmed hat and a long cloak over a very short coat preaches through the nose and gives the name of the whore of Babylon to all churches where the ministers are so fortunate as to enjoy an annual revenue of five or six thousand pounds and where the people are weak enough to suffer this and to give them the titles of my lord, your lordship or your eminence these gentlemen who have also some churches in England introduced to there the mode of grave and severe exhortations to them is owning the sanctification of Sunday in the three kingdoms people are there forbidden to work or take any recreation on that day in which the severity is twice as great as that of the Romish church no operas, plays or concerts are allowed in London on Sundays and even cards are so expressly forbidden that numbered persons of quality and those we call the Gentile play on that day the rest of the nation go either to church, to the tavern or to see their mistresses though the Episcopal and Presbyterian sects are the two prevailing ones in Great Britain yet all others are very welcome to come and settle in it and live very sociably together although most of their preachers hate one another almost as cordially as a chancellors to dance a Jesuit take a view of the royal exchange in London a place more venerable than many courts of justice where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind there the Jew, the Mohammed Da and the Christian transact together as though they all profess the same religion and give the name of Infidl to numbered bankrupts there the Presbyterian confines in the Anabaptist and the churchmen depends on the Quaker's word if one religion only were allowed in England the government would very possibly become arbitrary if there were but two the people would cut one another's throats but as there are such a multitude they all live happy and in peace End of Letter 6 Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter 7 of Letters on England by Voltaire edited by Harry Moley this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letters on England by Voltaire Letter 7 on the Sosinians or Aryans or Antitrinitarians There is a little sect here composed of clergymen and offer a few very learned persons among the laity who though they do not call themselves Aryans or Sosinians do yet descend entirely from Athanasius with regard to their notions of the Trinity and declare very frankly that the father is greater than the son Do you remember what is related of a certain Orthodox bishop who in order to convince an emperor of the reality of consubstantiation put his hand under the chin of the monarch's son and took him by the nose in presence of his sacred majesty the emperor was going to order his attendants to throw the bishop out of the window when a good old man gave him this handsome and convincing reason Since your majesty says he is angry when your son has not due respect to show him, what punishment do you think will God the father inflict on those who refuse his son Jesus the title due to him The persons I just now mentioned declare that the holy bishop took a very wrong step that his argument was inconclusive and that the emperor should have answered him thus Know that there are two ways by which men may be wanting in respect to me first in not doing honor sufficient to my son and secondly in paying him the same honor as to me Be this as it will the principle of areas beginning to revive not only in England but in Holland and Poland The celebrated Sir Isaac Newton honored this opinion so far as to continent it This philosopher thought that the Unitarians argued more mathematically than we do But the most disanguine sticker for Arianism is the illustrious Dr. Clark This man is rigidly virtuous and of a milder disposition is more found off his tenets than desirous of propagating them and absorb the so entiling problems and calculations that he is a mere reasoning machine It is he who wrote a book which is much esteemed and little understood on the existence of God and another more intelligible but pretty much contempt on the truth of the Christian religion He never engaged in scholastic disputes which our friend calls venerable trifles He only published a work containing all the testimonies of the primitive ages for and again is the Unitarians and leaves to the reader the counting of the voices and the liberty of forming a judgment This book won the doctor a great number of partisans and lost to him the sea of Canterbury But in my humble opinion he was out in his calculation and had better have been primate of all England than merely an Aryan parcel You see that opinions are subject to revolutions as empires. Aryanism after having triumphed during 3 centuries and being forgot 12 rises at last out of its own ashes But it has chosen a very improper season to make its appearance in the present age being quite cloyed with disputes and sects The members of this sect are besides too few to be indulged the liberty of holding public assemblies which however they will doubtless be permitted to do in case they spread considerably But people are now so very cold with respect to all things of this kind that there is little probability any new religion or old one that may be revived will meet with favour Is it not whimsical enough that Luther, Carvin and Swingless all of them wretched authors should have founded sects which are now spread over a great part of Europe that Mohammed though so ignorant should have given a religion to Asia and Africa at that Sir Isaac Newton Dr Clarke Mr Locke Mr Luclerque etc. the greatest philosophers as well as the ableist writers of their ages should scarcely have been able to raise a little flock which even decreases daily This it is to be born at a proper period of time Were Cardinal de Gess to return again into the world neither his eloquence nor his intrigues would draw together 10 women in Paris Were Oliver Cromwell he who beheaded his sovereign and seized upon the kingly dignity to rise from the dead he would be a wealthy city trader and no more End of Letter 7 Recording by Cheyenne Arosmith Letter 8 of Letter Song England by Voltaire edited by Harry Moley This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arosmith Letter Song England by Voltaire Letter 8 on the Parliament The members of the English Parliament have found out of comparing themselves to the old Romans Not long since Mr Shippen opened a speech in the House of Commons with these words The Majesty of the People of England would be wounded The singularity of the expression occasioned a loud laugh but this gentleman so far from being disconcerted repeated the same words with a resolute tone of voice In my opinion the Majesty of the People of England has nothing in common with that of the People of Rome much less is there any affinity between their governments There is in London a Senate some of the members were of accused, doubtless, very unjustly of selling their voices on certain occasions as was done in Rome This is the only resemblance Besides, the two nations appear to me quite opposite in character with regard both to good and evil The Romans never knew the dreadful folly of religious wars and abomination reserved for devout preachers or patients and humility Mario Sensula, Cesar Napompe Anthony and Augustus did not draw their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe or his robe over his shirt or whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink or eat only in order to take the augury and cut one another to pieces in pitched battles for quarrels or for trifling a nature The sects of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians quite distracted these very serious heads for a time But I fancy they will hardly ever be so silly again they seeming to be grown wiser at their own expense and I do not perceive the least inclination in them to murder one another merely about syllogisms as some zillots among them once did a more essential difference between Rome and England which gives the advantage entirely to the letter namely that the civil wars of Rome ended in slavery and those of the English in liberty. The English are the only people upon earth who have been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by resisting them and who by a series of struggles have at last established that wise government where the prince is all powerful to do good and at the same time is restrained from committing evil, where the nobos are great without insolence though there are no vassals and where the people share in a government without confusion. The House of Lords and that of the commons divide the legislative power under the king but the Romans had no such balance The patricians and plebeians in Rome were perpetually at variance and there was no intermediate power to reconcile them. The Roman Senate who was so unjustly, so criminally proud as not to suffer the plebeians to share with them in anything could find no other artifice to keep the letter out of the administration then by employing them in foreign wars. They considered the plebeians as a wild beast whom it behoved to them to let loose upon the neighbors for fear they should devour their masters thus the greatest defect in the government of the Romans raised them to be conquerors. By being unhappy at home they triumphed over and possessed themselves of the world till at last their divisions sunk them to slavery. The government of England will never rise to so exalted a picture of glory nor will its end be so fatal The English are not fired with splendid folly of making conquests but would only prevent their neighbors from conquering. They are not only jealous of their own liberty but even of that of other nations The English were exasperated against the reader 14th for no other reason but because he was ambitious and declared war against the minister him merely out of levity not from any interested motives The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high price and waded through seas of blood to draw on the idol of arbitrary power. Other nations have been involved in as great calamities and have shared as much blood but then the blood they spilled in defence of their liberties only enslaved them the more That which rises to a revolution in England was no more than a sedition in other countries