LETTER II.

AS TO THE TRUTH OF THE CHARGE OF IRRELIGION BROUGHT

BY THE MINISTERS OF THE STATE AND GOSPEL, AGAINST THE PEOPLE.

"Slavery has long since ceased to be tolerable in Europe; the remains of feudal oppression are disappearing even in those countries which have improved the least; nor can it be much longer endured, that the extremes of ignorance, and wretchedness, and brutality, should exist in the very centre of civilized society. There can be no safety with a populace half Luddite, half Lazaroni. Let us not deceive ourselves. We are far from that state in which any thing resembling equality would be possible; but we are arrived at that state in which the extremes of inequality are become intolerable. They are too dangerous, as well as too monstrous, to be borne much longer. -The condition of the populace, physical, moral, and intellectual, must be improved, or a Jacquierie, a bellum servile, sooner or later will be the result. It is the people at this time who stand in need of reformation, not the government. The government must better the condition of the populace; and the first thing necessary is, to prevent it from being worsened. It must curb the seditious press, and keep it curbed. This is the first and indispensable measure; for without this, all others will be fruitless."

Southey's Letter to Mr. W. Smith, 1817.

"I have had the satisfaction of receiving the most decisive proofs of the loyalty and public spirit of the GREAT BODY OF THE PEOPLE; and the patience with which they have sustained the most severe temporary distress cannot be too highly commended."

Speech of the Prince Regent (in person) on the prorogation of Parliament, July 17, 1817!

SIR,-To the accusation brought against the People, that they are immersed in irreligion, and the patrons of "blasphemy," I beg leave most abruptly to give the lie direct. From all that I have personally seen and heard in the populous and manufacturing districts of England and Scotland, (and I possess peculiar means of personal knowledge and information relative to the quantity and influence of religious publications,) I am morally convinced that there is scarcely a shadow of ground for the imputation. I do not mean to deny that some attempts have been made to insinuate irreligion with the doctrines of parliamentary reform so current amongst them; but I do deny that such attempts have been made by any of their popular writers, or that they have met even with partial success in any corner of the country: but more of this in a subsequent Letter, wherein I shall expose to you the real source of the blasphemy afloat, and the singular impunity it has received from the law officers of the Ministry.

I will appeal to the curious reader, whether there has ever been a period in our history in which there are not traces of this stale but not unprofitable artifice, of levelling accusations on the part of the government against the people, and thus shifting the sins of the Ministers from their own shoulders to those of the victims of their selfish policy. According to the political estimates of religion contained in these precious state documents, from the time of the first conversion of this island to new year's day last, Christianity has been constantly losing ground; and, in this sinking consumptive state, the wonder is, that a shadow of its existence. can be detected. With regard to our ancestors, I shall say nought: their pretended lamentations at leaving Christianity in a worse condition than they found it, were ably exposed by the late Bishop of Carlisle, in that admirable sermon on "The Progress of Religion and Science, and the Continual Improvement of the World in general," from the text, (not inapplicable to the present times,) "Say not thou what is the cause why the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." The false and dangerous system of villanizing mankind, is there painted in its true colors. That the clergy of all classes should join in this clamor, is extraordinary indeed; for can they be blind to the certain reflection on themselves, who, though educated and paid to advance the religious character of the people, profess not to be able even to keep them from backsliding? "It reflects (says Milton) to the disrepute of our ministers also, of whose labors we should hope better, and of the proficiency which their flock reaps by them, than that after all this light of the gospel which is, and is to be, and all this continual preaching, they should be still frequented with such an unprincipled, unedify'd, and laic rabble, as that the whiff of every new pamphlet should stagger them out of their catechism and Christian walking." I could venture to say,. that for this century past every Administration has had its Carliles. The works of Woolston, Toland, Peter Annett, Morgan, Paine, Houstan, Daniel Eaton, of Hume, of Bolingbroke, and Gibbon, have had their successive publishers and readers-and yet Christianity still survives! Take courage, therefore, Mr. Wilberforce; and do not fear that the "Temple of Reason," in Fleet Street, will supersede the revelation of JESUS.

To return to the charge, however, as affecting the People surely the Religious Public cannot but be indignant at the falsehood. This libel on the country has been studiously spread by all the catcalls of the Treasury, and echoed back again by those of all others the most notoriously destitute of all religious principle. Surely this convenient and fashionable charge of the inroads of "infidelity" cannot but be regarded as a gross aspersion of, and

detraction from, the public and private efforts of persons of all political and religious opinions, to distribute the Bible, and disseminate Christian principles. Indeed, a more palpable calumny cannot be invented; since, from the establishment of Charity and Sunday schools of National and Lancasterian systems of education-the number of those who can read and write is a hundredfold increased. The vast increase and extended circulation of religious magazines and tracts exceed those of any other publications; and I shall lay before the public their almost incredible amount, as the completest refutation of the charge: and I presume it may be taken as an undeniable fact, that they would not appear in the market, were there not a demand for them. Now, can it be believed that this popular taste is co-existent with such an imputative irreligion? If so, this avidity for religious writings is a singularly dear-bought hypocrisy by those who have confessedly but barely sufficient to keep their body and soul together. Is it to be credited, that vice keeps pace with the increase of knowledge, and that the Devil takes two strides whenever the philanthropist takes one. If so, better at once that the King's printer should return his patent for exclusively printing the Scripturesbetter that the Bible Societies should cease to translate the sacred records of truth into the different languages of the earth-that an Act of Parliament were added to our Statutes at Large, (though already large enough,) for depositing the Bible within the archives of the Tower, as the books of the Roman sybils were preserved in the Capitol-and that Orders in Council were issued, to collect and chain up all men who exercise their own reason, or teach others to burn that candle of the Lord, with the wild beasts of the royal menagerie: forbid the public reading of the word of God, as the crafty lawgiver of the Lacedæmonians interdicted the public representation of Sophocles and Euripides, out of a feigned respect to those illustrious dramatists. All ye echoes of the Treasury, petition your Monarch, as Cardinal Wolsey did the Pope, (in Harry the Eighth's time,) "That his Holiness could not be ignorant what divers effects the new invention of printing had produced. And that which particularly was most to be lamented, was, that lay and ordinary men were exhorted to read the Scriptures, and to pray in their vulgar tongue. That, if this were suffered, besides all other dangers, the common people at last might come to believe that there was not so much use of the clergy; for if men were persuaded once they could make their own way to God, and that prayers in their native and ordinary language might pierce Heaven as well as in Latin; how much would the authority of the mass fall? how prejudicial might this prove to our ecclesiastical orders?" And if this frightful phenomenon" of the "increase VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

