The Republican.

No. 19, VOL. 12.] LONDON, Friday, Nov. 11., 1825. [PRICE 6d

TO JOHN S. HARFORD ESQ. OF BLAISE CASTLE, NEAR BRISTOL, AUTHOR OF A FALSE AND SCURRILOUS MEMOIR OF THOMAS PAINE, MEMBER OF THE VICE SOCIETY AND PAPER MONEY DEALER IN BRISTOL.

LETTER II.

SIR,

Dorchester Gaol, Nov. 4, 1825, anniversary of the last revolution in the English monarchy.

THOMAS PAINE, as an Englishman, had more right and justice on his side, in seeking the dethronement of George the Third for the public good, than William, Prince of Orange, a foreigner, had to invade this country and seek the dethronement of his father in law James the Second. Yet, men of your stamp, who reason nothing honestly, call the former a detestable attempt at revolution, and the latter, because the royal revolutionists was successful, a glorious revolution! Thomas Paine, at least had the merit, not to seek the dethronement of a king for his own advancement to that title and office. He was a revolutionist; but a viituous revolutionist. In all his views, in all his endeavours, self never counted higher than as one of the people for whom he wrote.

My first letter forms a complete disproof of all your slandeous and false attacks upon the name and memory of Thomas Paine; but as the disproof was not written as a minute answer to your memoir, I now proceed to that minute an

swer.

On your title page, you profess to shew, that the writings of Thomas Paine had an intimate connection with the vowed objects of the revolutionists of 1793, and of the ralicals in 1819. The first poiut, I shall not dispute. The evolution of all the governments on the face of the earth, us that of the United States of North America had been hap

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pily revolutionized, was the grand, glorious and praisewor thy aim of Thomas Paine. And, proud am I to say, that! possess the whole of his spirit. But as to the radicals of 1819, they were pursuing they knew not what. They had no sys tem, nor a single leader that had a system which he could publish. Some of them were for Paine's system, the few of them who thought for themselves; but the bulk knew nothing of his writings, and his name had hardly been thought of, had I not republished those writings at a critical period. Major Cartwright condemned the republication. Mr. Hunt boasted, that he had never read them; and Mr. Cobbett, we know, stood ready to praise or to denounce them, to say he had or had not read them, just as the wind blew favourable or unfavourable. So that, in reality, there was very little of similarity between the radicals of 1819 and the republicans of 1793. The spirit of what was called radicalism in 1819 had no foundation and was soon evaporated but had it been a spirit founded upon the writings of Thomas Paine, not a particle of it had ever abated. What was good in it is still good and has clung round the writings of Thomas Paine, which are daily cherished by new converts; until now, we see the effects in mechanic's insti tutions, in free discussion societies, in men, in almost every town and village, making the priests visible in their real characters and showing a towering superiority over them in every kind of argument. I, alone, of all the revolutionary writers of 1819, have been able to maintain the same ground on which I started, and I attribute the circumstance entirely to aresting upon such solid principles as those developed in the writings of Thomas Paine. I have done this in spite of a persecution that would have silenced the others in a few days. I have had to start anew, again, and again with no property but the principles of Thomas Paine; and now, I feel invulnerable. Upon this shewing, I assert, that your title sets forth a falsehood. I have met with many of the old staunch republicans of 1793 and with scarcely an exception, I found them looking with contempt or indifference on the proceedings of the Radicals in 1819.

Your dedication to Sir Thomas Acland is ludicrous enough. How would the Devonshire people stare to hear him called a patriot? All who knew him, know that he is a weak minded man, and, in expression of that weakness, is, in Devonshire, commonly called Tommy Acland. Instead of dying for his country, he would die with fright, if there were an insurrection of a formidable character. You have selected him for your dedication; because he is a sort of

leading man in your vice society. Shew me a man who subscribes largely to what are called public charities, and to institutions similar to the Vice Society and I will engage, that, at bottom, he is to be found a very weak or a very wicked man: a man who seeks a popularity by his money which he cannot acquire by his abilities or virtues. Such a man is the present Sir Thomas Dyke Acland.

The first paragraph of your preface states a falsehood, in saying, that the name of Thomas Paine is proverbial for infamy. Infamy expresses a notorious immoral character. Now, Mr. Harford, I have done all that I could do, to sift the real character of Thomas Paine, and, after reading what the government agent, Oldys, or George Chalmers, wrote of him, after reading all that Cobbett wrote in slander of him, after reading Cheetham's memoir, and after reading what you have written, I challenge you, and with you, all that are like you, and all that are unlike you, to attach a proof of one immoral act to the name and character of Thomas Paine. I pronounce every immoral act, that you and others have imputed to him, to be false and written for the most vicious of purposes-to deceive the people as to the real character of a man who was the greatest public teacher that ever appeared among them. If I would admit the reality of the character in which Jesus Christ is drawn in the New Testament, which I do not, but take it to be a sketch of an allegorical character, I can boldly say, and saying prove it, by a contrast, that Jesus Christ was a mere fool when compared with Thomas Paine. These are assertions which the vileness and virulence of such attacks as yours upon the name and character of this great man have justifiably drawn forth. In every other respect, holding the character of Jesus Christ to be an allegory, I have resolved never to allude to him again, as to a real character, to say nothing for or against him, other than in the shape of criticism upon a fabled or allegorical character.