A sitting Spain in Barbary or in Turkey takes up arms in defence of its privilege when immediately it is stormed by mercenary troops it is punished by executioners and the rest of the nations kiss the chains they are loaded with. The French are of opinion that the government of this island is more tempestuous than the sea which surrounds it which indeed is true but then it is never so but when the king raises a storm when he attempts to seize the ship of which he is only the chief pilot the civil wars of France lasted longer were more cruel and productive of greater evils than those of England but none of these civil wars had a wise and prudent liberty for their object In the detestable reigns of Charles IX and Henry III the whole affair was only whether the people should be slaves to the geeses with regard to the last war of Paris it deserves only to be hooted at because I see a crowd of schoolboys rising up in arms against their master and afterwards whipped for it Cardinal de Hretz who was witty and brave but to no purpose rebellious without a cause factious without design and ahead of a defenceless party caballed for caballing sake and seemed to forment the civil war merely out of diversion the parliament did not know what he intended nor what he did not intend he levied troops by act or parliament and the next moment cashured them he threatened, he begged pardon he set a price upon Cardinal Monson's head and afterwards congratulated him in a public manner our civil wars under Charles VI were bloody and cruel those of the League exquerable and that of the frondeurs ridiculers that for which the French chiefly reproach the English nation is the murder of King Charles I whom his subjects treated exactly as he would have treated them had his reign been prosperous after all consider on one side Charles I defeated in a pitched battle imprisoned, tried, sentenced to die in Westminster Hall and then beheaded and on the other the Emperor Henry VII poisoned by his chaplain at his receiving the sacrament Henry III stabbed by a monk 30 assassinations projected against Henry IV, several of them putting execution and last relieving that great monarch of his life way I say all these wicked attempts and then judge End of Letter VIII Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter IX of Letter Song England by Voltaire edited by Harry Moley this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in a public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter Song England by Voltaire Letter IX on the Government that mixture in the English Government that harmony between King Lords and Commons did not always subsist England was enslaved for a long series of years by the Romans the Saxons, the Danes and French successively William the Conqueror particularly ruled them with a rod of iron he disposed as absolutely of the lives and fortunes of his conquered subjects as an eastern monarch and forbade upon pain of earth the English either fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock whether was this to prevent their nocturnal meetings or only to try by an odd and whimsical prohibition how far it was possible for one man to extend his power over his fellow creatures it is true indeed that the English had a parliament before and after William the Conqueror as though these assemblies then called parliaments composed of ecclesiastical tyrants and of plunderers entitled barons had been the guardians of the public liberty and happiness the Biberians who came from the shores of the Baltic and settled in the rest of Europe brought with them the form of government called states or parliaments about which so much noise is made and which are so little understood Kings indeed were not absolute in those days people were more wretched upon that very account and more completely enslaved the chiefs of these sabbages who had laid waste France, Italy, Spain and England made themselves monarchs their generals divided among themselves the several countries they had conquered when sprung those margraves those peers, those barons those petty tyrants who often contested with their sovereigns for the spoils of whole nations these were birds of prey fighting with an eagle for doves whose blood the victorious was to suck every nation instead of being governed by one master was trampled upon by a hundred tyrants the priests soon played a part among them before this it had been the fate of the Gauls the Germans and the Britons to be always governed by their druids and the chiefs of their villages an ancient kind of barons not so tyrannical as their successors these druids pretended to mediate us between God and the men they enacted laws they fominated their ex-communications and sentenced to death the bishop succeeded by insensible degrees to their temporal authority in the Gauls and the vandal government the popes set themselves at their head and armed with their briefs, their bulls and reinforced by monks they made even kings tremble deposed and assassinated them at pleasure and employed every artifice to draw into their own purses money from all parts of Europe the weak Ena one of the tyrants of the Saxon Habitaki in England was the first monarch who submitted in his pilgrimage to Rome to pay Saint Peter's penny equivalent very near to a French crown for every house in his dominions the whole island soon followed his example England became insensibly one of the Pope's provinces and the Holy Father used to send from time to time to the gates to levy exorbitant taxes at last the King John delivered up by a public instrument the Kingdom of England to the Pope who had excommunicated him but the barons not finding their account in this resignation they thrown the wretch the King John and seated Louis father to Saint Louis King of France in his place however they were so wary of their new monarch and accordingly obliged him to return to France the Pope's all laid waste England where all were for ruling the most numerous the most useful even the most virtuous and consequently the most venerable part of mankind consisting of those who study the laws and sciences of traders of artificers in a word of all who were not tyrants that is those who are called the people these I say were by them looked upon as so many animals beneath the dignity of the human species the commons in those ages were far from sharing in the government they being villains or peasants whose labour, whose blood were the property of their masters who entitled themselves to nobility the major part of man in Europe were at that time where they are to this day in several parts of the world they were villains or bondsmen of lords that is a kind of cattle bought and sold with the land many ages passed away before justice could be done to human nature that it was abominable for many to sow and but few reap and was not France very happy when the power and authority of those petty robbers was abolished by the law for authority of kin and of the people happily in the violent shocks which the divisions between kings and nobles gave to empires the chains of nations were more or less heavy liberty in England sprung from the quarrels of a tyrant the barons forced the king John and King Henry III to ground the famous Magnicata the chief design of which was indeed to make kings dependent on the lords but then the rest of the nation were a little favoured in it in order that they might join on proper occasions with their pretended masters this great charter which is considered as the sacred origin of the English liberties shows in itself how little liberty was known the title alone proves that the king thought he had a just right to be absolute and that the barons and even the clergy forced him to give up the pretended right for no other reason but because they were the most powerful Magnicata begins in this style we ground of our own free will the following privilege to the archbishops bishops priors and barons of our kingdom etc the House of Commons is not once mentioned in the articles of this charter a proof that it did not yet exist or that it existed without power mention is there in made by name of the freemen of England a melancholy proof that some were not so it appears by article 32 that these pretended freemen old service to their lords such liberty as this was not many removes from slavery by article 21 the king ordains that his officers should not henceforth seize upon unless they pay for them the horses and carts of freemen the people consider the this ordinance as a real liberty though it was a greater tyranny that happy usurper and a great politician who pretended to love the barons though he in reality hated and feared them got their lands alienated by this means the villains afterwards acquiring riches by their industry purchase the estates and country seats of the illustrious peers who had ruined themselves by their folly and extravagance and degrees into other hands the power of the House of Commons increased every day the families of the ancient peers were at last extinct and as peers only are properly noble in England there would be no such thing in strictness of law as nobility in that island had not the king created new barons from time to time and preserved body of peers once a terror to them to oppose them to the commons since becomes so formidable all these new peers who composed receive nothing but their titles from the king and very few of them have estates in those places when they take their titles one shall be Duke of D though he has not a foot of land in Dorsetshire and another is Earl of a village though his gas knows where it is situated the peers have power but it is only in the Parliament House there is no such thing here as oud, moyen and barse justices that is a power to judge in all matters civil and criminal nor a right or privilege of hunting the grounds of a citizen who at the same time is not permitted to fire a gun in his own field no one is exempted in this country from paying certain taxes because he's a noble man or a priest all duties and taxes are settled by the House of Commons whose power is greater than that of the peers though inferior to it in dignity the spiritual as well as temporal lords have the liberty to reject a money bill brought in by the Commons but they are not allowed to alter