Pum.

M

of latitudinarian principles" is the monstrous birth of attempts to sow the seeds of knowledge and virtue, drown all the Humane Society -repeal your laws against infanticide-blow up your asylums for the blind and the destitute-fire your hospitals and colleges-and declare your penitentiaries and societies for the suppression of vice Spencean establishments for the begetting of sedition and blasphe my;-tear down the statue of Howard from its cathedral pedestal -burn Mrs. Fry and William Allen in Smithfield, with the paper of Mr. Brougham's Education Bill-and consume Basil Montagu, and the Christian subscribers to his Society for the abolition of capital punishments, on a funeral pile of the gathered copies of Beccaria, and the Report of the Criminal Laws. Abandon the wisdom of Solon, and give us the penal code of Draco, who punished all crimes with death, thinking that the smallest transgressions deserved it, and that no punishment was more rigorous for the blackest atrocities. Burn all printers' devils, and stop every paper-mill but that of the Bank of England. Petition that none of his Majesty's liege subjects should be allowed to use their eyes (for fear of blindness) but through spectacles of state manufacture-on the principle of that philanthropist who is said to have voted for the window tax, from the Christian motive of placing the blind on a level with their fellow-creatures. And ye, ministers of religion, pray that the times may be brought back to those golden halcyon days of polemical light, when bishops set their (+) crosses to the creeds and articles imposed upon posterity, for lack of a writingmaster; when the office of the minister was a sinecure; and when the laity performed their parts in pantomime before images of their saints, buying their sin-sponges for all lusts of the flesh, past, present, and to come. Defile not the altars of the church with Aaron and Moses, with the Apostles' creed and the Lord's prayer. As a rider on the late six Acts, tack another, totally expunging that clause in the Bill of Rights for the public assemblage of people on redress of grievances; and let the curfew bell, as at the conquest, again toll the wholesome hour of retiring to roost. Substitute for Magna Charta the old writ de hæretico comburendo; and burn Hannah More on the old statute of witchcraft; (see Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown, b. i. c. 3. on the sin of raising the Devil). Restore again the cautelous system of licensing -the old index expurgatorius of popery ;-our necks may now fit the yoke that so galled our ancestors of old. And in the place of Sir Roger L'Estrange, commission Dr. Slop to be the door-keeper of the press; and let his imprimatur be the only passport to that "inspiration of the Lord which giveth us understanding." Doubtless, nothing could be more gratifying to the palates of these political epicures, than to reduce us to the condition of blind worms!

"How goodly, and how to be wished, were such an obedient unanimity as this! What a fine conformity would it starch us all into! Doubtless a staunch and solid piece of frame-work as any January could freeze together!"

Rejoiced I truly am, Sir, in these great discoveries and that the eyes of Ministers are at length opened to those scandalous and cheap publications, "lottery puffs, exchequer bills, sale of bankrupts' stock, racing calendars, bank forgeries, and insolvent schedules.'"

But why need I expose these unmerited insults on my fellowcountrymen? Can it be necessary to appeal to the fortitude and acknowledged patience with which, during the last quarter of a century, they have borne privations of the most trying and touching description? Was there ever any nation under a king, that endured with more true loyalty and religious fortitude the fiscal contributions to the most direful warfare that ever swept with a desolating scourge over the happiness of the civilized world?— wars which (whether necessary or not, it is not here my purpose to inquire,) have in their consequences undeniably produced great fluctuations in the demand and compensation for labor, and a melancholy deluge of pauperism and misery. Taxed from the crown of our heads to the extremities of our toes, have we ever (with the exception of a few local political irritations, excited by spies and incendiaries,) touched a crumb of our neighbours' property or food, though often starving in the midst of plenty, and with wives and children emaciated around us? Hard is the case, Sir, where a willing laborer can get nothing for the sweat of his brow; and unknown to us is the mental conflict which broke his English and independent heart to the scanty pittance of the poor-rates! During the war, no increased burden was imposed which was not preambled with an eulogy on the loyalty and patriotic devotion of the country. The speeches from the throne, in return for supplies-the prayers and benedictions from the altar, on the annual thanksgivings for dear-bought victories, won by the courage and lives of the common people-implored the blessings of Heaven on this generous and forbearing people and so long as the recruiting drum sounded its funeral knell on the bosom of the mother-so long as the press-gang tore the unlicensed freeman from the bosom of his family-so long all was flattery and gratitude. Are we then to be told, that without any assigned cause Britain is become a den of thieves and blasphemers? Is

* For some insight into the defects and remedies of the Bankrupt Laws, see a very superior volume, lately published, entitled, "Considerations on the Origin, Progress, and present State of the English Bankrupt

Laws."