REASONS HUMBLY OFFERED BY THE COMPANY EXERCISING THE TRADE AND AGAINST PART OF THE BILL FOR THE BETTER VIEWING, BEING called upon by several retailers and dispensers of drugs and medicines about town, to use our endeavours against the bill now depending for viewing, &c., in regard of our common interest, and in gratitude to the said retailers and dispensers of medicines, which we have always found to be very effectual, we presume to lay the following reasons before the public against the said bill. That the Company of Upholders are far from being averse to the giving of drugs and medicines in general, provided they may be of such qualities as we require, and administered by such persons, in whom our Company justly repose the greatest confidence; and provided they tend to the encouragement of trade, and the consumption of the woollen manufacture of this kingdom. 2 We beg leave to observe, that there hath been no complaint from any of the nobility, gentry, and citizens whom we have attended; our practice, which consists chiefly in outward applications, having been always so effectual, that none of our patients have been obliged to undergo a second operation, excepting one gentlewoman, who, after her first burial, having burthened her husband with a new brood of posthumous children, her second funeral was by us performed without any 1 In the year 1724 the physicians made application to parliament to prevent apothecaries dispensing medicine without the prescription of a physician: during which this tract was dispersed in the Court of Requests. See page 107. 2 An Act of 1678 obliged the dead to be buried in woollen, to protect homespun goods against foreign linen. further charges to the said husband of the deceased. And we humbly hope that one single instance of this kind, a misfortune owing merely to the avarice of a sexton in cutting off a ring, will not be imputed to any want of skill or care in our Company. We humbly conceive that the power by this bill lodged in the Censors of the College of Physicians to restrain any of his Majesty's subjects from dispensing, and well-disposed persons from taking what medicines they please, is a manifest encroachment on the liberty and property of the subject. As the Company exercising the trade and mystery of Upholders have an undisputed right in and upon the bodies of all and every the subjects of the kingdom, we conceive the passing of this bill, though not absolutely depriving them of their said right, might keep them out of possession by unreasonable delays, to the great detriment of our company and their numerous families. We hope it will be considered, that there are multitudes of necessitous heirs and penurious parents, persons in pinching circumstances with numerous families of children, wives that have lived long, many robust aged women with great jointures, elder brothers with bad understandings, single heirs of great estates, whereby the collateral line are for ever excluded, reversionary patents, and reversionary promises of preferments, leases upon single lives, and play-debts upon joint lives, and that the persons so aggrieved have no hope of being speedily relieved any other way than by the dispensing of drugs and medicines in the manner they now are; burying alive being judged repugnant to the known laws of this kingdom. That there are many of the deceased, who by certain mechanical motions and powers are carried about town, who would have been put into our hands long before this time by any other well-ordered government: by want of a due police in this particular our Company have been great sufferers. That frequent funerals contribute to preserve the genealogies of families, and the honours conferred by the crown, which are no where so well illustrated as on this solemn occasion; to maintain necessitous clergy; to enable the clerks to appear in decent habits to officiate on Sundays; to feed the great retinue of sober and melancholy men, who appear at the said funerals, and who must starve without constant and regular employment. Moreover we desire it may be remembered that by the passing of this bill the nobility and gentry will have their old coaches lie upon their hands, which are now employed by our Company. And we further hope that frequent funerals will not be discouraged, as is by this bill proposed, it being the only method left of carrying some people to church. We are afraid that by the hardships of this bill our Company will be reduced to leave their business here, and practise at York and Bristol, where the free use of bad medicines will still be allowed. It is therefore hoped that no specious pretence whatsoever will be thought sufficient to introduce an arbitrary and unlimited power for people to live (in defiance of art) as long as they can by the course of nature, to the prejudice of our Company, and the decay of trade. That as our Company are like to suffer in some measure by the power given to physicians to dissect the bodies of malefactors, we humbly hope that the manufacture of cases for skeletons will be reserved solely to the coffin-makers. We likewise humbly presume that the interests of the several trades and professions which depend upon ours may be regarded; such as that of hearses, coaches, coffins, epitaphs, and bell-ropes, stone-cutters, feather-men, and bell-ringers; and especially the manufacturers of crapes, and the makers of snuff, who use great quantities of old coffins, and who, considered in the consumption of their drugs, employ by far the greatest number of hands of any manufacture of the kingdom. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF MR. JOHN GINGLICUTT'S TREATISE CONCERNING THE ALTERCATION OR SCOLDING OF THE ANCIENTS. BY THE AUTHOR1. I was born near the Monument of that dreadful fire which consumed this august city, where my mother, Mrs. Judith Ginglicutt, being soon after my birth left a widow, has continued to sell some fishes of the testaceous kind, which exert their stimulating quality on the constitutions of such as eat them, and in the discourse of such as vend them. My mother, by an assiduous and honest traffic in the aforesaid commodity, acquired wherewith, not only to maintain, but liberally to educate me, her only child. When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honour of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate, by composing a Treatise of the Altercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is no where so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood. The word altercation, which properly signifies debating, has likewise been translated scolding; therefore, complying with modern barbarity, I have taken it in the most extensive sense. I propose publishing this my treatise by subscription; the reasons which have induced me to do it at this time are, first, to rectify a general mistake of the moderns, who find fault 1 Published in 1731. See pages 132-3. with the acute style of the present political disputations, Secondly, to administer comfort unto such as think themselves abused on either side, by shewing that calling of names is true Greek and Roman eloquence, and bearing such appellations is Greek and Roman virtue. Thirdly, to dissipate the fears of some well-meaning people, who think our liberty in danger, which is impossible, as long as this truly ancient and polite rhetoric subsists, which is both the symptom and cause of public liberty. Fourthly, to assist the promising geniuses which are daily rising in my native country. The mistake of people who censure the plain appellations and epithets which the political antagonists on each side bestow on their adversaries proceeds from two causes; the first is the not sufficiently distinguishing between propriety and truth of speech. Propriety of language is when an author maketh use of the expression which is most apposite to his own idea, but doth not suppose the idea to be either absolutely true or false thus he who thinks, and calls his adversary a rogue, certainly speaks properly, though perhaps not truly; those terms of objurgation which so offend the moderns, are only short and significant words to express a complex idea. Thus tell a modern, 'Sir, you have often deceived me,' it would only put him upon his own vindication; but if you call him a cheat, you run the risk of a drubbing: and pray what should make so wide a difference between a circumlocution and a nounsubstantive, which both express the same thing? The second cause of this general mistake, is ignorance of the languages and manners of purest antiquity, wherein this opprobrious language (so much censured nowadays) was quite familiar, as I have showed through the whole body of my work. In the first chapter I have settled the notion of the term barbarous, which was constantly applied to every thing that was not Greek or Roman, and ought still to retain the same signification; in consequence of which, I have proved that the ceremonious, humble, low manner of speech and address of the moderns, their pompous titles of honour, coats of arms, and all the jargon of heraldry and chivalry, are gothic and barbarous, introduced by the fall of the republics of Greece and Rome. Did ever a citizen of any of those republics say to his equal or superior, 'your devoted slave'? On the contrary, the dialect of those republics, where they call things by |