luxuries and nauseating manners, whilst, by that excess, the families of a dozen, perhaps a hundred, labourers are reduced to comparative nakedness, starvation, and constant disease and misery? What honour, what benefit, to Ireland is the rich church and aristocracy, whilst three-fourths of her labouring people have not the healthy necessaries of life? The bad effects of such an aristocracy as this law of primogeniture creates are every where visible to those who can look beyond the surface of things, to those who can turn their eyes from your mansion at Critchill and survey the interior of every labourer's cot in the neighbourhood.

Of the result of such an aristocracy as that which now exists, we have a specimen in the Island of Sicily, an Island inferior to England in no respect, and superior to it in situation, climate, and soil. It was once the most popularly powerful Island on the earth, and the seat, if not the parent, of many of the useful arts and sciences. A friend thus introduces to me an extract descriptive of its present situation.

"See the glorious effects of aristocracy!

"If you attend to all the texts this short extract contains, you will have matter enough to dilate upon.

"Sicily, take it altogether, is the most beautiful, the most healthy, and the most fertile spot on the whole earth; add to which, its unmatchable situation for commerce, and its internal means of promoting arts and manufactures. What it is under a vile aristocracy you here, in some sort, see: what it would be under a free republican government, it is hardly possible to conjec

ture.

1.

"Need it be said, that the common people are brutish, ferocious, and miserable."

MANNERS OF SICILIAN NOBLES.

THE whole island of Sicily does not now, with all its advantages of climate, fertility, and position, possess in population what the cities of Syracuse and Agrigentum jointly have boasted in ancient times. The disproportion of nobles is great, there being in this small kingdom, exclusively of the Royal Family, the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, and other church dignataries, no less than one hundred and twenty-seven Princes, seventy-eight Dukes, one hundred and forty Marquisses, with Counts, Barons, and Knights almost innumerable. Many of these titles, however, never wore the honourable badges of power and trust, but are simply marks of distinction, conferring little more than local importance, and bestowed by the Crown for various services. The

The baronial peers alone possess any influence in the country, and are entitled to sit in the Upper House of Parliament.

A few of the nobles attend to public affairs, and shew a considerable share of talent and sagacity; but, from defective education, and from being deprived of the advantages of travelling, the majority have narrow and contracted ideas, which lead them to prefer the dissipation and the heartless pleasures of the capital, to rural, literary, or scientific pursuits. So far from enjoying the varied beauties of Sicilian landscape, their country excursions, called Villeggiature, are confined to a residence of about a month in spring and autumn, at a small distance from the great towns, where the time is passed in the usual routine of paying and receiving visits, in those monotonous assemblies called conversazioni, and in gambling. In their deportment they are obliging, affable, and attentive, though very ceremonious. Those violations of truth and morality that so frequently cloud the brightest titles, may be attributed to the neglect of the domestic ties, to their indolence, and to the effects of bad example.

In this elevated class the rights of primogeniture are so strictly exercised, that the eldest son alone is well provided for. The others being retainers for life, on a small pension, called "Il piatto," or dinner-cover, at the father's or elder brother's table, are driven to mean habits; and, as they are not allowed to marry, and are generally deficient in military or civil enterprise, they abandon themselves to idleness, vice, and debauchery.

There is also a class of nobility miserably poor, whose honours never had any patrimony annexed to them, and who are yet too vain to permit themselves or their progeny to engage in commercial or professional undertakings; and it is this class that, by its mis-deeds, has lowered the respectabitity of the whole Sicilian peerage.

A pompous affectation of title is, indeed, the principal trait of the Sicilian character, and is as observable in the vain inscriptions, which their public edifices, fountains, and statues display, as in the metaphoric superscriptions of letters in use among all ranks; for even tradesmen address each other Most Illustrious, and a letter to any gentleman scarcely ranking with an esquire in England, is addressed as pompously as to the first peer of the realm "A Sua Eccellenza, l'Illustrissimo Signore Stimatissimo, e Padrone Collendissimo, Don -;" here follows the Christian name, and then the title, surname, &c. &c.

"

Most of the Nobles have a palace of their own, which goes by their name; but very few, if any, have an establishment sufficiently numerous to occupy the whole building, and many let even the appartamento nobile," or second floor, restricting themselves to an inferior suite of rooms. They are proud of having a tall robust man as porter at the gate, decked out in more gorgeous livery than any of their other servants, with mustachios, a

huge cocked hat and feather, broad cross belt and hanger, and a large silver-headed cane.

In Sicily every house is a palace, and every handicraft a profession; every respectable person is addressed as his Excellency, and even a servant on an errand is charged with an embassy. This attachment to ostentation is so inveterate, that the poorer nobility and gentry are penurious to an extreme in their domestic arrangements, and almost starve themselves, to be able to appear abroad in the evening, with an equipage, often mean, and calculated rather to indicate poverty than comfort.-Smyth's memoir descriptive of Sicily.

Here is a beautiful and fertile country, to all intents and purposes, destroyed for the time being, by an aristocracy! Misery is its predominant element; and were Etna to throw a lava over its present surface, the aggregate of mankind would sustain neither moral nor physical loss. By the time that it again became fertile, aristocracy, or that which springs from monarchy aud the law of primogeniture, would be extinct..

