Wesley Corpus

This morning a friend sent me the Gentleman's Magazine for last May, wherein I find another letter .concerning my eldest brother. I am obliged to Mr. Badcock for the candid manner wherein he writes, and wish to follow his pattern in considering the reasons which he urges in defense of what he wrote before. [See 'Some Remarks on Article X of Mr. Mary's New Review for December 1784' in Works, xiii. 408-11; and heading to letter of June 17, 1724.] 1. Mr. B. says: 'His brother cannot be ignorant that he always bore the character of Jacobite, a title to which I really believe he had no dislike.' Most of those who gave him this title did not distinguish between a Jacobite and a Tory; whereby I mean 'one that believes God, not the people, to be the origin of all civil power.' In this sense he was a Tory; so was my father; so am I. But I am no more a Jacobite than I am a Turk; neither was my brother. I have heard him over and over disclaim that character. 2. 'But his own daughter affirmed it.' Very likely she might; and doubtless she thought him such. Nor is this any wonder, considering how young she was when her father died especially if she did not know the difference between a Tory and a Jacobite; which may likewise have been the case with Mr. Badcock's friends, if not with Mr. Badcock himself. 3. Mr. W. says, 'He never published anything political.' This is strictly true. 'He never wrote, much less published, one line against the King.' He never published one. But I believe he did write those verses entitled 'The Regency,' and therein, 'by obliquely exposing the Regents, exposed the King himself.' In this my brother and I differed in our judgments. I thought exposing the King's Ministers was one way of exposing the King himself. My brother thought otherwise; and therefore without scruple exposed Sir Robert Walpole and all other evil Ministers. Of his writing to Sir Robert I never heard before, and cannot easily believe it now.