TO THE EDITOR OF THE REPUBLICAN."

SIR, Sept. 28, 1826. WHILE enjoying the sweet leisure, and retirement of my garden this evening a farmer called on me and asked me to solve a puzzle. He said-If God created Heaven and earth what did God himself spring from? I replied why should not the universe as : well as its mover God have existed from all eternity? Why not, indeed, said he. Why now I should have thonght so before, only I thought it was forbidden to think of such things at all. I referred him to 62, Fleet-street, as he was going to town to-morrow, for all theological information whatever.

Yours, &c.

RUSTICUS.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REPUBLICAN.”

SIR,

THE Catholic Church must be much indebted to you for one thing -that you have proved that faith and reason have nothing in common, and that one must be either a Catholic or an Atheist, there being no rational medium. All the rest are a set of halfwitted drivellers. St. Dominic himself would have thanked you for

your assistance. Let me conclude, as you have dealt lately in forcible questions, by asking you one for your Protestant and God-loving readers to solve, viz.-What was Christianity before the third age, when St. Cyprian and the early Catholics gave it like other airy nothings, a local habitation and a name?

0.0.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REPUBLICAN."

LAST week died here, at his seat at Lankington, Major Worthington, a most eccentric, but virtuous and able philosopher. In the early part of his life, an act of indiscretion threw him into the shade among loyal and religious people. Fired by a love of liberty, and a detestation of the persecuting spirit of religion, he threw up a military commission in England on the first burst of the French Revolution, and joined the National Guard at Paris.

Travelling afterwards in Normandy, being an English man, he was mistaken for a spy, and confined à parole at Rouen, in Normandy. But the Royalist army being heard to be near to one of the towns occupied by the Rebels, he demanded of the Mayor, to his great astonishment, to be liberated to join his regiment. The Mayor refused, and treated him as an impostor till he desired that his portmanteau might be opened, and shewing therein his officer's uniform of the National Guard, he was liberated, went and headed the regiment, repulsed the Royalists, and marched them prisoners into the town, amidst the acclamations of the people. He has since lived in retirement in England, and though laughed at for certain eccentricities of dress and manners by the empty fools who form the Toλλo every where, though hated by the bigot and the Church of Englandist, he had the universal esteem of all good and enlightened men-and, till the day of his death, kept up a familiar correspondence with some of the most enlightened statesmen in Europe. He was a man of great metaphysical talents, ready wit, and independent honesty of character, and held in utter contempt every species of humbug, whether political or religious.

0. O.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REPUBLICAN."

SIR,

I HAVE been to-day conversing with some people who were formerly Quakers, and who knew all the secrets of that society. I learn that the question asked so forcibly of William Allen, has puzzled some of the Friends not a little; and that the answer which they as Friends would give is this" God is the spiritual influence which we feel in our minds when silently waiting for it; and which we cannot demonstrate to any man except by the good it causes us to do, and the evil it admonishes us to avoid." Now the Quakers ought to recollect, that the most atrocious crimes and bloody persecutions have been ascribed by zealots to the same source. This spiritual and inward God is, however, a very different being from Jehovah, from the God who lived in a little box made of shittim-wood, as the author of the Edipus Judaicus" says, and who has been bickering and quarrelling with his favourite people for 6,000 years. The God of the Quakers acts universally on the mind, as if by some chemical action on the brain. Now with due deference to the Quakers, allow me to suggest, that, taking for granted the sincerity of their belief and the validity of their experience, may not what they call the Holy

Spirit be really the activity of what MM. Gall and Spurzheim call the Organ of Conscientiousness or Justice, which prompts them internally to such actions as they ascribed to the special grace of the Great Mover of an infinite space full of eternal worlds; and may not what is called the suggestions of the Devil be the visitation produced by the lower organs of the animal propensities, when unduly stimulated by the sense of the blood? Yours respectfully,

A PHRENOLOGIST.

Sept. 27, 1826,

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REPUBLICAN."

MR. EDITOR, July, 1826. PERHAPS, no circumstance has been more obvious to you, or your readers, for a considerable time, than, that deep concern, that intense anxiety, so ludicrously manifested by the ruling faction, to direct the minds of the thinking part of the public. While the people were spending their time at the pot-house, or the conventicle; while they were studying the slang of Tothill Fields or the Fives Court, or quietly waiting the advent of Shiloh; while they amused themselves at the pugilistic ring, or at the ranters' camp meeting; the faction had nothing to fear. It knew well enough that such pursuits had brutalizing effects; that they tended to divide the people into opposing parties, and to form such characters as it could govern at pleasure. A succession of circumstances however arising, and a number of bold and (for the times) honest writers springing up, a new direction was given to the public mind, and the people began to make a right use of their understanding. Thence may be dated a new era in the intellectual history of the people of this country, and coeval with it an eagerness to divert them entirely from such pursuits. Some of the purveyors of " food for the mind," flattered themselves, that they should accomplish this object by patronizing scientific institutions. Mr. Sheriff Laurie, at the public meeting at which the Mechanics Institution was established, observed," that such an institution would tend to prevent discussion, and keep men from debating societies. Which he had always witnessed made people dissatisfied, and led them to scepticism," He might have said, that by enquiry, the industrious people found that they were toiling principally for the idle and worthless; that priestcraft was an imposition; and priests impostors; which every honest man will maintain to be important discoveries; instead of which, that gentleman told the meeting they were very "bad things indeed;" for which he met a certain sort of smile from a considerable portion of the assembly. They knew that the study of the sciences, if not mixed with a due portion of superstition, would lead to the very point they wished to avoid. They therefore maintain, that no one can possibly be moral without believing in their particular creed: and endeavour to cram miracles, and lectures on the uncontrollable and immutable laws of nature, down the same throats. By these means, they calculate on keeping up the veneration for all those antiquated impositions and barbarous delusions of our forefathers; the source of so much domination and profit to the privileged

