legal jurisdiction, and were liable to no control. And the more to enlarge their authority, they were empowered to punish all incests, adulteries, fornications; all outrages, misbehaviours, and disorders in marriage. And the punishments which they might inflict were according to their wisdom, conscience, and discretion. In a word, this court was a real inquisition; attended with all the iniquities, as well as cruelties, inseparable from that tribunal."*

This must suffice, and well it may, as evidence of the passion for persecution which at that time distinguished the clergy. For their proceedings in detail we must refer to the proper authorities : to Neal, and the historians of the several sects; for in the general histories of England a most imperfect view of this interesting part of our story is to be obtained. It is well known that, in spite of all persecution which could be applied, the spirit of the nation continued to rise, and rise the faster in consequence of that persecution, till the appearance of Laud. Of that man we have recently had occasion to speak. He is a prolific source of evidence, not only of the spirit of the clergy in his own age; but, selected as he has been, for the standard of a churchman to the present hour, of the spirit of the clergy in every suc ceeding age.

That he was a relentless persecutor, is saying little. With such an impetuous rage of persecution was be driven, that, undeterred by all that opposition which public opinion now obviously presented to him, he went on, recklessly, to raise the storm, in which the church and the monarchy were both levelled with the ground.

At the restoration of the monarchy (of the intermediate period it is not necessary for us to speak), the church was also restored; and with it, the spirit of persecution in its pristine vigour. To ensure the extinction of rivals, the Act of Uniformity, that is, an act for the persecution of all dissenters from the established church, was passed in 1662.

as the

"This act," says Hume, "reinstated the church in the same condition in which it stood at the commencement of the civil wars." What that condition was, in regard to powers and desires of persecution, the account just recited, of the Commission court, sufficiently testifies. "And," continues Hume, " old persecuting laws of Elizabeth still subsisted in their full rigour, and new clauses of a like nature were now enacted, all the king's promises of toleration, and of indulgence to tender consciences were thereby eluded and broken." The following great historical fact is remarkable. However," adds the historian," it is agreed that the king did not voluntarily concur

* Hume's History of England, chap. xli.
+ Hume's History of England, chap. Ixiv.

with this violent measure, and that the zeal of Clarendon and of the church party among the commons, seconded by the intrigues of the Catholics, was the chief cause which extorted his consent." Hume says, that the Catholics seconded the persecuting views of the church, because their hopes rested upon the wideness of the breach between the contending parties.

Even the Act of Uniformity did not satisfy the avidity of the clergy for means of extinguishing rivals. Two years afterwards "it was enacted, that wherever five persons above those of the same household should assemble in a religious congregation, every one of them was liable, for the first offence, to be imprisoned three months, or pay five pounds; for the second, to be imprisoned six months, or ten pounds; and for the third, to be transported seven years, or pay a hundred pounds.'

The most remarkable transactions of the reigns of the last two of the Stuarts were the persecutions, hardly surpassed for savage barbarity by any with which the page of history is stained, carried on for the establishment of episcopacy in Scotland. We have so recently had occasion to dwell upon these transactions, in our review both of Brodie's History, and of Southey's Book of the Church, that the evidence thence afforded of the persecuting spirit of the church of England, must be fresh in the recollection of our readers.

It is only further necessary, therefore, that we should shew by sufficient samples the spirit manifested by the priestly corporation in England since the epoch of the Revolution.

Hume's History of England, chap. Ixiv.

(To be continued.)

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

THE parcel has been duly received from Portsea, with thanks to Mr. Wolgar for his communication. The Scotch Preacher, John Neave, is not worth a printed letter, nor indeed, scarcely worth this notice. His Letter, in the Portsmouth Paper, detailing German Christianity, is a very useful document, inasmuch as it shews that the superstition of Christianity is almost extinct in Germany, and that the preachers see it to be necessary to conform to the change of opinion upon the subject.

The late funeral of Talma shews the state of opinion in Paris as to the Christian superstition, and that no kind of missionary or evangelical preaching can bring the body of Frenchmen back to a love of monks and friars. R. C.

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street.-All Correspondences for "The Republican," to be left at the place of publication.

No. 17. Vol. 14.] LONDON, Friday, Nov. 3, 1826. [Price 6d.

THE NEW ORTHODOXY.

THE reader of "The Republican" has this week presented to him what I have headed the new orthodoxy, in the very reverend speeches of two reverend gentlemen :-The speech of the Rev. Mr. Detrosier at Manchester, and the last Sunday's discourse of the Rev. Mr. Taylor, in his chapel at Lothbury in London. It is pleasing to see this new orthodoxy making its way before that dire old orthodoxy of divine right of kings, passive obedience and non-resistance of subjects; to see the orthodoxy of former centuries, the heterodoxy, the sedition, the treason, even the blasphemy of this! This is pleasing; and additionally so, where the priest becomes a convert to the useful preaching of this new orthodoxy. Past offences are speedily lost sight of in politics by a people, where sincere conversion is expressed, and zealous utility for the future made apparent, as the atonement.

