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teaching any longer, and thinks they may dispense with the

establishment.

Mag. Why sometime ago, I saw an account of a parson wanting a coal merchant to apply to the devil to obtain the order to serve him with coals, supposing him to have a very large fire in Hell, as they pretend the scriptures inform us. If they do not believe holy writ themselves, it is very unkind of them to prevent us from thinking the Bible true; for we have nothing else to rely upon. They take all our comfort away and give us nothing in return, seeing we have nothing to rest on whatever but the Bible-no promise of future happiness in the next world, for our good doing in this. The lower order of ignorant men, of little schooling, are easily caught by these Atheists; for, when they read the Bible, it contains many passages which cannot be understood by us, nor does god mean that we should understand it all:—so they directly conclude that it is priestcraft, and call on us to prove it true. That is impossible, for no man can say the Bible is all truth: we only believe it and it cannot do us any harm, nor the Atheist; for when we die and meet in the next world, I think it will not be any cause of unhappiness to the Atheist or the Christian, to have believed the gospel.

Beau.-Yes, your worship, as I am a dealer in that article coals, it may turn out very profitable; for the Testament, gives us an account of an everlasting fire, and you say you believe.

Heath. I know Mr. Hardy, that Beauchamp has many times in Enfield openly and publicly denied the truth of the Bible and Testament too: and such a fellow as he should not be allowed to take an oath, to hold such a respectable person as I am to bail to the quarter Sessions.

Beau. I never publicly harangued an audience in my life; I do not think my ability great enough; but I may have talked of something which your mud-head cannot understand.

Mr. Hardy, at least, seems to have a religion that is tempered with good humour. I have a sort of notion, that he is only politically and magisterially a religionist. R. C.

We cannot prevent any thing of the kind. Believe and damn yourselves in this life, if you like: we will neither believe nonsense nor fear your damnation, in the next. The fault is, that ignorant men in power, the truly wicked, Mr. Hardy, call on more intelligent men to believe that which is repugnant to all reason, and for no other reason whatever, than because immense profits are associated with it and desired to be préserved. R. C.

What is the next world?

R. C.

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Mag. Why, Mr. Heath, I have put every question I can think of to Mr. Beauchamp, and he has given me such answers as prove him to be a Christian; I cannot legally refuse to take his oath :-and what is more, Beauchamp, I will not hesitate to say before these gentlemen, this evening, whether you are a believer in the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or not, you are a sensible man and I must not refuse you an oath, so take up the book and I will swear you.

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Beau. When I come to trial, your worship, I expect Mr. Heath's counsel will question me severely as to my faith.

Mag. Yes, undoubtedly, Beauchamp, he will prepare his counsel with such argument as to endeavour to destroy yours. But you need not fear the greatest counsellor in London; you are prepared to answer all the questions he can ask, for you well understand the matter.

Then the worthy magistrate proceeded to bind Heath in two sureties of £20. each, to appear at the Sessions 12th of September to answer to the assault.

T. P.

TO RICHARD CARLILE DORCHESTER GAOL.

ESTEEMED FRIEND. London 3rd day 9th month. As thou hast at length effectually stormed the strong hold of my deep rooted and long standing prejudices, I can no longer desist from giving to thee a candid assurance of my conversion and ardent attachment to Materialism. After having been only eighteen months under thy, not magic, but material wand, the immaterial non-entities, which had been thirty years growing on my mind have totally disappeared; in spite of attending church. twice every sunday, singing the hundredth psalm, Jehovah reigns, Glory be to thee &c. &c., and rehearsing all the stagnant dogmatical humbug and parasitical fulsomeness of Mother Church, even unto loathing. This confession is what is due to thee from hundreds, and it is a confession which ought to be made by all who are in my situation, and which would be made, did not the cruel illiberality of the base and the ignorant implicitly debar them from speaking the honest effusions of the mind. "THE BIBLE HAS LONG BEEN THE GAOLER OF TRUTH," but mankind will eer long throw off the mask and speak out. I only wonder that the old hag should so long elevate her gorgon head and that men of independant fortunes should still continue

with confidence.

to bring their sons up to the church. The whore of Babylonand the mummery of England have passed their Zenith; we can measure their altitude; we can anticipate their fall; and that That fall they have facilitated by their mutual recriminations and accusations of falsehood and of fraud. Can it be supposed that men, possessing extensive scientific and literary knowledge, can be so far blinded, as to believe the monstrous absurdities of the Christian Religion. Impossible! Not believing what they so strenuously advocate, they mischeviously and wickedly palm it upon the ignorant; for the purpose of emolument. We may fairly accuse them of being the really wicked. 'Tis they who reign the hecate of domestic hells. 'Tis I who have felt it, and it is I who am now an alien from my family, for merely differing in opinion from those hecates. With hearty wishes for thy success, I remain thine assured friend,

EPHRAIM SMOOTH.