Such is now the country of Empedocles, of Archimides, and of the many illustrious names which delight the scholar, the poet, and the student who traces the history of the arts and sciences! O! accursed aristocracy! O! pestiferous priesthood! O! damnable despotism! O! misery-begetting monarchy! O! the rotten religion of raggedness! O! Christianity! vile Christianity! corrupted emblem of the Pagan Mythology!

The former and the present state of Sicily contrasted, form a clear case, that, where monarchy, priesthood, and aristocracy have unimpeded power, the mass of labouring people will be degraded, and the country weakened. Spain, Portugal, and the whole of Italy are proofs in illustration of this case. The same result would be forthcoming in this country, had we not a rival power in the manufacturing districts, and in the commercial world. I suppose, that a well disciplined army of ten thousand men would conquer and retain the whole Island of Sicily; for the aristocracy of such a country is not a class to oppose openly any kind of open hostility. Manhood they never attain, under such a routine of habits as custom has imposed upon them. Treachery and servility are every where the characteristics of such an aristocracy-intrigue, meanness, and baseness, the sum of their actions.

Such an aristocracy, with such a property and such a power, is cried up as essential to the proper filling of the

higher offices of legislation and the administration of the law. But it is clear, that such an aristocracy, from the mode and extent of its education, is qualified for nothing useful to the useful part of the people, for nothing but the preservation and extension of its own privileges. The members of such an aristocracy know nothing of the nature of commerce, very little of the practical part of the arts and sciences, and as little of what is the most stable and most useful, political power. They think it very pretty, very comfortable, and very proper, that such things as themselves should be invested with such power; and they deem that person vile and profane, who proclaims the contrary and offers them molestation. That good and powerful government can exist without such an aristocracy, we have an excellent specimen in the United States of North America. That there can be good government with such an aristocracy, the history of past and present governments affords no proof. Some perons, apt to be deceived with the improvement of one century upon another, or one particular time over another, give the merit to the government, and cry it up as good; but the question with the wise and honest. always will be-to what extent can improvement in the condition of a people be carried, if every impediment to their welfare be removed.

All schemes, all projects, to ameliorate the condition of a people, are futile and servile, that do not begin with removing those impediments which obstruct their welfare and happiness. I find one of those impediments in religion, and I seek to remove that impediment, by showing that all religion is founded in error, and that there can be no such a thing as true religion: and this I explain, simply, by saying, that there is no such a God as is preached-no intelligent being superior to man, known to man If there were such a God, he would be seen and known alike by all, there would be no such a sectarianism and disagreement about him as now exists. The fact, that we cannot instruct one another about him, is a proof that his existence is fabulous. I find religion to be an impediment to human happiness; it has no foundation but in the the word God; and thus I dispose of it. I find monarchy, such as exists in this country, and in many other countries, to be an impediment to the welfare of the people, an obstrction to the happiness of the majority; first, in the expence it occasions: secondly, in its being the source of many bad laws: and thirdly, in its fear of all inde

pendent popular power. I desire therefore, to remove or to reform such a monarchy.

I find the most powerful class in this community to be an ill-founded aristocracy, and that a mischievous class. I find, that, in the shape of ministerial advisers, the King is but the tool of this aristocracy:-that the House of Lords affords it a direct negative upon all proposed laws: and that the majority of the members of the House of Commons is constituted of members of this aristocracy, or its representatives, which is a manifest evil, a palpable impediment to the welfare of the people. I find this aristocracy filling, either in person or by influence, every place of power and profit in the country. Finding these things, these impediments to the welfare of the people, I desire to remove every vestige of the power of such an aristocracy.

I find also, that this aristocracy corrupts the manners of the people, by rendering them servile to its affected superiority, by making itself an unnatural and unjust reservoir for profits and distinctions, by drawing the attention of the people to its influence, by a desire to keep them as ignorant as possible, and by an opposition to every thing that bears the appearance of popular discretion or election. Where there is a feudal aristocracy, it will always endeavour to use the mass of the people as a machine, to keep them in the condition of cattle. Clans, sects, and parties are another result of aristocracy, as a means to divide the people, and to play off one part against another part. We see the aristocrats affecting to divide themselves with the people. In the Royal family, we have one part Tory and High Church-such as the Dukes of York and Clarence; another Whig-such as the Dukes of Sussex and Gloucester: and, by way of influencing that large class of people called religious dissenters, the Duke of Sussex and the late Duke of Kent have condescended to patronize and participate in all their proceedings. This may all be looked upon as so much trick, the better to influence the mass of the people. We have the Duke of Buckingham a flaming Tory, and his brother Lord Nugent as flaming a Whig. Counties, cities, and boroughs are divided between Tories and Whigs: thus, if one party were a jot better than the other, all good effect would be neutralized by the division: for since both are returned by the same majority or dictation, there might as well be two of one sort, as one of each. It must not be forgotten that we have also whig aud tory parsons! and, in a solitary instance, a whig bishop.*

The Bishop of Norwich.