to overcome. A certain degree of symthy has already been evinced in SoUTHWELL'S e, but a trifling demonstration when comred with what might be brought to bear by fidel strength and resources if fairly put t. Much is due to partial effervessence, t it must not be calculated, from the past odicum of support, that the agitation will followed up by proportionable future conibutions in pence, labor, and energy. This Balm of Gilead to the godists; there is gall dwormwood for them, nevertheless. They nnot have the sweet without the bitter, and eadly bitter will it be for them; a bitter, owever, which will sweeten the labors of the ilers. The sweet is the beholding of the uth-martyrs, after a temporary ebullition, in me clutches of the law; vituperated, negcted, or unassisted by their own party. The Etter is the finding the vehicle of the objeconable and dangerous opinions still careering n; still continuing to furnish mental food to be thinking; still beating down old errors; till exposing all sorts of crafts, priestcraft, adecraft, godcraft, and devilcraft, all which ill, in their proper places, come in for conideration, as essential departments in the dohain of REASON. The "bonds of society," ur "noble institutions," our "admirable ws," our venerable church," our holy region;" all this stiltification must be laid w. For the bonds of society we will read hains of society; for our noble institutions crafty devices; for admirable laws-sancioned trickeries; venerable church— antiquated pander; for holy religion-mystical umbug. "Truth without mystery, or fear of man" we will proclaim, and as little "mixEure of error," as may be.

cts, or than he is prepared to meet, to repel, (tively tolerated, or apologised for with bated breath. To acknowledge an identity of opinion would be an effort quite beyond their courage. The people, with the little sympathies and narrow benevolences cannot afford it; "it is not the season," as the boys say with the pegtops. Whence comes this? Is it from the antagonisms of their language? No, for hostility far more aggravated in the organs of despotism is viewed with dove-like tenderness. Is it from the fierceness of their attacks? No, for nothing can be more disgustingly unscrupulous than the onslaughts of the bigot press, which is passed over with scarcely a disapproval. What, then, are the obstacles? The opinions themselves! And why the opinions? Because other people are afraid of them. What would Mrs. Grundy say? what would become of us, if we lost Mrs. Grundy for a customer? How should we make, both ends meet, my dear, if Mrs. Grundy were to leave us? Consider our wives and families. Consider my parliamentary duties, says an M.P. in sending a very polite refusal to attend at a Radical hob-nob. Why a wife and family are as good as a little annuity to one of your cautious tribe. A widow's cap can scarcely compete with a wife and family. And what an irresistible reason for sitting slippered in the arm-chair before the fire, reading with complacency or becoming indifference about other people's strugglings; and what an infallible excuse for buttoning up the breeches pocket. Besides, a wife and family begets sympathy; and sympathy begets custom, you know, and being a "nation of shopkeepers," we must look to the "main chance," and all that. Yes, the main chance, et preterea nihil, and nothing else. What do the poor do with their wives and families, who lose more by sacrificing their miserable pence, than these excusers do in deducting their pounds? The fact is,that three-fourths of the so-called Infidels are worshippers. They worship the till, the profits, and the percentages; they have, equally with the religious world, a god, as operative, as influential, as controlling in their every thought, word, and action. This god, and the godists'god is the god mammon. In him, as one of the noted "Jew Book" writers has it, "they live, and move, and have their being."

But to return to the hob-nobers, and shaminfidels, there are among them, as among all her men and parties, those who give their unqualified sanction, their approval to all past efforts for reform; so much so as to leave o reserve for present toils, trials, and troubles in the same cause. They can admire the Socrates, and Wickliffes, and Huses, and Luthers, &c. &c., in the moral and religious rforms, and the Gracchi, and the Tells, and the Hampdens in political reforms. These Can be admired at a distance, and distance, Vainly do the firm hearts that stand in the with this class of people, confers respectability foreground, and strike the first blow against and lends enchantment to the view. The tyranny, vainly do they look for support; they day of these reformers is gone by, and they who cast away the mental bandages, who require but the passive, fruitless sympathy think for themselves, who see for themselves, of actionless approval. The O'Briens, O'Con- who use not the tongue nor pen of others, ors, Frosts, Lovetts, Hetheringtons, the but boldly put forth their independent thoughts, Carliles, Watsons, the Southwells, living are suffered to fall unaided, or faintly and inten, their actions fresh in our recollection, effectively helped, the victims of force and d above all, it being so unfashionable to fraud. Man, man!" says the New Ecce concede to such our sympathy, and so un- Homo, "I begin to be ashamed of thy name! Pofitable to grant them support, must be A brother comes to thee, and says, 'Farewell, repudiated, or cautiously screened, or fur- brother, I go to prison!' and thou sleepest !.

