therefore, require a free importation of corn, that the foreign exporters may have wherewith to purchase my goods. And if you import corn, eries the agriculturist, where am I to find a market for mine, taxed as I am? What other people can meet my price? None. Our mutual remedy is, then, clearly confined to a levelling of our taxation to the amount of taxation in other countries. It is clear, there is no other means for our mutual support. YOUR correspondent, J. F. says:-" F. P. has withdrawn from the contest." This was news to me; for I did not know that I had entered into a contest with J. F. He quarrelled with an article which you copied from " The Bolton Chronicle;" but that did not make me a party in what he calls "the contest.". J. F. commenced his attack by acknowledging his ignorance of the subjects treated in the essay which you copied; but apparently forgetting this avowal, he soon made his ignorance manifest by his presumption. It is a little too much in any man to talk as J. F. has done, and then to expect replies to his crudities. Those were reasons quite sufficient to prevent my taking any no, tice of what he said; but there were other reasons quite as po tent as these. It is evident, J. F. did not, comprehend what he read, and it is equally evident, that he reasons incorrectly; that he imputes motives and calls names, and thus takes the matter from the broad and useful basis on which it was placed, and puts it upon the narrow and useless, not to say pernicious basis of a mere personal dispute, into which no man who really meant to do good to the working classes, and knew what he was about, would enter. If those of your readers who pay attention to the important subjects of "Machinery and Population" will read over all that J. F. has written, and then read the essay from "The Bolton Chronicle" they will find it a reply to all that J. F. has said re specting it. J. F. should read a good deal and think a good deal more than he has hitherto done, even in justice to himself, before he presumes to teach others. Political economy is the science of the working people; nothing but a knowledge of its leading principles, aided by their own prudence, can ever rescue them from the degradation into which they have not fallen-but from which they have never been able to emerge. Political economists are necessarily friends of the working people; the very end and object of the science is to elevate them, procure for them the greatest possible share of the produce of their labour; but, like all others who have attacked vulgar prejudices, political economists must expect to be attacked, and, if it were in the power of those they seek to serve, to be persecuted by them, and, this has been the state, and not unfrequently the fate of all reformers; this political economists know but as they are sincere in their desire to be useful, and fully convinced that the principles they endeavour to expound cannot fail to be useful, no vituperation, no ascription of motives will deter them from steadily pursuing their course." If their doctrines be sound, they will, in time, be embraced by those whom they seek more particularly to serve, as they are at present by the most enlightened of those who have takeu the pains necessary to comprehend them. If they be unsound, they will be exposed and refuted, and better doctrines substituted in their place. Political economists have but one wish, and that is, that whatever may upon the whole be best calculated to promote the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" should be adopted. A small, low priced book, containing so much of the principles of political economy as most immediately affects the working people is much wanted, and, should I be able to apply as much time to the subject as may be necessary-which, I, however, fear I shall not I will, with your permission, Mr. Editor, do what I Editor, do - can towards furnishing such a book. My plan would be to supply a series of essays for "The Republican," which might afterwards be worked off as a pamphlet, and sold separately. It should consist of an introduction-containing a general view of the science; to be followed by Essays on Rent of Land-Capital and Profit-Wages-Population Taxation, including Tithes and Corn Laws-and, a summary of the whole. This might be comprised in four sheets of letter press. Might be sold at fourpence a sheet, and as a volume in boards for two shillings, and even for a smaller sum, were the purchasers likely to become numerous. Such a book would serve as a manual to those who could not afford to purchase larger works, and as an introduction to those who could. F. P. WHAT IS GOD?-No. II. Principio cœlum ac terras camposque liquentes I HAVE already considered God to be the moving power of the universe, or more properly, to be the universe itself, comprehending matter, or the substratum which excites our sensations-life, or the motion superadded-and mind, or the source of that motion; and this seems to be an opinion that agrees with the doctrine of the ancient philosophers, and which the poets of Greece and Rome embodied in their poetical descriptions and didactic songs. The quotation from Virgil above, contains the substance of the doctrine of the Schools on the universe expressed in very appropriate language. For here the material mass or moles is considered as supported by the spirit or breath of life, and the whole agitated or kept in motion by mind. I grant that all this is hypothetical, but it seems the best of all the hypotheses. At an earlier period the sun and the spirit of fire were regarded as God, because at that time men professed not that more extensive acquaintance with remote suns which astronomy subsequently taught, and the sun, or our system of planets, was regarded as containing within itself the causes of all those phenomena which were produced by his light. The worship of the sun, the air, and the elements, is certainly the most ancient worship we are ac quainted with, and it gave rise to the custom of building cities" and temples in the form of a cross-the principal gate being to the east, and consequently the other three great gates would correspond to the remaining three points of the compass. Not only the great cities of the East, but our own English and French towns, and indeed most of the oldest towns of Europe, have the great streets running east and west, north and south, and contain therefrom evident marks of ancient astro-theology and the worship of the sun. In the grand invocations of the elements in some of