anything in it and must either pass or throw it out without a restriction when the bill has passed the Lord and is signed by the King then the whole nation pays every man in proportion to his revenue or estate not according to his title which would be absurd there is no such thing as an arbitrary subsidy or poll tax but a real tax on the lands of all which the estimate was made in a ring of the famous King William III the land tax continues still upon the same foot though the revenue of the lands is increased thus no one is tyrannized silver and everyone is easy the feet of the peasants are not bruised by wooden shoes they eat white bread are well clothed and are not afraid of increasing their stock of cattle nor of tiling their houses from any apprehension that their taxes would be raised to the year following the annual income of the estate of a great many commoners in England amounts to 200,000 livres and yet these do not think it beneath them to plow the lands which enrich them and on which they enjoy their liberty End of Letter 9 Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter 10 of Letters on England by Voltaire edited by Harry Moley this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain if you have any information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter on England by Voltaire Letter 10 on Trade As trade enriched the citizens in England so it contributed to their freedom and this freedom on the other side extended their commerce whence arose the groundure of the state Trade raised by insensible degrees the naval power which gives the English a superiority over the seas and they now are masters of very near 200 ships of war posterity will very probably be surprised to hear that an island whose only produce is a little tin, fuller earth and coarse wool would become so powerful by its commerce as to be able to send in 1723 three fleets at the same time to three different and far distanced parts of the globe. One before Gibraltar conquered and still possessed by the English a second to Port Bélo to dispossess the king of Spain of the treasures of the West Indies and a third into the Baltic to prevent the northern powers from coming to an engagement at a time when Louis XIV made all Italy tremble and that his armies which had already possessed themselves of Savoy and Pierdemont were upon the point of taking to ring. Prince Eugene was obliged to march from the middle of Germany in order to destroy. Having no money without which cities cannot be either taken or defended he addressed himself to some English merchants. These at an hour and a half's warning lent him five millions whereby he was enabled to deliver Turin and to be the French after which he wrote the following short letter to the persons who had dispersed him the above mentioned sums Gentlemen, I have received your money and flatter myself that I have laid it out to your satisfaction. Such a circumstance as this races are just a pride in an English merchant and makes him presume not without some reason to compare himself to a Roman citizen and indeed a pierce brother does not think traffic beneath him when the Lord Townsend was Minister of State a brother of his was content to be a city merchant and at a time that the Earl of Oxford governed Great Britain a younger brother was no more than a factor in Aleppo where he lived and where he died. This custom which begins however to be laid aside appears monstrous to Germans vainly puffed up with their extraction these think it's morally impossible that the son of an English peer should be no more than a rich and powerful citizen for all a princess in Germany. There have been 30 Highnesses of the same name and whose petrimony consisted only in their escutcheons and their pride. In France the title of Marquis is given gratis to anyone who will accept of it and whosoever arrives at Paris from the midst of the most remote provinces with money in his purse and a name terminating in A.C. or Il may strut about and cry such a man as I a man of my rank and a figure and may look down upon a trader with sobering contempt while is the trader on the other side by thus often hearing his profession treated so disdainfully is full enough to blush at it. However I need not say which is most useful to a nation. A lord powered in the tip of the mold who knows exactly at what o'clock the king rises and goes to bid and who gives himself heirs of grandeur and state at the same time that he's acting the slave in the end chamber of a prime minister or a merchant who enriches his country dispatches orders from his counting house to so far and around the Cairo and contributes to the well-being of the world. Inoculation. It is inadvertently affirmed in the Christian countries of Europe that English are fools and madmen. Fools because they give their children the smallpox to prevent their catching it at madmen because they wantonly communicate a certain and dreadful distemper to their children merely to prevent an uncertain evil. The English on the other side call the rest of the Europeans cowardly and unnatural. Cowardly because they are afraid of putting their children to a little pain unnatural because they expose them to die one time or other of the smallpox but that the reader may be able to judge whether the English or those who differ from them in opinion are in the right here follows the history of the famed inoculation which is mentioned with so much dread in France. The Circassian women have from time immemorial communicated the smallpox to their children when not above six months old by making an incision in the arm and by putting into this incision a pustule taken carefully from the body of another child. This pustule produces the same effect in the arm it is laid in as a yeast in a piece of dough it ferments and diffuses through the whole mass of blood the qualities with which it is impregnated. The pustules of the child in whom the artificial smallpox has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper to others. There is an almost perpetual circulation of it in Circassia and when unhappily the smallpox has quite left to the country the inhabitants of it are in as great trouble and perplexity as other nations when their harvest has fallen short. The circumstance that introduced a custom in Circassia which appears so singular to others is nevertheless a cause common to all nations i.e. maternal tenderness and interest. The Circassians are poor and their daughters are beautiful and indeed it is in them they chiefly trade they furnish with beauties the Sahalios of the Turkish Sultan of the Persian Sulfi and of all those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such pressures merchandise. These maidens are very honourably accepted to fondle and caress men are taught dances of a very polite and infeminate kind and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed.  Now it often happened that after a father and mother had taken care of the education of their children they were frustrated of all their hopes in an instant. The smallpox getting into the family one daughter died of it another lost an eye, a third had a great nose at her recovery and the unhappy parents were completely ruined even frequently when the smallpox became epidemical trade was suspended for several years which thinned very considerably the Sahalios of Persia and Turkey. A trading nation is always watchful over its own interests and grasps at every discovery that may be of advantage to its commerce. The Circassians observed that scarce one person in a thousand was ever attacked by a smallpox of a violent kind that some indeed had this distemper very favorably three or four times but never twice so as to prove fatal in a word that no one ever had it in a violent degree twice in his life. They observed a father that when the smallpox is of the milder sort and the pastures have only a tender delicate skin to break through they never leave the leased scar in the face. From these natural observations they concluded that in case an infant of six months or a year old should have a milder sort of smallpox he would not die of it would not be marked nor be ever afflicted with it again. In order therefore to preserve the life and the beauty of their children the only thing remaining was to give them the smallpox in their infant years. This they did by inoculating in the body of a child a pasture taken from the most irregular and at the same time the most favorable sort of a smallpox that could be procured. The experiment could not possibly fail. The Turks who are people of good sense soon adopted this custom in so much that at this time there is not a bazaar constantly noepo but communicates the smallpox to his children of both sexes immediately upon their being weaned. Some pretend that the Circassians borrowed this custom anciently from the Arabians but we shall leave the clearing up of this point of history to some learned Benedictines who will not fail to compile a great many folios on this subject with the several proofs or authorities. All I have to say upon it is that in the beginning of the reign of King George I the lady wordly Montagu a woman of as fine a genus and in due to with as great a strength of mind as any of her sexes in the British kingdoms being with her husband who was ambassador at the port made no scruple to communicate the smallpox to an infant of which she was delivered in conceding noepo. The chaplain represented to his lady but to no purpose that this was an un-christian operation and therefore that it could succeed with none but infidels however it had the most a happy fact upon the son of the lady wordly Montagu who at her return to England communicated experiment to the princess of Wales now queen of England it must be confessed that this princess abstracted from her crown and the title was born to encourage the whole circle of arts and to do good to mankind. She appears as an amiable philosopher on the throne having never let slip one opportunity of improving the great talents she received from nature nor of exerting her beneficence. It is she who being formed that a daughter of Milton was living but in miserable circumstances immediately sent her a considerable present it is she who protects the learned father Courier. It is she who condescended