Deprive a pensioner of his unmerited pension, or the placeman of the emoluments of his useless place, and they will both call it a robbery. Abolish lotteries, and suppress gambling houses; and the jugglers in the former, and the robbers in the latter, will cry," a robbery!" But the public who look upon one as a juggle, and the other as a nuisance, will be thankful to their legislators, when they see both suppressed. And the right of the property in land, (as private property) is a-juggle which those who have land, make use of to oppress those who have none.

Now, as most, or all of our great landholders profess to be Christians, and believed, or pretend to believe, that the Bible is the word of God, let us see how their actions agree with their faith. In Leviticus xxv. 23, there God declares in the most unequivocal manner, that "the Land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine." That is, the land is God's. Yet, the landholdors, in direct contradiction of this divine command, dare, impudently and audaciously, to buy and sell the land for ever and ever! And the rebel lawyer writes down the blasphemous sentence in the title deed of every estate, that is called a freehold. What a pity it is that God has no power to punish such daring violators of his laws. Nor is the holding of land, as private property, less contrary to the commands of the founder of the Christian religion, than it is to those of Jehovah himself; for when the young man, who had great possessions, in land I presume, applied to Christ to know what he should do to be saved; that is, to become a Christian, Jesus is made to reply, "sell off all that thou hast and give to the poor." This proves very clear to me, that a man could not then be a landholder and a Christian at the same time. But a more striking proof still is afforded, when St. Peter becomes the first lord of the treasury. Ananias is commanded by Lord Peter, to sell off all his property, (his estate) and to bring to the treasury the whole of its price. Ananias sold his estate, but not having quite so much faith as was required, reserved, for his own use, a small portion of the money. This was so offensive to God, that he had no sooner denied it, than he was struck dead upon the spot, and his wife, in a few minutes after, shared the same fate.

I once made those remarks to a member of a Bible Association, but was answered very abruptly, "such sacrifices are not required now." To which I replied, "it is folly then to force a circulation of the Bible, if its contents cannot be relied on." To this I received no answer. It is astonish

ing how little of argument will silence a religious man, particularly, if his Bible is turned against him. How painful it must have been to the Judge and Jury, who, on June 10, at the Old Bailey, sat to try the bold and persevering John Clarke: to hear him make so many quotations from the Bible, every one of which must have been like a thorn planted in the breasts of his prosecutors. This is, in my opinion, the best mode of defence that can be adopted, for thus holding the mirror of their faith to the eyes of the Judge and Jury, they are compelled to see what absurdities a man is obliged to swallow, in order to become a Christian, and seeing this, it is impossible that they can retire from the Court, without losing a portion of their faith, and feeling a body of new ideas rising in rebellion against old opinions. But the Christian faith depends entirely on a lie; for a Christian is not required to believe the Bible, all that is required of him, is to say he believes it; and, as a great lie is as soon told as a little one, it is as easy to say, Jonah was alive three days in the fish's belly as one. Mr. Paine, in making the Bible refute itself, gave that beauty and strength to the " Age of Reason," which make it, in my opinion, superior to every other book of the kind. All who read it are Deists, whether they avow it or not. But I am wandering from my subject, instead of hastening as I ought, to the conclusion of this already too lengthy essay.

Well, I have already proved, that the buying and selling of land by individuals in perpetuity, is contrary to the express command of the God of the Jews; and I have as clearly proved, that it is incompatible with the Christian religion, as well as contrary to the precepts of its supposed founder, whom the Christians believe in, and worship as the son of God, for any individual to hold any portion of land as private and individual property. Indeed, the primitive Christians made it a rule for a long period, that before any person could become a member of their community, he was compelled to sell his property, if it was in land, and sink the money with all other property he might happen to possess, into one common joint stock, for the benefit of every member. Their motto was, "Let all things be common to all." This is the system against which, it is said, "the gates of hell shall not prevail." But the Christians have renounced their principles, and what hell could not effect, the printing press will achieve.

Every estate in England must hase been an usurpation, and every title-deed must have been a forgery some time or other;

many of those usurpations and forgeries were put into practice at the time of the conquest. I remember reading some twenty years ago, in Littleton's History of England, a very striking instance of one of those usurpations. Some time after the conquest, and when the people began to enjoy some little repose after the storms that had overwhelmed their country, a court was instituted, and invested with power to summon every landholder in the kingdom before it, where the business of its members was to examine the title-deeds of their estates. After several of such like documents had been examined and decided on, a summons was sent to an old Earl, whose name was Warren The old veteran, for he had been one of the invading army, immediately repaired to the Court, and presented himself at their bar for examination; but on the Court demanding the title-deed of his estate, the gallant old Earl drew an old sword from the scabbard, deeply incased in blood, which the historian calls rust, and exclaimed, "With this sword I obtained my estate, and with this sword will I defend it to the last drop of my blood!"20 What powerful language, and how emphatically and decisively expressed. Here is no false canting lawyer brought into Court, no false title produced, no talk about the right of property as by law established, no equivocation, no evasion; the norman lord, without the least hesitation, shows the Court his title-deed, and that title-deed is the sword! Whether the Court was intimidated by this bold and daring threat of the Earl Warren, or whether the then government discovered their own folly, in proceeding thus to expose their own nakedness, or not, I cannot tell, neither can the bistorian; but certain it is, the Court proceeded' no further, no further enquiries were made, and the thing was heard of no more. Now, if the Earl Warren's estate had no legal title then, it can have none now; therefore, it is as much an usurpation at the present period as it was 700 years ago. There is no doubt, that this usurpation, in common with thousands more of the kind, have been legalized by the legislature; so have the possession of Spain by the French been legalized by the

