enough to make you all, all that support such a system, my play things, my foot balls; though it is likely, as in other games, that I may get a blow now and then in knocking you about.

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

SIR,

Dorchester Gaol, October 17, 1825. It is said of Pope Leo the Tenth, that, on surveying the heaps of treasure, with which the Lateran Palace abounded, he exclaimed in admiration or astonishment:

Hem! quantum reddit nobis hæc fabula Christi! Aha! What treasure, this fable of Christ brings us!

the

I am perfectly aware, that this treasure has been and is the source of all my persecution. Take away the treasure, money, the tithes, the influence by which the gain is made, and there will be no religion among mankind, no gospel preachings, no sermons, no prayers. Get a law passed, that they, who are fond of preaching religion, shall preach it without direct profits, and down will come the whole fabric of the established church, there will be never a preacher but some poor fellow that wants to increase bis trade or to gain notoriety.

It is the fable of Christ, that brings the treasure to the Lambeth, as well as to the Lateran, Palace, and that treasure is extracted from the sweat of the brow of

the labouring man. There is no treasure to be obtained originally without labour, and he, who produces, the trea

sure, has been kept by the Christian Church, and by Monarchy and Priestcraft generally, a slave and a beggar.

But for these state arrangements, there would be no pauperism mankind would abound in wealth, with the la bour of a few hours each day, just as much labour as is essential to the preservation of health. Their necessary labour would produce them a double benefit-health and plenty; and peace would also follow as the conse quence of the absence of Kings and Priests. These are not phantasmal ideas: they are found to be realities, wherever the experiment has been made, or as far as it has been made.

For instance, your establishment consumes as much wealth as a thousand first rate labourers can produce. And this is not the whole of the evil; for, to keep your establishment in existence, there must be many approaching to something like it, so as to make it the interest of a number to support a splendid monarchy. There are, at least, including the church, a thousand, on an average, of such establishments as yours. This is much below the mark; but it will do for a calcula tion to shew the evil of the present system of legislation and religion. This thousand public establishments produces nothing, not even any kind of useful service for the public. This thousand of useless and wasteful establishments consumes the produce of the labour of a million of men. These men must have something to live upon, if it be a sort of starving life, and what they do live upon, we may as drawn from what the remainder of the labourers produce, which drags them down to a level with the others, by so many divisions upon their produce. All this I reckon, as unconnected with useful taxation, with that which is essentially necessary for legislation and administration of the

laws.

consider

This system has another tendency, and that is to produce large manufacturers, who hold a tyrannic sway over a host of

A labor

bar p

bese

23

labourers, and accumulate vast wealth, whilst the producer, or the labourer, produces under a series of pains and calamities. If he is wanted for a soldier or sailor, he must be a slave that way; if not so wanted, he must be a slave and a pauper at home.

This is a bad state of society and cannot be much longer endured. America is setting an example that Europe must follow! Governing institutions must be more simple and no men publicly employed but such as are absolutely necessary to perform the real work of government. Hundreds of nominal offices exist in this country, where there is no duty, but to take the salary and to bear a name; and that of king is, to all intents and purposes, one of them. I care not so much about abolishing the offices, as to find them proper work; but where nothing could be found to be done publicly useful, there I would abolish both office and salary, and not hear a word about pension or compensation. It is abominable, it is both morally and politically wicked, that such offices and salaries should exist, whilst the latter has to come from the labouring mans produce, his real wages. This is the real cause of all the clamours and combinations about wages. This makes Mr. Peel offer the aid of the military to settle disputes between masters and men. The labourers of this country cannot thrive on a large scale, or generally, under the present complicated forms of government, of legislation and the administration of the laws.

But this is another piece of blasphemy. This is the genuine blasphemy. Had any poor bigot made the observation to Pope Leo, that he himself made in exclamation and surprise, that same Pope would have sent him to the stake, if he had survived the tortures of the inquisition. Such is the effect of and the punishment for, blasphemy; FOR SPEAKING EVIL OF POWERFUL ROBBERS.

I am, Sir, your prisoner, for this kind of blasphemy,

RICHARD CARLILE.

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

A PRISON is the grave of the living, where they are shut up from the world and their friends; and the worms that gnaw upon them-their own thoughts, and the jailor. A house of meagre looks and ill smells-for lice, drink, and tobacco, are the compound. Pluto's court was expressed from this fancy; and the persons are much about the same parity that is there. You may ask, as Menippus in Lucian, which is Nimes, which Theisites, which the beggar, which the knight; for they are all suited in the same form of a kind of nasty poverty. Only to be out at elbows is a fashion here, and a great indecorum not to be thread-bare. Every man shows here like so many wrecks upon the sea, here the ribs of a thousand pound, here the relics of so many manors, a doublet without buttons; and 'tis a spectacle of more pity than executions are. The company, one with another, is but a vying of complaints, and the causes they have to rail on fortune and fool themselves, and there is a great deal of good fellowship in this. They are commonly, next their creditors most bitter against the lawyers, that have had a great stroke in assisting them thither. Mirth here is stupidity or hard heartedness, yet they feign it sometimes, to slip melancholy, and keep of themselves from themselves, and the torment of thinking what they have been. Men huddle up their life here as a thing of no use, and wear it out like an old suit, the faster the better; and he that deceives the time best, best spends it. It is the place where new comers are most welcomed, and next them ill news, as that which extends their fellowship in misery and leaves few to insult: and they breathe their discontents more securely here, and have their tongues at more liberty than abroad. Men see here much sin and much calamity; and where the last does not mortify the other hardens; as those that are worse here, are desperately worse, and those from whom

as men

the honor of sin is taken off and the punishment familiar. And commonly a hard thought passes on all that come from this school; which, though it teach much wisdom, it is too late and with danger; and it is better to be a fool than come here to learn it.-Dr. John Earle, Bishop of Salisbury, MICROCOSMOGRAPHY, &c, 1628. B. D.

To die for truth is not to die for one's country, but to die for the world. Truth, like the Venus dei Medici, will pass down in thirty fragments to posterity but posterity will collect and recompose them into a goddess. Then, also, thy temple, oh, eternal Truth! that now stands half below the earthmade hollow by the sepulchres of its witnesses, will raise itself in the total majesty of its proportions; and will stand in monumental granite; and every pillar, on which it rests, will be fixed in the grave of a martyr.

THE moment that power is permitted by the partiality of a people to rest in an individual, or to centre in a family— liberty receives its death wound. Man, in his highest state of moral and intellectual perfection, is not to be trusted with absolute dominion. His nature was not made for it, and there is not one instance on historic record, in which he has been so trusted, without his affections becoming, perverted, and his instincts depraved: with no public opinion to guide and no public force to controul his volitions, he has uniformly degenerated from his social character, and inflicted lasting misery upon the subjects of misrule. For power there is but one safe depository,-and that is, the responsible administration of recognized laws.

LADY MORGAN. ITALY, 1821.