to attempt a reconciliation between Dr Clark and Mr Leibniz. The moment this princess heard of inoculation she caused an experiment of it to be made on four criminals sentenced to die and by that means preserved their lives doubly for she not only saved them from the gallows but by means of this artificial smallpox prevented there ever having that distemper in a natural way with which they would very probably have been attacked one time or other and might have died off at a more advanced age. The princess being assured of the usefulness of this operation caused her own children to be inoculated a great part of the kingdom followed her example and since that time ten thousand children at least of persons of condition owe in this manner their lives to Her Majesty and to the lady Whitley Montague and as many of the fair sex are obliged to them for their beauty. Upon the general calculation four persons in every hundred have the smallpox. Of these three score twenty die of it in a most favourable season of life and as many more where the disagreeable remains of it in their faces so long as they live. Thus a fifth part of mankind either die or are disfigured by this distemper but it does not prove fatal to so much as one among those who are inoculated in Turkey or in England unless the patient be infirm or would have died had not the experiment be made upon him. Besides no one is disfigured no one has the smallpox a second time if the inoculation was perfect. It is there for certain that had the lady of some French ambassador brought this secret from Constantine Nopoul to Paris the nation would have been forever obliged to her then the Duke de Villacier fathered to the Duke Dormont who enjoys the most vigorous constitution and is the healthiest man in France would not have been cut off in the flower of his age. The Prince of Soubis happy in the finest flesh of health would not have been snatched away at 5 and 20 nor the Dauphin grandfather to Louis the 15th had been laid in his grave in his 50th year 20,000 persons whom the smallpox swept away at Paris in 1723 would have been alive at this time but are not the French found of life and is beauty so inconsiderable and advantage as to be disregarded by the ladies it must be confessed that we are an odd kind of people perhaps our nation will imitate ten years hence this practice of the English if the clergy and physicians will but give them leave to do it or possibly our country man may introduce inoculation three months hence in France out of mere whim in case the English should discontinue it through fickleness. I am informed that the Chinese have practiced inoculation these hundred years a circumstance that argues very much in its favor since they are thought to be the wisest and the best to govern the people in the world the Chinese indeed do not communicate this distemper by inoculation but at the nose in the same manner as we take snuff this is a more agreeable way but then it produces the like effect and proves at the same time that had inoculation being practised hence it would have saved the lives of thousands. End of Letter 11 Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter 12 of Letters on England by Voltaire edited by Harry Molly this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letters on England by Voltaire Letter 12 on the Lord Bacon Not long since the Triton Frivoler's question following was debated in a very polite and learned company namely who was the greatest man Caesar, Alexander, Tameleung Cromwell, etc. Somebody answered that Sir Isaac Newton excelled the more the gentleman's assertion was very just for if true greatness consists in having received from heaven a mighty genius and in having employed it to enlighten our mind and that of others a man like Sir Isaac Newton whose equal is hardly found in a thousand years is the truly great man and those politicians and conquerors and all ages produced some were generally so many illustrious wicked man that man claims our respect who commands over the minds of the rest of the world by the force of truth not those who enslave their fellow creatures he who is acquainted with the universe not they who deface it Things therefore you desire me to give you an account of the famous personages whom England has given birth to I shall begin with Lord Bacon Mr Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, etc. Afterwards the warriors and ministers of state shall come in their order I must begin with the celebrated Viscount Generalum, known in Europe by the name of Bacon which was that of his family his father had been Lord Keeper and himself was a great many years Lord Chancellor under King James I Nevertheless amidst the intrigues of a court and the affairs of his exhorted employment which alone were enough to engross his whole time he yet found so much leisure for study as to make himself a great philosopher a good historian and an elegant writer and a still more surprising circumstance is that he lived in an age in which the art of writing justly and elegantly was little known much less true philosophy Lord Bacon, as is the fate of man, was more esteemed after his death than in his lifetime. His enemies were in a British court and his admirers were foreigners When the Marquis Defia attended in England upon the Princess Maria, daughter to Henry IV whom King Charles I had married that minister went and visited the Lord Bacon who being at that time sicking his bed received him with the curtains shut closed You resemble the angels said the Marquis to him We hear those beings spoken of perpetually and we believe them superior to man but are never allowed the consolation to see them You know that this great man over a crime very unbecoming a philosopher I mean bribery and extortion You know that he was sentenced by the House of Lords to pay a fine of about 400,000 French livre to lose his peerage and his dignity of chanceller but in the present age the English revere his memory to such a degree that they will scarce allow him to have been guilty In case you should ask what are my thoughts on this head in the words which I heard the Lord Bollingbroke use on another occasion several gentlemen were speaking in his company of the avarice with which the late Duke of Marlborough had been charged some examples were of being given the Lord Bollingbroke was appealed to who having been in the opposite party might perhaps without the imputation of indecency have been allowed to clear up that matter He was so great a man that he replied his lordship that I have forgotten his vices I should therefore confine myself to those things which so justly gained the Lord Bacon the esteem of all Europe The most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which at this time is the most useless and the least read I mean his Nauvus Chantiarum Organum This is the scaffold with which the new philosophy was raised and when the edifice was built part of it at least the scaffold was no longer of service The Lord Bacon was not yet acquainted with nature but then he knew and pointed out the several paths that lead to it He had it despised in his younger years the thing called philosophy in the universities and did all that lay in his power to prevent those societies of man instituted to improve human reason from depraving it by the equities, their horrors of the vacuum their substantial forms and all those impertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered a venerable but which had been made sacred by their being ridiculously blended with religion He is the father of experimental philosophy It must indeed be confessed that very surprising secrets had been found out before his time the sea compass, printing, engraving on copper plates, oil painting looking glasses the art of restoring in some measure old men to their sight by spectacles gunpowder etc had been discovered A new world had been fought for found and conquered Would not one suppose that these sublime discoveries had been made by the greatest philosophers and in age so much more enlightened than the present but it was far otherwise all these great changes happened in the most stupid and barbarous times chance only gave birth to most of those inventions and it is very probable that what is called chance contributed very much to the discovery of America at least it has been always thought that Christopher Columbus undertook his voyage merely on the relation of a captain, of a ship which a storm had driven as far westward as the Caribbean island Be this as it will men had sailed around the world and could destroy cities by an artificial thunder more dreadful than the real one then they were not acquainted with the circulation of the blood the weight of the air the laws of motion, light the number of our planets etc and a man who maintained a thesis on Aristotle's categories on the universals apartheid or such like nonsense was looked upon as a prodigy the most astonishing the most useful inventions but not those which reflect the greatest honour on the human mind it is to a mechanical instinct which is a founding many man and a not to true philosophy that most arts own their origin the discovery of fire the art of making bread of melting and preparing metals of building houses an invention of the shuttle to mankind then printing or the sea compass and yet these arts were invented by uncultivated savage man what are prodigy's use the Greeks and Romans made afterwards of mechanics nevertheless they believed that there were crystal heavens that the stars were small lamps which sometimes fell into the sea and one of their greatest philosophers after long research found that the stars were so many flints hatched from the earth in a word no one before the Lord Bacon was acquainted with the experimental philosophy nor with the several physical experiments which had been made since his time scarce one of them but is hinted at in his work and he himself had made several he made a kind of pneumatic engine by which he guessed the elasticity of the air he approached on all sides as it were to the discovery of his weight and had very near attained it but some time after Torricelli seized upon this truth in a little time experimental philosophy began to be cultivated all of a sudden in most parts of Europe it was a hidden