4. The True Briton No. 24 (23 August 1723)
Introduction
The editor's head note implies at least some prior familiarity with the writer, and the
closing remark by “A.B.” makes clear that he has had letters previously accepted
for publication; it seems probable that this person was the same as the one who wrote Nos. 6,
9, and 23. Like Nos. 6 and 23, this letter once again addresses the oppression of the Roman
Catholics under the recent governmental decrees in revenge for the Jacobite conspiracy. But the
special emphasis on the plight of women who have to take oaths of allegiance to avoid the
penalties imposed on their religious beliefs may bring us closer to Richardson's life-long
interest in ameliorating the woman's situation in general. The topic concerning the solemn
taking of oaths is a frequent occurrence in his novels, especially by way of discrediting the
libertines whose
word is worthless to women. But in contrast to the previous two letters by “A.B.,”
this one is mainly an extracting of a long debate that “Dr. Wake (now Archbishop of
Canterbury) published” as a “Practical Discourse concerning
Swearing, in the Year 1696.”
Although Sale does not provide evidence that Richardson printed anything by Wake,
nevertheless the extensive extracting of this churchman's pronouncements on the issue of
swearing has at least the format of what Richardson performed, say, in his culling of
authorities in the third part of the Vade Mecum. In any case, this is
more obviously the “cut-and-paste” technique of sifting other texts for one's own
essay that Richardson is known to have used repeatedly and that is also very difficult to
identify with any particular writer/editor in the process. It may be more than a coincidence
that the Daily Journal (13 May 1723) ran The conduct
of Dr. Wake, relating to the Controversy between him and Dr. Atterbury. This letter by
“A.B.”
appears after the editor's essay on the problem of the goverment's demanding oaths denying any
allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church and thus supplements the previous number on religious
persecution.
A telltale sign of Richardson's hand in this number is difficult to prove because of its
method of borrowing words at length from another author—Dr. William Wake, the Archbishop
of Canterbury (1657-1737), on the matter of swearing. When McKillop noted Richardson's
“rather perfunctory compilation of extracts from contemporary authors against `skepticism
and infidelity,'” for the third part of the Vade Mecum, he need
not have stopped
there (Introduction to Vade Mecum, p. i). Much of the anonymous
material in the newspapers printed and perhaps composed by Richardson is also in the form of
perfunctory compilations. Richardson was an expert at the “cut-and-paste” technique
in the printerly world of his time, and it is this very technique that lends him the aura of a
man of learning. It may be the same writer, for instance, who, in the Daily
Journal (13 May 1723), also extracted
extensively Dr. Wake's opinions “relating to the controversy between him and Dr.
Atterbury,” which according to the DNB is one of the most important among his voluminous
writings. As a printer with more than a casual interest in the Atterbury case during the
Jacobite scare of 1723, Richardson could well have had on hand Wake's tract in their
controversy.
Furthermore, in the True Briton No. 47 (11 November 1723), an
advertisement for A Compleat History of Public and Solemn State Oaths,
Containing, The Forms of all such as have been taken, either by the Kings of England at their
Coronation, or administered to the Subjects upon every Occasion may indicate a source of
this letter-writer's authority on the matter
of oaths. In the domestic conflicts of his novels, Richardson continually emphasizes the need
to distrust the libertine's word and his whole untrustworthiness while making promises. In the
moral extracts from Clarissa, included in an appendix at the end of the
third edition, Richardson observes: “The man who binds his Promises by Oaths, indirectly
confesses that his word is not to be taken” (Clarissa, 3rd edn.,
8:393).
Text
THE following Letter is just come to my Hands from my worthy Friend, whose Honesty, I hope,
every TRUE BRITON, who reads this Paper, will acknowledge.