P. S. I have lately had a conversation with one of those deluded. creatures, calling themselves" Odd Fellows," He appeared as rational as it was possible for a man to be, and agreed with thee in every thing, till he put one question to me.-whether I thought thou wouldest write an exposure of the society of Odd Fellows. I told him that I dared say, thou wouldest not grapple with all existing abuses, at one time; but, I had no doubt, if it was any thing by which one man could hold in mental darkness or dupe another, to an extent that merited thy notice, thou wouldest expose and sap its very foundations, as thou hadst done other crying abuses, although theyhad come before thee clothed in the omnipotent armour of parliament. At this my auditor turned pale, and he said I hope the -(a vile term, meaning thee) would first die in his cell." Now he could part with the old grey bearded dotard of iniquity religion. He thought the clergy an evil. He could bid a pleasing farewell to Masonry, when he saw her strangling in thy grasp. But he could not resign his hobby, with all the spleen of an irritated child, he stuck the cap of fanaticism upon his head and wore it in spite of my remonstrances.

Thy blow at masonry is a masterpiece and when completed will be one of the best Books for lending out that can be put in a library. I know several who intend to avail themselves of the reading of it by that means.

Note--I assure Ephraim Smooth and his "Odd Fellow," that I shall expose all the secret associations, as far as I can obtain information; and I wish some good fellows grown too wise to remain odd, would do what some ex-masons have done, to assist me in an exposure. These associations, though patronized by all classes, are a scandal to mankind.

No possible general good can arise from them; but much general evil does arise. The Orange Society in Ireland and even in England is as villanous an institution as was ever formed for the support of tyranny and cheat. The pretended secrets of this society are scarcely worth knowing, as the association is an avowed warring with all human improvement. Still, there is a satisfaction in seeing its ceremonies and secret purposes exposed. Perhaps Ephraim's odd acquaintance, growing ashamed of himself by a little reflection, will see the wisdom of renouncing and denouncing his odd fellows. And, to that end, I hope friend Ephraim will shew him this note and assure him, that I am likely to live long enough in spite of his malicious curse, to humble and shame all such characters. R. C.

COPY OF A LETTER SENT TO THE KING, WINDSOR CASTLE.

SIR,

Dorchester Gaol, Sept. 2, 1825. THE Common ideas attached to monarchy are those of apparent splendour or brilliancy, not of mind; but of body, in dress, dwelling, diet attendance equipage, &c., a fancied superiority over other men in physical or legislative powers. It is seen also, that such a monarchy begets a gradation of such circumstances, and all who can get into that gradation extol the the system, under a hope that they shall thereby advance in it. The consequence of this gradation is, that all who attach themselves to it become debased as men and citizens and put off that independence of character which every citizen should hold, to put on a dependance upon every thing that is vile and that preys upon those who produce food and other property. Within the pale of the monarchy, there is nothing produced for the benefit of the na-` tion, nor any thing fairly produced for the support of itself; for property is the all in all of a nation; even the people without it are nothing superior to other herds of cattle. But under a monarchy, they who do produce all this property are told that, like cattle, they are entitled to nothing more than the smallest amount of food that will keep them alive to labour, and that all other profit, beyond the value of that

coarse food, is the profit, of their masters: so that a country monarchically governed may be looked upon as a large farm, the owner of which is the king, and the mass or majority of the people, all whose labour can be used, are to him but one species of labouring brutes, the worst fed and hardest worked of all the species of brutes on the soil. To be sure, they are provided with priests to comfort them, to tell them that they are immortal and are to be very happy in another life if they are quiet and submissive in this; but this is only an aggravation of the original evil.

If human affairs were conducted as they should be, if mankind were not so ignorant so easily cheated, they would not labour for a monarchy, but for themselves, and become joint free holders of the soil on which they live. They would not allow a class of men to take of the public produce what pleased and to leave what pleased; but they would keep no more public officers than were necessary and pay them no more than was necessary.

Mr. Thompson has laid it down correctly in his work on the Distribution of Wealth, that, whatever is taken from the property producing man against his consent, is, in fact, a a robbery. This will be seen as labouring men grow wiser and more powerful. But for this labouring class of people, a king could find no ornaments for splendour, no luxuries for revelling, no power for despotism. All that is good to all spring from the labour of mankind. Even if property be obtained by war or plunder, that property must have sprung from the labour of some part of mankind.

The maxim, with mankind, should, therefore, be, that all should labour, either mentally or bodily, for the greater benefit of each and all that an idle man pensioned on the labour of others, should not exist.

But the point of this letter is, that mental splendour and brilliancy is the only splendour and brilliancy that is worthy of human encouragement, and that that which is merely a matter of show, such as monarchy, a rich priesthood and

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