treasure which the Lord Bacon had some notion of and which all the philosophers encouraged by his promises endeavoured to dig up but that which surprised me most was to reading his work in express terms the new attraction the invention of which is ascribed to Sir Isaac Newton we must search says Lord Bacon whether there may not be a kind of magnetic power which operates between the earth and the heavy bodies between the moon and the ocean between the planets etc in another place he says either heavy bodies must be carried towards the centre of the earth whether they are attracted by it and in the latter case it is evident that the nearer bodies in their falling draw towards the earth the stronger they will attract one another we must says he make an experiment to see whether the same clock will go faster on the top of a mountain where the bottom of a mine whether the strength of the weights decreases on the mountain increases in a mine where the earth has a true attractive power this forerunner in philosophy was also an elegant writer and historian and a wit his moral essays are greatly esteemed but they were drawn up in the view of instructing rather than of pleasing and as they are not a satire upon mankind like Hoshford calls the maxims nor written upon a skeptical plan like montaigne's essays they are not so much read by the new ingenious authors his history of Harry the 7th was looked upon as a masterpiece but how is it possible that some persons can presume to compare so little of work with the history of our illustrious Chew and Euse speaking about the famous imposter Perkin son to a converted Jew who assumed boldly the name and the title of Richard the 4th King of England and the instigation of the Duchess of Urgandy who executed the crown with Harry the 7th the Lord Bacon writes as follows at this time the king began again to be haunted with sprites by the magic and curious arts of the Lady Margaret who raised up the ghost of Richard Duke of York second son to King Edward the 4th to walk and vex the king after such time as she Margaret of Burgundy thought he Perkin wore back was perfecting his lesson she began to cast with herself from what ghost this blazing star should first appear and at what time it must be upon the horizon of Ireland for there had the like meteor strong inference before we think our sagacious Chew and Euse does not give in to such fustion which formerly was looked upon as sublime but in this age is just record nonsense End of Letter 12 Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter 13 of Letter Song England by Voltaire edited by Harry Molly this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter Song England by Voltaire Letter 13 on Mr Locke Perhaps no man ever had a more judicious or more methodical genus or was a more acute logician than Mr Locke and yet he was not deeply skilled in the mathematics this great man could never subject himself to the tedious fatigue of calculations nor to the dry pursuit of mathematical truth which do not at first present any sensible objects to the mind and no one has given better proofs than he that it is possible for a man to have a geometrical head without the assistance of geometry Before his time several great philosophers had declared in the most positive terms what the soul of man is but as these absolutely knew nothing about it they might very well be allowed to differ entirely opinion from one another In Greece the infant seat of arts and of eras are aware the grandeur as well as fully of the human mind when such prodigious lengths the people used to reason about the soul in a very same manner as we do the divine Anazagoras in whose order an altar was erected for his having taught mankind that the sun was greater than polyponises that snow was black and that the heavens were of stone affirmed that the soul was an aerial spirit but at the same time immortal. Diogenes not he who was a cynical philosopher after having coined base money declared that the soul was a portion of the substance of God an idea which we must confess was very sublime Epicurus maintained that it was composed of parts in the same manner as the body Aristotle who has been explained a thousand ways because he's an intelligible was of Apinia according to some of his disciples that the understanding in all man is one and the same substance the divine Plato master of the divine Aristotle and the divine Socrates master of the divine Plato used to say that the soul was corporeal and eternal no doubt but the divine of Socrates had instructed him in the nature of it some people indeed pretend that a man who boasted is being attended by a familiar genius must infallibly be either a naive or a mad man but this kind of people are seldom satisfied with anything but reason with regard to the fathers of the church several in a primitive age believed that the soul was human and the angels and the god corporeal. Man naturally improve upon every system Saint Bernard as father Marbion confesses taught that the soul after death does not see God in the celestial regions but converses with Christ's human nature only. However he was not believed at this time on his bare word the adventure of the crusade having a little sunk the credit of his oracles afterwards a thousand schoolmen arose such as the irreverable doctor the subtle doctor the angelic doctor the seraphic doctor and the cherubic doctor who were all sure that they had a very clear and distinct idea of the soul and yet wrote in such a manner that one would conclude they were resolved no one should understand a word in their writings. Our Descartes born to discover the eras of antiquity and at the same time to substitute his own and hurried away by that dramatic spirit which throws a cloud over the minds of the greatest man thought he had demonstrated that the soul is the same thing as thought in the same manner as matter in his opinion is the same as extension he asserted that man thinks eternally and that the soul at its coming into the body is informed with the whole series of mental physical notions knowing God infinite space possessing all abstract ideas in a word completely endued with the most sublime light which it unhappily forgets and it's issuing from the whoop Father Malbranche in his sublime illusions not only admitted innate ideas but did not doubt of our living holy in God and that God is as it were our soul such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance of the soul a sage at last arose who gave with an air of the greatest modesty the history of it Mr. Locke has displayed the human soul in the same manner as an excellent anatomist explains the springs of the human body he everywhere takes the light of physics for his guide he sometimes presumes to speak affirmatively but then he presumes also to doubt instead of concluding at once what we know not he examines gradually what we would know he takes an infant at the instant of his birth he traces step by step the progress of his understanding examines what things he has in common with beasts and what he possesses above them above all he consults himself the being conscious that he himself thinks I shall leave says he to those who know more of this matter than myself the examining whether the soul exists before or after the organisation of our bodies but I confess that it is my lot to be animated with one of those heavy souls which do not think always and I'm even so unhappy as not to conceive that it is more necessary the soul should think perpetually than that body should be forever in motion with regard to myself I shall boast that I have the honour to be a stupid in this particular as Mr. Locke no one shall ever make me believe that I think always and I am as little inclined as he could be to fancy that some weeks after I was conceived I was a very learned soul knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot at my birth and possessing when in the womb though to no men our purpose knowledge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it and which I have never since been able to recover perfectly Mr. Locke after having destroyed innate ideas after having fully renounced the of believing that we think always after having laid down from the most solid principles that ideas enter the mind through the senses having examined our simple and complex ideas having traced the human mind through its several operations having shown that all the languages in the world are imperfect and the great abuse that is made of words every moment he at last comes to consider the extent or rather the narrow limits of human knowledge it was in this chapter he presumed to advance but very modestly the following words we shall perhaps never be capable of knowing whether a being purely a material thinks or not this sage assertion was by more devines than one looked upon as a scandalous declaration that the soul is material and mortal some Englishman devout after their way sounded an alarm the superstitious are the same in society as cowards in an army they themselves are seized with a panic fear and communicate it to others it was loudly exclaimed that Mr. Locke intended to destroy religion nevertheless religion had nothing to do in the affair it being a question purely philosophical altogether independent of faith and revelation Mr. Locke's opponents needed but to examine calmly and impartially whether the declaring that matter can think implies a contradiction and whether God is able to communicate thought to matter but deviles are too apt to begin their decorations with saying that God is offended when people differ from them in opinion in which they too much resemble the bad poets who used to declare publicly that Boilu spake irreverently of Louis XIV because he ridiculed their stupid productions Bishop Stillingfleet got the repetition of a calm and unprojudiced divine because he did not expressly make use of injurious terms in his dispute with Mr. Locke that divine entered the lists against him but was defeated for he argued as a schoolman at Locke as a philosopher who was perfectly acquainted with the strong as well as the weak side of the human mind and who fought with weapons whose temper he knew if I might presume to give my opinion are so delicate a subject after Mr. Locke I would say that man had long disputed