Of the Reverend Mr. Detrosier, we have heard nothing before the present year; but various reports have reached town of the highly useful application of his oratorical talent in the neighbourhood of Manchester.

There has been a meeting at Manchester, to petition for a re peal of the Corn Laws, reform of parliament, &c., rendered important by the manner in which it has been reported in "The Times" newspaper. The speech of the Reverend Rowland Detrosier is good, and worthy of being every where copied. The following is the report taken from "The Times."

MEETING AT MANCHESTER,

ON Thursday evening last, a numerous meeting of the working classes and others, of Manchester, was held in the Manor-Court Room, High Street, according to public advertisement, "for the purpose of considering the propriety of petitioning Parliament

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet-street.

for a total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws, for a prompt and very great reduction of the present enormous amount of taxation, and for such a reform in the Commons House of Parliament as will secure to the people a proper and constitutional controul over its members, especially as it regards the management of the public money, and prevent a recurrence of that bankruptcy and ruin which is now devastating the country, and which threatens to reduce England, our once free and happy England! to the condition of the poorest and most despotic country in Europe."

By the unanimous voice of the meeting. Mr. William Eddie was called to the Chair. He commenced by reading the advertisement calling the public meeting, after which he called upon them, if they had any amendments to propose to any of the resolutions which would be submitted to the meeting, to come forwaed to the hustings, but by no means to create any disturbance by calling out from various parts of the body of the meeting.

Mr. A. Clarke rose to object, that a meeting called for such a purpose should be held in a room at ten o'clock at night.

Mr. Murray submitted the first resolution to the meeting which was seconded and passed :

1. That the present state of this country, which is now in the twelfth year of peace, is that of the most unexampled misery and ruin which it has ever fallen to the lot of any country to endure. Merchants and manufacturers are stripped of their property; the working or productive classes are without the means of employment, without food, without raiment; and pauperism, the ever fertile source of profligacy and crime, threatens to extend its baneful influence through the whole of the industrious community.

Mr. Brookes moved the second resolution, which was seconded and passed :—~

2. That one immediate cause of the deplorable and heartrending state of our country, is the cruel and unjust measure of prohibiting the importation of foreign grain, thereby depriving us of markets for our manufactured goods, at once raising the price of food, and depriving us of the means of obtaining it at almost any price, and at the same time forcing those countries which would willingly exchange their corn for our goods, to establish manufactories of their own, which threaten to exclude us altogether from the foreign market.

Mr. Jonathan Hodgin moved the third resolution; observing, that by one class they were called upon to petition Parliament for a repeal of the Corn Laws, by another class they were told it was sheer impudence, passive obedience and non-resistance were their duty. They were told that Ministers had already determined upon the line of conduct they meant to pursue, and all they did would be of no avail. He here alluded to some observations

which were contained in the " Manchester Herald" of that day, on the subject of the meeting. Proceeding to the subject of the resolution, he took occasion to observe, that in the reign of Queen Anne, the amount of the taxes was fifty hundred thousand pounds, or, in other words, five millions; but now they were increased till they were upwards of eleven times that amount. Five hundred and seventy thousand pounds were collected annually, or, as it is generally expressed, £57,000,000.; of which £52,000,000. were taken in an indirect manner, somehow, as it were by legerdemain or sleight of hand, and £5,000,000. only were exacted in a direct way, the tax-gatherer coming and demanding so much money. Nothing, he said, would be more amusing than that the advocates of the present system should be put to the necessity of going and collecting, iu a direct manner, the, at present, indirect taxes-that they should go to the old ladies, as they were sipping their tea, for instance, and for the three pennyworth of tea demaud their threepence extra as the tax, and see what answer they would get. Pokers, tongs, shovels, kettles, pots would be the order of the day. [Laughter, and applause.] He concluded a very able and appropriate, but somewhat long speech, by reading the third resolution, which was passed:-

3. That the Corn Laws, and all other prohibited enactments, which tend to raise the price of food, are the necessary conse quences of the enormous, ruinous, unjust, and unconstitutional amount of taxation which the nation is called upon to pay, to maintain a large standing army in time of peace, and to uphold a system of favouritism and corruption, in the shape of useless places, unmerited pensions, sinecures, grants, and other emoluments, that are distributed amongst a few particular and influential families, who not only give no equivalent to the state, but who, by means of various unjust and partial laws, passed by themselves, are enabled to escape those burdens which the rest of the community are compelled to bear, and by which means they are enabled to exercise a control over the members returned to serve in the Commons House of Parliament, a control totally incompatible with the spirit of the British constitution, destructive of the rights of the people, and ruinous to the best interests of the nation.

The Reverend Rowland Detrosier, a dissenting minister, next presented himself to the meeting, for the purpose of moving the fourth resolution, previous to reading which he thus addressed the Chairman and the meeting:

"Mr. Chairman and fellow townsmen, whatever be the nature of the Government of a country, when it sets aside the end for which Governments ought to be instituted; namely, the happiness of the governed, and seeks to establish an interest of its own, distinct and separate from that of the people, it ceases to be worthy of their support, and loses all title to their confidence.