In this same first paragraph, you say, that you have taken up the history of Thomas Paine; because, with pain and wonder, you have witnessed the imprudent attempts lately made, in various ways, to confront the system of Paine with that of Christianity; in other words, to oppose the kingdom of darkness, sin and contention, to that of light, purity and love.

A reverse of your description of the two systems will be nearer the truth. You see nothing, or you can shew nothing, dark, sinful or contentious in the system of Paine;

whilst I can show the system of Christianity to have been and to be of that threefold description, from its origin to this day. There was never before on the earth, nor with it, a system of religion so dark, so sinful, and so contentious. On the other hand, the two continents of America are eloquent proofs of the goodness of the system promulgated by Paine. And better they will be, when they follow his theological as well as his political system.

And now, what think you of the system of Paine Mr. Harford? I have travelled far beyond him in matters of religion. I scout his Deism; though I admire him for the advance which he made. I have undermined the Christian Religion by its own history, and I show, by dates, that it has been antedated a full century. I undermine the Old Testament, by asking you to shew me a single proof, a single piece of evidence, that a people called Jews or Israelites inhabited Syria or Asia Minor before the Babylonian Colonization, and that any part of their sacred books was in existence before that time. But my third and most powerful retreat, that which shews all religion to be vice, is, the proof, visible to all who will open their eyes, and who dare to look at as I dare, that intelligence or the power to design is artificial, no where natural, and no where existing beyond that third portion of fixed matter, the animal world: an artificial property manufactured by a system of nerves and totally dependant upon that system. Now, where will you find au animal large enough to make or to move a planet? And from what can intelligence arise but from a planet already formed? That which theologians call a first principle, is, in reality, the last principle in the scale of creation. They reverse every thing. They are they who ideally turn the world upside down.

Your second paragraph commences with calling me impious. If impious expresses nothing more than hostility towards that vice religion, if it expresses nothing more than a war with the gods, I glory in the title and hold it to be the perfection of that which is right honourable, noble, excellent, or whatever title can be found for that which is good and great. Six years have elapsed since you wrote your pamphlet. I have seen quotations from it; but never saw the original until the past summer. I now, for the first time, find, that you have been an active member of the vice Society, and now I can proudly tell you, that though I have been a prisoner for these last six years, though, at the instigation of your society, I have been excessively robbed by the govern

ment, I have not only triumphed over, I have not only beaten your society to the ground; but 1 have silenced all the artillery of that mean and base administration of gdvernment, that could espouse and identify itself with such a society. I have brought you all, government, and vice society, into such a state of contemptible weakness, as to be a mere set of play things for me. And I have done this solely upon the virtue of my impiety! I could have done a mere nothing as a politician, without an assault upon feligion. I saw this, at an early period of my career, and I have undeviatingly acted upon it, amidst the clamour and frowns of pretended or short-sighted friends, and the abuse, the virulent abuse, of you and other enemies. I feel my triumph to be complete, and I am justified in shewing it. Basely as I have been treated in this Gaol, by some of your brother villains of the Vice Society and its tools, my imprisonment has been a pleasure to me, a real gratification, aud though, at the time of writing this, I have not the least prospect of liberation, I shall look forward to the idea of another six years of imprisonment with the same peace of mind, with which I look back upon the past. I have now completed a moral power that is far more powerful than all the physical power in the hands of the government of this country, and in or out of prison, I shall go on to`war my moral power, against that physical power, until I, or they who shall succeed me, shall make all moral alike, and see nothing but moral power the boast of the country.

In your third paragraph, you say:-" Paine's works never did any harm to a candid and well instructed mind, but they have often proved incalculably pernicious to perSous whose education or abilities have not qualified them to disentangle the sophistries, or to expose the arts of impiety." If an evil exists here as you say, all you have to do is to educate all alike. I am very willing to put the works of Paine to this trial. I can suppose, that a mind skilled in all the money making intrigues of Church and State is brassed or steeled against the admonitions of Paine; but where no education existed, the fault would be, that they could not understand his instructions so as to compare system with system. The majority of mankind all over the face of the earth are as ignorant as the cattle of the field, and what is worse, they are corrupted both in body and mind by bad habits and bad social institutions. The object of Thomas Paine was to free this majority of mankind from this thraldrom, and to render them more equal with the mi