on the nature and the immortality of the soul with regard to its immortality it is impossible to give a demonstration of it since its nature is still the subject of controversy which however must be thoroughly understood before a person can be able to determine whether it be immortal or not human reason is so little able merely by its own strength to demonstrate the immortality of the soul that it was absolutely necessary religion should review it to us it is of advantage to society in general that mankind should believe the soul to be immortal faith commands us to do this nothing more is required and a matter is clear to our pet once but it is otherwise with respect to its nature it is of little importance to religion which only requires the soul to be virtuous whatever substance it may be made of it is a clock which is given us to regulate but the artist has not told us of what materials the spring of this clock is composed I am a body and I think that's all I know of the matter shall I ascribe to an unknown cause what I can so easily impute to the only second cause I am acquainted with here all the school philosophers interrupt me with their arguments and declare that there is only extension and solidity in bodies and that there can have nothing but motion and figure now motion, figure, extension and solidity cannot form a thought and consequently the soul cannot be matter all this so often repeated mighty series of reasoning amounts to no more than this I am absolutely ignorant what matter is I guess but imperfectly some properties of it now I absolutely cannot tell whether these properties may be joined to thought as I therefore know nothing I maintain positively that matter cannot think in this manner do the school's reason Mr. Locke addressed these gentlemen in the candid sincere manner following at least confess yourself to be as ignorant as I neither your imaginations or mine are able to comprehend in what manner a body is susceptible of ideas and do you conceive better a substance of what kind so ever is susceptible of them as you cannot comprehend either matter or spirit why would you presume to assert anything the superstitious bang comes afterwards and declares that all those must be burnt for the good of their souls who so much as suspect that it is possible for the body to think without any foreign assistance but what would these people say should they themselves be proved irreligious and indeed what man can presume to assert without being guilty at the same time of the greatest impiety that it is impossible for the creator to form matter with thought and sensation consider only I beg you what a dilemma you bring yourself into you who confine this manner the power of the creator these have the same organs the same sensations the same perceptions as we they have memory and combine certain ideas in case it was not in the power of God to animate matter and inform it with sensation the consequence would be either that bees are mere machines or that they have a spiritual soul me thinks it is clearly evident that bees cannot be mere machines which I prove this God has given to them the very same organs of sensation as to us if therefore they have no sensation God has created a useless thing now according to your own confession God does nothing in vain he therefore did not create so many organs of sensation merely for them to be uninformed with this faculty consequently beasts are not mere machines beasts according to your assertion cannot be animated with a spiritual soul you will therefore in spite of yourself be reduced to this only assertion namely that God has endured the organs of beasts who are no matter with the faculties of sensation and perception which you call instinct in them but why may not God if he pleases communicate to our more delicate organs that faculty of feeling perceiving and thinking which we call human reason to whatever side you turn you are forced to acknowledge your own ignorance and the boundness power of the creator exclaimed therefore no more against the modest the philosopher of Mr. Locke which so far from interfering with religion would be of use to demonstrate the truth of it in case religion wanted any such support for what philosophy can be of a more religious nature than that which affirming nothing but what it conceives clearly and conscious of its own weakness declares that we must always have recalls to God in our examining of the first the principles besides we must not be apprehensive that any philosophical opinion will ever prejudiced the religion of a country though our demonstrations clash directly with our mysteries that is nothing to the purpose for the letter are not less revered upon that account by our Christian philosophers who know very well that the objects of reason and those of faith are of very different nature philosophers will never form a religious sect the reason is their writings are not calculated for the vulgar and they themselves are free from enthusiasm if we divide mankind into 20 parts it will be found that 19 of these consist of persons employed in manual labour who will never know that such a man as Mr. Locke existed in a remaining 20th part how few are readers and among such as are so 20 amuse themselves with commences to one who studies philosophy the thinking part of mankind is confined to a very small number and these will never disturb the peace and tranquility of the world neither Montaigne, Locke, Bell Spinoza, Hobbes, the Lord Shaftesbury, Collings, North Holland, lighted up the firebrand of discord in their countries this has generally been the work of devines who being at first a puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a sect soon grew very desirous of being the head of a party but what do I say all the works of the modern philosophers put together will never make so much noise as even the dispute which arose among the Franciscans merely about the fashion of their sleeves and of their cows. End of letter 13 recording by Cheyenne Arosmith Letter 14 of Letter So-England by Voltaire edited by Henry Morley this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Cheyenne Arosmith Letter So-England by Voltaire Letter 14 on Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton A Frenchman who arrives in London will find philosophy like everything else very much changed there he had left the world a plenum and he now finds it a vacuum. At Paris the universe is seen composed of vortices of sutile meta but nothing like it is seen in London in France it is the pressure of the moon that caused the tides but in England it is the sea that gravitates towards the moon so that when you think that the moon should make it flood with us those gentlemen fancy it should be ebb which very unluckily cannot be proved for to be able to do this it is necessary the moon and the tides should have been inquired into at the very instant of the creation you will observe father that the son which in France is said to have nothing to do in the affair comes in here for very near a quarter of its assistance according to your catechons everything is performed by an impulsion of which we have very little notion and according to Sir Isaac Newton it is by an attraction the cause of which is as much unknown to us at Paris you imagine that the earth is shaped by a melon or of an oblique figure at London it has an oblique one a catechon declares that light exists in the air but a Newtonia asserts that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half the several operations of your chemistry are performed by acids alkalines and sutile matter but attraction prevails even in chemistry among the English the very essence of things is totally changed you neither agreed upon the definition of the law on that of matter Descartes as I observed in my last maintains that the soul is the same thing with thought and Mr Locke has given a pretty good proof of the contrary Descartes asserts father that extension alone constitutes matter but Sir Isaac adds solidity to it how furiously contradictory are these opinions no nostrum mintel voestant has component lits Virgil egg log 3 it is not for us to end such great disputes this famous Newton this destroyer of the Cartesian system died in March and all 1727 his countrymen honoured him in his lifetime and interred him as though he had been a king who had made his people happy the English read with the highest satisfaction and translated into their tongue the elogium of Sir Isaac Newton which Monsieur de Fontenelle spoke in the Academy of Sciences Monsieur de Fontenelle presides as judge over philosophers and the English expected his decision as a solemn declaration of the superiority of the English philosophy over that of the French but when it was found that this gentleman had compared Descartes to Sir Isaac the whole Royal Society in London rose up in arms so far from Marquessing with Monsieur de Fontenelle's judgment they criticised his discourse and even several who however were not the ableist philosophers were offended at the comparison and for no other reason but because Descartes was a Frenchman it must be confessed that these two great men differed very much in conduct in fortune and in philosophy nature had indulged Descartes with a shining and strong imagination whence he became a very singular person both in private life and in his manner of reasoning this imagination could not conceal itself even in his philosophical works which are everywhere adorned with Chinese ingenious metaphors and figures nature had almost made him a poet and indeed he wrote a piece of poetry for the entertainment of Christina Queen of Sweden which however was suppressed in honour to his memory he embraced a military life for some time and afterwards becoming a complete philosopher he did not think the passion of love derogatory to his character he had by his mistress a daughter called Francine who died young and was very much regretted for him thus he experienced every passion incident to mankind he was a long time of opinion that it would be necessary for him to fly from the society of his fellow creators and especially from his native country in order to enjoy the happiness of cultivating his philosophical studies in full liberty Descartes was very right for his contemporaries were