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tunate. It is a kind of murder to traduce, o even expose the defenceless, but to attack party, such as yours, which is armed cap-à pied, to the very teeth, if not in principle and honesty, at least in talent and resources; and to do this openly is surely no mark of treachery or cowardice. As Pilate said to the Jews, say to all Socialists: what I have written have written, and will willingly defend. Al this, however, is but the beginning of the end and though such a beginning may be some what salt, there is no grain of bitterness in it at least I FEEL none. Your well wisher,

C. S.

within the narrow fences of his own conceits, command to crush others who are not so for his inveterate habit of proving himself a false prophet, and his late leaning towards a jesuitic kind of policy, leave us ample reason to regret, for the sake not merely of Mr. Owen's reputation, but for the sake of the interests of your party, together with those of the world at large, that he did not long since retire into private life. His own opinion is that your party can do nothing without him, my opinion is that it never will do anything with him. There is a kind of fatality about his projects, and his very name conjures up the idea-unpractical. As practical as Robert Owen, is now a praise accorded to all visionaries. I know he will smile when he reads or hears of this, but I had much rather he should smile at my blunt ignorance, than weep for my insincerity. Nothing can be more offensive than large pretensions and small performances, talking as though mountains were molehills, and acting as though molehills were mountains. All vain boasting smells of quackery, and certainly nothing can be more quackish than Mr. Owen's pompous manner of laying claim to the character of a practical man, aye, and the only practical man to be found in Europe. Psha, all men are more or less practical, and there is much less difference between the wisest and most simple than is generally imagined.

These are some of the truths NOT made of marble, that few among you may be charmed with. I regret this, but cannot help it, there are prejudices to be shocked in your party as well as all others. My course is marked out, I know it to be an honest, though it may prove a mistaken one. I am paying freedom's price, and will not be easily deterred by fear or love of individuals from exercising those rights which can only be exercised by the free.

To be weak

Is to be miserable, doing or suffering; but I am happy to say, that with regard to the candid avowal of my opinions, I have neither scruples nor weaknesses. Mr. Owen is but a man with great talents and virtues, not without a tolerable share of human frailties. Infallibility, said the promising Charles Roper, is the prerogative of no man, and he who would proclaim himself infallible, is one of the most deceived of men, or the most daring of deceivers. The general of the Jesuits, by a fiction worthy of their order, was esteemed a man without passions, surely you will not propagate a like fiction with regard to the general of the Socialists. For my own part, I should be ashamed, nay, rather would I skulk into woods and wilds, making companionship with the half-brute half-man bush-rangers, than give up my rights to inquire freely, and as freely publish, without individual or party licence.

It is not fair for those who have the press at

IS THERE A GOD?

IX.

O YES! answer the Charons of orthodoxy who live by ferrying unbelievers to hel However we agree with the Scotchman, wh dooted the foct. If all ever written on the affirmative side of this question could b collected together in one heap, we opine it migh be poured into a perfect vacuum, without a all destroying the common notion of nonentity Divines on this their favourite hobby are s many students under Moses, the Jewish jug gler. Their forte lies in manufacturing seeming something out of nothing.

"It has been truly said," remarked th author of Ion, in his defence of Mr. Moxon for selling Queen Mab, "that an undevou astronomer is mad; an atheist poet was a con tradiction in terms." How truly an astronome who doubts the existence of a first-cause e be stigmatised as a lunatic, perhaps the learne serjeant can determine. To us the insanit lies on the side of those who, finding the un verse a mystery, take refuge in a greater, t account for it. Such procedures, if astronom cal, are far from being reasonable. In th supposition that the truth of the existence a god is involved in anything that poets sin or say is a great fallacy. A very common and very influential. Much popular feeli has been enlisted in favour of belief in supe natural powers by poesy, without a particle foundation. Persons who bring forth muses, instead of argument, only expose the own weakness, as a little examination show.

