BLES.

BY THOMAS HOPE, ESQ.

To the Right Reverend, Right Honourable, and Right Worshipful, and
to the Reverend, Honourable, and Worshipful, &c. Company of
Stockjobbers; whether Honest or Dishonest, Pious or Impious, Wise
or Otherwise, Male or Female, Young or Old, One with another, who
have suffered Depredation by the late Bubbles: _Greeting_.

Having received the following scheme from Dublin, I give you the
earliest notice, how you may retrieve the DECUS ET TUTAMEN,[23]
which you have sacrificed by permits in bubbles. This project is founded
on a Parliamentary security, besides, the devil is in it, if it can
fail, since a dignitary of the Church[24] is at the head on't. Therefore
you, who have subscribed to the stocking insurance, and are out at the
heels, may soon appear tight about the legs. You, who encouraged the
hemp manufacture, may leave the halter to rogues, and prevent the odium
of _felo de se_. Medicinal virtues are here to be had without the
expense and hazard of a dispensary: You may sleep without dreaming of
bottles at your tail, and a looking-glass shall not affright you; and
since the glass bubble proved as brittle as its ware, and broke together
with itself the hopes of its proprietors, they may make themselves whole
by subscribing to our new fund.

Here indeed may be made three very grave objections, by incredulous
interested priests, ambitious citizens, and scrupulous statesmen. The
stocking manufactory gentlemen don't know how swearing can bring 'em to
any probability of covering their legs anew, unless it be by the means
of a pair of stocks: That the hemp-snared men apprehend, that such an
encouragement for oaths can tend to no other advancement, promotion, and
exaltation of their persons, than that of the gallows: The late old
ordinary, Paul,[25] having grown grey in the habit of making this
accurate observation in every month's Session-Paper, "That swearing had
as great a hand in the suspension of every living soul under his cure,
as Sabbath-breaking itself;" and that the glass-bubble-men cannot, for
their lives, with the best pair of spectacles, that is the only thing
left neat and whole, out of all their wares, see how they shall make
anything out of this his oath-project, supposing he should even confirm
by one its goodness: An oath being, as they say, as brittle as glass,
and only made to be broken.

But those incredulous priests shall not go without an answer,