not knowing enough to improve and enlighten his understanding and were capable of little else than of giving him uneasiness after France purely to go in search of truth which was then persecuted by the wretched philosophy of the schools however he found that reason was as much disguised and depraved in the universities of Holland into which he withdrew as in his own country for at the time that the French condemned the only propositions of his philosophy which were true he was persecuted by the pretended philosophers of Holland who understood him no better and who having a nearer view of his glory hated his person the more so that he was obligated to leave Eutect Descartes was injuriously accused of being an atheist the last refuge of religious scandal and he who had employed all the sagacity and penetration of his genius in searching for new proofs of the existence of a god was suspected to believe there was no such being such a persecution from all sides must necessarily suppose a most exhorted merit as well as a very distinguished repetition and indeed he possessed the both reason at that time darted array upon the world through the groom of the schools and prejudices of popular superstition at last his name spread so universally that the French were desirous of bringing him back into his native country by rewards and accordingly offered him an annual pension of a thousand crowns upon these hopes Descartes returned to France pay the fees of his patent sold at that time but no pension was settled upon him thus disappointed he returned to his solitude in North Holland where he again pursued a study of philosophy while as the great Galileo at full score years of age was groaning in the presence of the Inquisition only for having demonstrated the earth's motion. Alas Descartes was snatched from the world in the flower of his age at Stockholm his death was owing to a bad regimen and he expired in the midst of some literati who were his enemies and under the hands of a physician to whom he was odious the progress of the Isaac Newton's life was quite different he lived a happy and very much honoured in his native country to the age of full score and five years it was his peculiar felicity not only to be born in a country of liberty but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were banished from the world the reason alone was cultivated and mankind could only be his pupil not his enemy one very singular difference in the lives of these two great men is that Sir Isaac during the long course of years he enjoyed was never sensible to any passion was not subject to the common realities of mankind nor ever had any commerce with women a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments we may admire Sir Isaac Newton on this occasion but then we must not censure Descartes the opinion that generally prevails in England with regard to these new philosophers is that the latter was a dreamer and the former a sage very few people in England read Descartes whose works indeed are now useless on the other side but a small number perused those of Sir Isaac because to do this the student must be deeply skilled in mathematics otherwise those works will be unintelligible to him but not withstanding this these great men are the subject of everyone's discourse Sir Isaac Newton is allowed every advantage while as the Descartes is not indulged a single one according to some it is to the former that we own the discovery of a vacuum that the air is a heavy body and the invention of telescopes in a word Sir Isaac Newton is here as the Hercules saw fabulous story to whom the ignorant has scribed all the feats of ancient heroes in a critique that was made in London on Monsieur de Fontenelle's discourse the writer presumed to assert that Descartes was not a great geometrician those who make such a decoration may justly be reproached with flying in their masters face Descartes extended the limits of geometry as far beyond the place where he found them as Sir Isaac did after him the former first talked the method of expressing curves by equations this geometry which thanks to him for it is now grown common was so upstrooth in his time that not so much as one professor would undertake to explain it and shotten in Holland and four men in France were the only man who understood it he applied this geometrical and inventive genius to dioptrics which when treated or by him became a new art and if he was mistaken in some things the reason of that is a man who discovers a new tract of land cannot at once know all the properties of the soil those who come after him and make these land fruitful are at least obliged to him for the discovery I will not deny but that there are innumerable errors in the rest of Descartes works geometry was a guide he himself had in some measure fashion which would have conducted him safely through the several paths of natural philosophy nevertheless he had last abandoned this guide and moved entirely into the humour of forming hypothesis and then philosophy was no more than an ingenious romance fit only to amuse the ignorant he was mistaken in the nature of the soil in the proofs of the existence of a god in matter in the laws of motion and in the nature of light he admitted innate ideas he invented new elements he created a world he made man according to his own fancy he said that the man of Descartes in fact that of Descartes only very different from the real one he pushed his mental physical errors so far as to declare that two and two make four for no other reason but because god would have it so however it will not be making him too great a compliment if we affirm that he was valuable even in his mistakes he deceived himself but then it was at least in a methodical way and all the absurd chimeras with which youth had been infatuated for two thousand years he taught his contemporaries how to reason and enabled them to employ his own weapons against himself if Descartes did not pay in good money he however did great service in crying down that of a base alloy I indeed believe that very few will presume to compare his philosophy in any respect with that of Sir Isaac Newton the former is an essay the letter a masterpiece but then the man who first brought us to the path of truth was perhaps as great a genius as he who afterwards conducted us through it Descartes gave sight to the blind these saw the eras of antiquity and of the sciences the path he struck out is since become boundless poor's little work was during some years a complete system of physics but now all the transactions all academies in Europe put together do not form so much as the beginning of a system in Featherman this abyss no-bottom has been found we are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it End of Letter 14 Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter 15 of Letter Song England by Voltaire edited by Harry Molley this is a LibriVox recording in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cheyenne Arrowsmith Letter Song England by Voltaire Letter 15 on Attraction the discoveries which gained Sir Isaac Newton's so universal repetition relate to the system of the world to light, to geometrical infinities and lastly to chronology with which he used to amuse himself after the fatigue of his severest studies I will now acquaint you without prolixity if possible with the few things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas with regard to the system of our world disputes were a long time maintained on the course that turns the planets and keeps them in their orbits and on those courses here below descend towards the surface of the earth the system of Descartes explained and improved since his time seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena and this reason seemed more just as it is simple and intelligible to all capacities but in philosophy a student ought to doubt of the things he fenses he understands too easily as much as of those he does not understand gravity, the falling of accelerated bodies on the earth the revolution of the planets in their orbits their rotations around their axis all this is mere motion now motion cannot perhaps be conceived any otherwise than by impulsion therefore all those bodies must be impaled but by what are they impaled all space is full therefore is filled with a very subtle matter since this is acceptable to us, this matter goes from west to east since all the planets are carried from west to east thus from hypothesis to hypothesis from one appearance to another philosophers have imagined a vast weeple of subtle matter in which the planets are carried around the sun they also have created another particular vortex which floats in the great one and which turns daily round the planets when all this is done it is pretended that gravity depends on this diagonal motion for say these the velocity of the subtle matter that turns round our little vortex must be 17 times more rapid than that of the earth or in case its velocity is 17 times greater than that of the earth its central fugue force must be vastly greater and consequently impale all bodies towards the earth according to the Cartesian system but the theorist before he calculated the central fugue force and velocity of the subtle matter should first have been certain that it existed Zizak Newton seems to have destroyed all these great and little vortices both that which carries the planets round the sun as well as the other which supposes every planet to turn on its own axis first with regard to the pretended little vortex of the earth it is demonstrated that it must lose its motion by insensible degrees it is demonstrated that if the earth swims in a fluid its density must be equal to that of the earth and in case its density be the same all the bodies we endeavor to move must meet with an insuperable resistance with regard to the great vortices they are still more chimerical and it is impossible to make them agree with Kepler's law the truth of which has been demonstrated Zizak shows that the revolution of the fluid in which Jupiter is supposed to be carried is not the same with regard to the revolution of the fluid of the earth as the revolution of Jupiter with respect to that of the earth it proves that the planets make their revolutions in ellipses and