66

Another says, Farewell, brother, I go to the scaffold!' and thou sleepest! Another says, 'Farewell, brother, avenge my death!' and thou sleepest! Man! man! man! I will still exclaim until thou wakest."

modification of his belief or unbelief, and accordance with its special applicability,

The Infidel from whim and the Infidel fro disgust, and the Infidel from anger, and sham-Infidel, and the semi-Infidel, or any b the Infidel from examination and convictio may shake their crotchetty heads "and lo repudiative," or may even wax indignant, contemptuous, or dignified, or in some sha or way cast off from themselves any identi cation with the real supporters of comple latitude in the expression of opinion. T honest Infidel, the honest man of all beliefs no beliefs, will always uphold right and pri ciple. The little phalanx linked together i the upholding of right, the assertion of pri ciple, and the practical carrying out of objects through the pages of the Oracle, a banded by ties not belonging to personal frien ship alone, nor those of the till, or the counte They hardly know each other but by reput tion, or mutually seeing or interchangin thoughts on paper. They are banded by pr ciple. Holding, with scarcely an exceptio prominent and influential positions in th society, which is attracting a larger share public attention to its operations, both fro the cabinet and the people, than any other e tant, and which is about to commence " pra tical measures," on the grandest scale of co-op rative association; thus situated, as I said, this society, the contributors to, and pledg supportors of, this periodical are determin to abolish, or set at defiance, all interferen with mind, whether in high or low places. SOUTHWELL'S bark shall never sail witho an helmsman.

The same ferocity, for it is still ferocity, whether gratified or not, whether barbarous or refined, is still displayed in the judicial sentence of the fine and imprisonment. And shall this most monstrous and unjust power be permitted to be exercised, shall its objects be gained by stopping the free current of thought? They shall not stifle the free voice, they shall not "coquet with the press or with human knowledge," they shall not upraise one portion of the press and trample on the other; either they must crush the press, as the priest truly said, or the press will crush them. Is the hunger and thirst after blasphemers' liberty and life to be allayed by a single sacrifice? No! he "still must have more blood!" His appetite is whetted by the taste. The human tiger prowls about from conventicle to conventicle, from "missionary" meeting to " bible" meeting, from " anti-popery" meeting to "churchextension" meeting, the most brutalising of the human passions being wrought upon and brought into full play by the doctrines and incendiary addresses of the M'Neiles, Stowells, M'Ghees, et id genus homne. The stream proceeding from a polluted and sanguinary source must necessarily partake of its foulness -blood! blood! is their theme. Blood for the old Jew-god! blood for the young Christgod! blood at the Jew massacres! blood at the Christian massacres! blood at the Tonga Islands! and blood at Rathcormac! Finally, they would have blood at Bristol gaol, were their murderous intentions not frustrated by a more generally diffused opinion in favour of milder criminal laws; diffused, let it be borne in mind, not by religion, as Bentham could THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANIT attest, but by Infidel philosophy.

Stay! before you return to the day-book or the ledger, view this portrait, it is drawn from the life, and by a faithful artist: "See, at yonder high-place, a figure moving towards you with a crucifix in his hand! See, he moves his lips? His lips are as black, and hang as frightfully over his chin, as the lips of the horror of the night. Words fall from his lips-his words-hark, bark! You are within, leaning on the creaking stools, you adored the god of the ocean-drop, you were heretics, you have been broken, you have been rent and cast away-hallelujah! You who stand outside the door, you were Jews, your hearts have been burned-hallelujah! And future heretics and Jews shall be broken, and rent, and cast away, and burned-hallelujah! hallelujah!'"

These remarks may be fitted by each shade or grade of believer or unbeliever to himself, according to the particular complexion or

DISPLAYED;

M. Q. R.

OR THE PENALTY OF HONESTY IN THE NINETEEN
CENTURY.

(Concluded from page 88.)