the Greek tragedian choruses, we find evidence of the popularity of the same worship; and we may discover by the history of all religions that grew out of and were modified and simplified by our progressive knowledge of astronomy, and of the phenomena of the atmosphere, such were the basis of the polytheism of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome: and it possessed this great advantage over the theology of modern Europe, that the Deities of the Greeks and Romans were personifications of the general powers of Nature, and are therefore capable of a physical expla nation-while the Gods of the Christians, though springing, like the former, originally out of astronomy, are now purely imaginative beings, formed by man in the image of his own imperfect nature, endowed with his worst passions, and hidden from the ken of the multitude by a veil of mystery; by means of which, Priestcraft, backed by Tyranny, preys on ignorance, and cheats the unwary out of the goods of life on the pretext of procuring them a reward in a fictitious Paradise, more abstrusedly absurd and unmeaning than its prototype, the Elysian Fields of the ancients. The selfish maxim of Christian charity is, that he that GIVES to the Priest, LENDS to the Lord, and that for goods given to others on earth, we are to have a 7 per cent. interest in Heaven. And the sensible proverb, that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, has not yet beat it out of the brains of many speculative Evangelicals to lend money on such terms of usury, and to avow openly that their charity is not the good Samaritan's, but is done to save or to help their own souls, and procure for them a better place in the kingdom to come. Now the Jupiters and Dianas of antiquity made no such stipulations. There is however a great resemblance between the manner the heroes of old Greece and the saints of new Rome were disposed of: Viam adfectere Olympo was a sort of classical getting to Heaven, and in the posthumous disposal of great souls, held out as a matter of encouragement to living subjects, there is a wonderful similarity between stellification and canonization; as there is also between Patron Genii and Patron Saints, between Natal Genii and Guardian Angels, and between all the festivals and ceremonies of Paganism and those of Christianity. But I must reserve this subject for my HISTORY OF ALL THE GODS, and my KEY TO ALL THE CALENDARS, in the sequel. And for the present go on to state my mode of reasoning on the hypothesis of an intelligent God. All the changes of figure which matter undergoes, which be come the objects of our sensations, and which we can individualize, and call phenomena, i. e. appearances, seem to take place by means of what we call motion and all motions seem determined by fixed laws. I have asserted, and I maintain it, that it is inconsistent with the nature of the human mind, be it by means of the organ of causality, or by what other name you please to designate it,-to consider matter as originating its own motion, the cause of motion is therefore what I mean by mind. Now the word Deity is, to me, only a sort of algebraical sign for the centre of all the motion of the whole universe taken collectively; and such has ever been the opinion of the greatest and most reflecting philosophers of every age and country. In this view of the subject, I assert the existence of a Deity in opposition to Atheism; and I shall proceed to examine this notion in reference to various physical sciences; and examine the consistency of the hypothesis with all positive knowledge which seems to me the only right way of proving the truth or falsehood of our opinions. For it is trying the truth of hypothetical or assumed causes, by examining their capability of explaining, or their agreement with positive sensations or effects. It is in this very same way that the Newtonian System is tried. It has been esta blished on the ground of its consistent adaptation to all known effects. We see not, nor feel, attraction or repulsion, and the Newtonian System is only verified by demonstrating its power to solve the problems of the causes correctly of what we do see and know of the celestial mechanism. This idea struck me long ago when examining the discoveries of Sir William Herschell in the higher department of astronomy. As the most correct physical facts may be known and predicted by calculations founded on the hypothesis of attractions, and the established laws of motion in mathematics, so great metaphysical truths may be established on the hypothesis of causes emanating from one intelligent source, and giving thereby a unity of design to the whole fabric of the universe; and this is the opinion that I have attempted to establish. In physics we can no more see the centre of gravity than we can in metaphysics see the centre of causation. Both are hypothetical, but I contend that the one as well as the other will serve for the solution of questions relating to the origin and changes of simple objects, and will enable us to predict the occurrence or periodical return of phenomena. Both proceed, likewise, on the supposition, that the laws of nature are everywhere the same; are constant, regular, and unchangeable; without which supposition there could be no such thing as certainty in philosophy. All our knowledge is founded on sensations, and I admit that we do not see causes, but we see their effects; and our knowledge of the causes is the necessary effect of ratiocination. What renders a belief in causation a correct belief is, that calculations founded thereon turn out to be true. We do not, in the mathematics, see either points or lines, nor attractiens, nor centres of gravity, yet all good calculations founded on these hypothetical existences, turn out in the result to be correct, and furnish all that grand and imposing astronomical prophecy on which our almanacks and ephemerides are founded. I know it is the fashion, now-a-days, to dispute the Newtonian System, and I, for one, am ready to assert, and I have asserted at Cambridge and elsewhere, that its purity is an assumed and unproved, though not an unsupported, hypothesis; it derives its support from the circumstance of its perfect agreement with all the existing phenomena of moving bodies with which we have as yet become acquainted: from the fact that all other known explanations of the phenomena involve contradiction and absurdity; and from our never being disappointed by any failure in the subsequent occurrence of such phenomena as calculation founded |