consequently being at a much greater distance one from the other in their aphilia and a little nearer in their perihelia the earth's velocity for instance ought to be greater when it is nearer Venus and Mars because the fluid that carries it long being then more pressed ought to have a greater motion and yet it is even then that the earth's motion is slower he proves that there is no such thing as a celestial matter which goes from west to east the comet traverses those spaces sometimes from east to west and at other times from north to south in find a better to resolve if possible every difficulty he proves and even by experiments that it is impossible there should be a plenum and brings back the vacuum which Aristotle and Descartes had banished from the world having by these and several other arguments destroyed the Cartesian vortices and he spared of ever being able to discover whether there is a secret principle in nature which at the same time is the cause of the motion of all celestial bodies and that of gravity on the earth but being retired in 1666 upon the count of the plague to a solitude near Cambridge as he was walking one day in his garden and saw some fruits fall from a tree he fell into a profound meditation the cause of which had so long been sought but in vain by all the philosophers while as the Volga think there is nothing mysterious in it he said to himself that from what height in our hemisphere those bodies might descend therefore would certainly be in the progression discovered by Galileo and spaces they run through would be as the square of the times why may not this power force as heavy bodies to descend and is the same without any sensible diminution at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth or on the summit of the highest mountains why said Sir Isaac may not this power extend as high as the moon and in case its inference reaches so far is it not very probable that this power retains it in its orbit and determines its motion the moon obeys this principle whatever it be may we not conclude very naturally that the rest of the planets are equally subject to it in case this power exists which besides is proved it must increase in an inverse ratio of the squares of the distances or therefore that remains is to examine how far a heavy body which should fall upon the earth from a moderate height would go and how far at that time a body which should fall from the orbit of the moon would descend to find this nothing is wanted but the measure of the earth and the distance of the moon from it thus Sir Isaac Newton reasoned but at that time the English hired but a very imperfect measure of our globe and depended on the uncertain supposition of marinas who computed a degree to contain but 60 English miles whereas it consists of a degree of near 70 as this force computation did not agree with the conclusions which Sir Isaac intended to draw from them he laid aside this pursuit a half-learned philosopher remarkable only for his vanity would have made a measure of the earth agree anyhow with his system Sir Isaac however chose rather to quit the researchers he was then engaged in but after Mr Picard had measured the earth exactly suggesting that Meridian which redound so much to the honour of the French Sir Isaac Newton resumed his former reflections and found his accounting Mr Picard's calculation a circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to me is that such sublime discoveries should have been made by the sole assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic the circumference of the earth is 123 million 249,600 feet this among other things is necessary to prove the system of attraction the instance we know the earth's circumference and the distance of the moon we know that of the moon's orbit and the diameter of this orbit the moon performs its revolution in that orbit in 27 days 7 hours 43 minutes it is demonstrated that the moon in its mean motion is 104 score and 7,960 feet of Paris in a minute it is likewise demonstrated by a known theorem that the central force which should make a body fall from the height of the moon would make its velocity no more than 15 Paris feet in a minute of time now if the law by which bodies gravitate and attract one another in an inverse ratio to the squares of the distances if the same power acts according to that law throughout all nature it is evident that as the earth is 60 semi diameters distant from the moon a heavy body must necessarily fall on the earth 15 feet in first a second and 54,000 feet in first a minute now a heavy body falls in reality 15 feet in first a second and goes in first a minute 54,000 feet which number is the square of 60 multiplied by 15 bodies therefore gravitate in an inverse ratio of the squares of the distances consequently what causes gravity on earth and keeps the moon in its orbit is one and same power it being demonstrated that the moon gravitates on the earth which is the centre of its particular motion it is demonstrated that the earth can gravitate on the sun which is the centre of their animal motion the rest of the planets must be subject to this general law and if this law exists these planets must follow the laws which Kepler discovered all these laws all these relations are indeed observed by the planets with the utmost exactness therefore the power of attraction causes all the planets to gravitate towards the sun and the centre as the moon gravitates towards our globe finally as in all bodies reaction is equal to action it is certain that the earth gravitates also towards the moon and that the sun gravitates towards both that every one of the satellites or Saturn gravitates towards the other four and the other four towards it or five towards Saturn and Saturn towards all that it is the same with regard to Jupiter and that all these globes are attracted by the sun which is reciprocally attracted by them this power of gravitation acts proportionably to the quantity of matter in bodies a truth which Sir Isaac has demonstrated by experiments this new discovery has been of use to show that the sun the centre of the planetary system attracts them all in a direct ratio of their quantity of matter combined with their nearness from hence Sir Isaac rising by degrees to discoveries which seemed not to be formed for the human mind is bold enough to compute the quantity of matter contained in the sun and in every planet and in this manner shows from the simple laws of mechanics that every celestial globe ought necessarily to be where it is placed his bare principle of the laws of gravitation accounts for all the apparent inequalities in the course of the celestial globes the variations of the moon are unnecessary consequence of those laws moreover the reason is evidently seeing why the nodes of the moon performed their revolutions in 19 years and those of the earth in about 26,000 the several appearances observed in the tides are also a very simple effect of this attraction the proximity of the moon when at the full and when it is new and its distance in the quadratures or quarters combined with the action of the sun exhibit a sensible reason why the ocean swells and sinks after having shown by his sublime theory the course and the inequalities of the planets his subjects comets to the same law the orbit of these fires unknown for so greater series of years which was the terror of mankind and the rock against the which philosophy split placed by Aristotle below the moon and sent back by Dickhart above the sphere of Saturn is at last placed in its proper seat by Sir Isaac Newton he proves that comets are solid bodies which move in the sphere of the sun's activity and that they describe an ellipsis so very eccentric and so near to parabolus that certain comets must take up 500 years in their revolution the learned Dr Haley is of opinion that the comet seen in 1680 is the same which appeared in Julius Caesar's time this shows more than any other that comets are hard opaque bodies for it descended so near to the sun as to come within a sixth part of the diameter of this planet from it and consequently might have contracted a degree of heat 2,000 times stronger than that of red hot iron and would have been soon dispersed in vapor had it not been a firm dense body the guessing the cause of comet began then to be very much in vogue the celebrated Bernoulli concluded by his system that the famous comet of 1680 would appear again the 17th of May 1719 not a single astronomer in Europe went to bed that night however they needed not to have broke their rest for the famous comet never appeared there is at least a more cunning if not mere certainty in fixing it's return to so remote a distance as 575 years as to Mr Wiston he affirmed very seriously that in a time of the deluge a comet overflowed the terrestrial globe and he was so unreasonable as to wonder that people laughed at him for making such an assertion the ancients were almost in the same way of thinking with Mr Wiston and fenced that comets were always the forerunners of some great calamity which was to befall mankind Cysac Newton on the contrary suspected that they are very beneficent and that vapours exhale from them merely to nourish and vivify the planets which imbibe in their cause the several particles the sun has detached from the comet an opinion which at least is more probable than the former but this is not all if this power of gravitation or attraction acts on all the celestial globes it acts undoubtedly on the several parts of these globes for in case bodies attract one another in proportion to the quantity of matter containing them it can only be in proportion to the quantity of their parts and if this power is found in a whole it is undoubtedly in the half in quarters in the eighth part and so on in infinitum this is attraction the great spring by which all nature is moved so Cysac Newton after having demonstrated the existence of this principle plainly foresaw that its very name would offend and therefore this philosopher in more places than one of his books gives the reader some caution about it he bit him beware of confounding this name with what the ancients called occult qualities but to be satisfied with knowing that there is in all bodies a central force which acts to the utmost limit of the unive