WITH a simplicity only to be pardoned, as M Owen would say, or the sense of " inexpe ence," we have felt it a kind of duty to belie that Christians were sincere in their professio of belief in their dogmas and creeds, and ha ascribed the reality of their faith to stupidi rather than deception; deeming it more char able to set them down for fools than to estims them as knaves. But our conciliating logic for ever knocked on the head by the imprude disclosures of the learned gentleman who co ducted the prosecution. Government, whi now means little else than robbing and star ing people in the name of her majesty, hing on the terrors of religion, which is but machine to support injustice, and frighten, bugaboos, its victims into submission. Christians themselves could not better defe

A

Sur

are taken every year, and they are all ad- hands his evidences are consigned, who, ministered in courts of justice, every taker" Publicola" forcibly says, would have first kissing the blessed bible. "What be- gued the other side with equal alacrity comes of the sanction under which law and the brief fallen into their hands. justice are administered," quoth Mr. Smith, theology is on its last legs, and its god in without "the solemn appeal to the omnicient despicable condition. Atheism comes like and almighty being, through the medium of balm, a sweet anodyne to the irritated spi an oath, taken upon the sacred scriptures ?" after the contemplation of such a scene. Aye, what indeed ? What became of this The utility of the course Mr. Southw same "sanction under which law and justice has pursued, this trial abundantly dem are administered" in the case of the quaker strates, except perhaps to the hopelessly P juryman to whom the pleader found himself judiced. A thousand lectures and argum obliged to allude? In the very same breath tations would fail to expose the pretensi Mr. Consistency Smith observed on the quaker's hollowness, cruelty, and injustice of r non-taking of the oath, but that "was not gion, so effectually as she has been driv because he disbelieved in the existence of a to expose herself. The public opinion n god; but because he has such a profound awakening, the light now cast on her def reverence for the holy scriptures." Thus, mities, and the press, her giant enemy ev have but an extra profound reverence for in bonds, publishing her infamies, will so the holy book; and the "sanction," the transform her into a suicide. If any vi "solemn appeal," the "almighty being," and taken here should be deemed over paint the "sacred scriptures" themselves, are all and unjust, the answer is, the condemnation pitched overboard sans ceremonie. On the Southwell is merciless cruelty, bigotry and opp contrary, say you don't believe a word of sion; RELIGION HAS BEEN THE PREPETRATO it, that it is all knavery or twaddle-and it is forced down your throat. So much for the morality of christianity! But see it further exemplified, in the truly Christian advocate entreating the jury, who had been sworn to decide only according to evidence, to find Mr. Southwell guilty, although no particle of evidence could be adduced in proof of the crime with which he stood charged. The best reply to all advanced, during the whole speech, on the immorality of Atheism, was in Mr. Southwell's own person. He had sacrificed his fair prospects, risked his life, subjected himself to the coldness and loss of friends, to the sneers, scoffs, and cruelty of enemies, and then stood there to be convicted of an offence which no man did, nor ever can, commitwithout hope of justice, without chance of mercy, and with the prospect of a long, cruel, and murderous imprisonment. It is due only to the accident of Mr. Southwell having friends to make his imprisonment tolerable, that his life may be saved to lay the lash again upon his bigot foes. And all rather than tell a lie, and with the hope of bettering the condition of his oppressed and priest-ridden fellow-men.

a

The moral sensibility of a lawyer is analogous to that of the butcher, him of the red coat as well as the blue apron, both alike having their sympathies blunted by their training. One might as consistently ask a soldier in the field of blood to sit on coroner's inquest as one of the men of the law to decide on a question of morality. Yet these men of dungeons and death, whose footsteps are in the midst of misery, and who live on the agonies of the unfortunates of humanity, are the vicegerents of a god, his defenders, to whose

A f

CHRISTIANITY HAS THE SHAM
and whatever is cruel and unjust is execrab
called by whatever name it may be. Still
transaction is redolent with satisfaction,
considering the fatal and imprudent disclosu
SOUTHWELL has drawn forth by his trial, o
conclusion seems inevitable, that Christia
have more to fear from the arguments of In
dels, than Infidels from the vengeful a
cowardly punishments of Christians.
more exposures like this Bristol convictio
will entomb them in contempt; a few mo
such victories will ruin them. SOUTHWE
has gained more to the territories of reason
two days, than they can regain to the doma
of faith in two centuries. By his sufferin
they are everlasting losers-a mental Sam
son-in his fall he has broken the pillars
the temple, and brought the superstructu
of Dagon over the heads of his enemies.

G. J. H.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.
A. Z. No.
MOVING THE TRIAL. The Trial was not move
because it could not have been brought within met

politan jurisdiction; aud it was not deemed adviɛa
to change the venue to a neighbouring county. Ev
step was taken by the committee under the best le
advice,
with furt

A SECOND REPORT will shortly appear,

SUBSCRIPTION LISTS.

ORACLE OF REASONTH

Or, Philosophy Vindicated.

"FAITH'S EMPIRE IS THE WORLD; ITS MONARCH, GOD; ITS MINISTERS, HE PRIESTS;
ITS SLAVES, THE PEOPLE."

EDITED FOR CHARLES SOUTHWELL, DURING HIS IMPRISONMENT,
BY G. JACOB HOLYOAKE.