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race; but more particularly to the priests. Even professors, when lecturing on the various sciences, make a practice of closing them by a word of religious exhortation. For instance :-Should the subject be geology, which furnishes evidence incontestible of the existence this globe from time incalculable, yet, nevertheless, the mosaic table of its origin is not to be questioned, but most implicitly believed. Should the subject be electricity, or what is commonly called lightning and thunder; they would persuade their pupils that the lightning and thunder of mount Sinai were quite different to what we now witness. When a lecture is delivered upon the formation of mists, fogs, clouds, &c. till rain is accounted for, in a way perfectly natural aud demonstrable, the lecturer has recourse to some disengenuous subter-. fuge, some contemptible piece of sophistry, to endeavour to persuade his audience, that the rain by which this world is said to have been drowned about four thousand years since, was quite, different, quite supernatural ; that it was made expressly for the occasion, in a place called heaven,' and then emptied out of the windows thereof. But the greatest of all outrages upon common sense and observation is, the attempt to reconcile the barbarously ignorant description of the Solar-system found in Genesis, with the actual facts of that part of the Universe, as far as has yet been discovered. Such however are the practices of some of the savans of the day. By which the man of science descends to the priest; and the philosopher sinks down upon a level with the old woman.

Charity compels one to hope that they may suppose that circumstances make it necessary, thus to dissemble, and that they are not real hypocrites. It is moreover fortunate, that many of their disciples are not to be thus imposed upon, and that there is a considerable portion of them, who have discernment enough, to collect the fruit, and reject the husks, in which some would fain have it enveloped.

I conceive no apology whatever ought to be allowed the conductors or correspondents of a periodical publication, of a moral, philosophical, and philanthrophical description, which the CO-OPERATIVE MAGAZINE is professed to be, for falling into such puerile, and contemptible dotage. In the leading article of one of the late numbers of that work, written by A LADY, who displayed much ability, to illustrate her subject by a passage from that part of the Jew books, called the proverbs, (attributed to one Solomon) as if she had not got rid of the impressions of the Nursery, she tells her readers, that this Solomon was the wisest of men, and the best of kings! By consulting history, at the time fixed for the reign of this splendid paragon, it cannot be discovered, that the Jews as a nation existed. Had they existed, they must have been known to those mighty empires which surrounded the little territory called Palestine, or the Holy-Land. If they were known, they were held in such contempt, that no writers of any other countries inention them. According to their own books, in such subjection were they held, in the time of Saul their first king; that they were not allowed to sharpen a pair of scissors, or a Plough-share, much -less to fabricate swords, spears, and other warlike implements. If the Romans had not entered their territory, they might have remained buried in their obscurity to the present time.

She

I cannot think of insulting the lady by asking her so absurd a question, as whether she believes the story of Solomon to be historically true. can no more believe in this history, than in those of" Jack the Giant-killer," "Tom Thumb," or " Baron Munchauson."

In a subsequent number of the same work, Solomon's father is introduced to us, as, the great, the gifted, the often good, and always clever David. J shall not attempt to intrude upon your pages, by entering into a review of

the life of this bible worthy, But, shall only remark, that if intriguing, ingratitude, treachery, and treason; if to murder any one who might stand in the way of his objects; if to outstrip all other monsters in villany; if to attain to the very consummation of atrocity entitles him to these distinctions; after giving him credit for being often good, and for the pleasant and wonderful love which existed between him and Jonathan, which “ surpassed the love of women, then, indeed, is he entitled to the highest degree of comparison, like his son; and ought to be styled the greatest and cleverest of Men.

In another article, in the latter number, we find the reveries and mysteries of Christ," which pass all understanding," which are “hid from the wise, and the prudent," which were always propagated by means of terror; and which were established by the sword, and are still maintained by the same means: put in requisition with the benefits, the inventions, the discoveries, and the facts, taught by such men as Copernicus, Columbus, Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, Owen. &c. &c. which are all demonstrable to the evidence of our senses. Mais restons ici. If any one should wish for a more particular account of these holy and inspired individuals; are not their lives, characters, and behaviour; birth, parentage, and education; written in the book of the Gospels according to John Clarke, who was lately removed from his Majesty's Gaol of Newgate to the Compter in Giltspur Street. There probably to remain for several months longer, as a living witness, that Christianity is not yet old enough (or too old) to support itself?

But, Sir, my object in troubling you with this, is, to ask the London Co-Operatives through your medium, if they think to advance their object by filling their periodical with such trash? It may do for a set of Rhap-sodists, or for those who may be ashamed to be thought to swallow the grosser dregs of superstition and who yet have not courage, or honesty enough to renounce it altogether; but, in my humble opinion, it will not attract such individuals as those who are calculated to carry the principles of Mr. Owen into practice. They must be such, whose minds are emancipated from priestcraft and miracles. And in this opinion, I do but follow that great philanthropist himself. Knowing too, that the only work in which such folly can be exposed, is " THE REPUBLICAN." However, wishing their cause, in which I feel much interest, every success, I remain your most obedient Servant, W. MILLARD.

HORRORS OF WAR. BRITISH HEROISM.

By a Correspondent.

WHEN I was in America, I often heard the following anecdote of one of our general officers. Sir Charles Grey (the father of the present Lord Grey) commanded a detachment of British soldiers to proceed to a midnight attack of a barn in Pennsylvania, which was filled with Americans. Previous, however, to their marching, he ordered them, to take their flints from their pieces, lest by one or more going off accidentally, the American sentinels might be alarmed, and those in the barn have time to prepare