20 That, Allen Davenport, is the Law of nature. We see nothing but a mass of animals generated for the purpose of devouring one another. The exception is in the herbivorous animals. Man is not an herbivorous animal: and if he were, the evil would not be less. There is the same natural right to devour as to be devoured. Reason from this point, and you will reason correctly. To remedy this evil disposition among mankind, we want your balance of power, and that, it seems to me, can only be acquired, by a far more extensive equal knowledge than exists at present.

R. C.

Holy Alliance. But who are they that enact all the laws relative to landed property? The landholders to be sure. And what are the landholders? Are not the greatest part of them the very descendants of those usurpers and robbers, of which this Norman lord is a sample. What should we think of the legislation of a gang of thieves, who, after having committed an extensive robbery, assemble in council, to legalize their own acts of violence, and to pass laws to defend their stolen property from its rightful owners? Much the same, I presume, as we ought to think of the legislation of that gang of land-usurpers who, not long since, seized on and enclosed the common-fields and moor-lands which, from time immemorial, had been, as all land ought to be, the property of the public at large. The only difference in the actions of these two gangs is, the former legislates after, and the latter legislates before the robbery!

In your reply to my letters in No. 21, Vol. VI., you say "we must fetch down the haughty spirits of the Norman aristocrats." And so we must, but that is only a first consideration; the second is how to prevent them from rising again. Spain brought her aristocrats down. But she only shaved the heads of her Samsons; and no sooner did the hair of their strength shoot out again, than they pulled down the temple of her liberty about her ears. It is no manner of use to shave the heads of our Sampsons; they must be scalped, they must be scalped of their little kingdoms, and must make every acre of land public property before we can render the great Normans good and useful citizens. This once done, the world would no longer be a field of blood, as it is at present: all sorts of taxes being done away, that deadly hatred which now exists between the rich and poor, would be done away also, and the horrid din of war would be heard no more. Children would again become a blessing instead of a curse, as they are, under the present system, to their parents, for the earth may be made to produce, under a well organized system, founded on Agrarian Equality, sufficient of every thing that is necessary for the comfort and happiness, of double, eye treble its present population.

The whole empire of China, says Patrick, contains 333,000,000 souls; from this it is computed that were all parts of the earth equally populous, the population of the world, would amount to 10,655,000,000 people. According to this calculation, the world as it regards its population, is only in its infancy, since there is room yet, for ten times the number of its present inhabitants; and this helps to con

firm what I have said above; that the earth with good management, may be made to produce every thing that is necessary for the supply of the real wants of three times its present number of inhabitants, or about 3,000,000,000, people. Ah! Malthus! Had you bent all the powers of your genius against the oppressors of man; had you employed all your shining abilities in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, by insisting on a more equal distribution of human subsistence; had you invented a system by the adoption of which the means may be furnished for amply providing for a rapidly increasing population; or had you only supported such a system, for such a system was invented, long before your book on population was written, what a noble work had been yours. What a glorious immortality had been your reward!

But by proposing a check on population, you have proclaimed yourself a rebel of nature, and a speculative murderer of your spies, for the voice of nature cannot be stifled, neither can her laws be reversed; if you wrote to immortalize yourself you have effected your purpose, for your name shall out live that of Erostratus 22, he only fired the temple of an Heathen goddess; but you have attempted to destroy the temple of humanity, the throne of justice, and that glorious empire which reason holds in the breast of man! Yes, your name shall live amidst the hisses, and execrations of posterity, and distant ages having historical proof of your existence shall scarcely doubt the existence of the fabled monsters of antiquity, who banquetted on human flesh.

Now, Sir, before I conclude, I must once more insist, that the monopoly in land by individuals, who transfer, by the laws of primogeniture their entire estates to one sole heir, and the holding the same in perpetuity, are the greatest of all political evils. Does not the landholders of England, at the present moment, hold the power not only to enslave, but even to starve the landless part of the population? Mr. Cobbett says they have the power, and so say I, and so say a thousand more. And if we look back to the years of 1800, and 1801, we shall see that hundreds of individuals were starved even to death by a dearth of the necessaries of life,

21 Malthus may be a rebel towards a class of mankind; but "a rebel of nature" is nonsense. My war with the Gods has some meaning; though these Gods are phantoms; but how a man is to rebel against nature, I R. C.

cannot conceive.

22 I doubt that very much. The name and book of Malthus has already reached comparitive abscurity. R. C.