The bard who said, "let me make yo ballads, and you may make the laws," knew power of poetry in forming popular notion Personification is the soul of poetry. It the tendency of the poet to embody his e ceptions. To admire his skill, and to feel force and beauty added to verse is delicio to attach the importance of fact to his dre ings, deleterious. Homer, Virgil, Ossian ancient poets, who sang of gods, were devout believers in divine existence.

the subject on which we treat, a learned disquisition would reveal some curious facts of gods of all forms and colours.

where are they? echoes only tell. Their gods no more suit modern imagination, than the gods of modern poets will posterity's. The bard feels more than he thinks. Leaving the One consideration of no little weight on majesty of the universe, he endeavours to em- this subject must not be forgotten. Poets, as body, to personify the supposed power he a class, are venal and time-serving, will fancies pervades it. His mind is constitution- eulogise murders, praise tyrants, flatter power, ally unfitted for close and strict reasoning. fawn on rank and title just as patronage may He laughs at it. Fancy and not logic, imagi- be dispensed, or the laureatship bestowed. As nation not reason, creation not fact, is his far as divinity goes, they will sing of one god, forte. To all this we do not demur. On the or thousands, just as the court fashion may decontrary, delight in it. But for consistency's mand. Byron, Shelley, Burns, and a few sake, let his reveries go forth as such. Let others, are glorious exceptions; but very few ali poetical gods and goddesses stand upon are such instances, and very far between. It their true ground-mythology. Our nurses, ought to be otherwise: the harp should ever said the shrewd curé of Etrepigny, are our be strung to truth and liberty, not prostituted irst theologians; to which may be added, to sycophancy. Where are the poets of the that the poets are the theologians of our people, whose wild strains waken the dignity When we hear of poets rhyming and spirit of independence? How few are about divinities, we fancy we see "their eyes they who are not chilled by conventionalisms, in fine frenzy rolling," and their brains too, or pensioned into silence and hypocrisy. Di"giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a vinity in their hands is not less an emphemera A celebrated living poet, commenting than liberty. When they sing of a god it is, one day in our hearing on the renowned bom- in nine cases out of ten, because their patrons bast of Pope, beginningwish the multitude set gaping after nonentities above, that they may secure the things below.

nurses.

name.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, &c,, &c., said, it was a remarkable instance of how much, words skilfully arranged, could be made to seem and sound like sense, without possess ing one grain of it. All attempts to embody in language the idea of a god, whether by poets or others, have been miserable failures; for the simple reason, that words, being as Dr. Johnson beautifully said, "The children of men;" the representatives of things; and god, according to divines, being No-thing, language is out of its elements. We might carry these remarks farther, and quote certain tart writers, who contend that anything can be Expressed of which a clear conception is entertained, proving, in this case, that people and poets are without any notion of the thing they pretend to talk and sing about. But as this might be "going too far," "shock people's prejudices," &c., we refrain.

We have never heard a sensible hymn of Mr. Barbauld's sung, without feeling how deep a satire is conveyed upon the folly of worship

m its best form. Two lines run thus:

But oh! our highest notes the theme debase, And SILENCE is our least injurious praise. The sapient saints who were bawling forth their own condemnation, would not make the discovery in "Seven Ages." Another proof that upon the railway of religion folly always rides in the mail train.

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contradiction, confusion, and blunder is the Analyse the prevalent conceptions of god: compound. Go a scale higher the notions it is notorious the notion is gone. The reagrow beautifully less." In the highest scale understood. Men who contemplate the reveson, through lack of education, is not generally lations of science, the mighty teachings of astronomy, and look through the glasses of their glorious way in realms where thought Herschel at the far off universes, wending has never been, and where imagination and fancy are lost, do they not feel the mighty who mock the overwhelming majesty of naself-sufficiency of the boundless whole? Men that there must be some prop to uphold that ture by their puny ravings and idiot teachings, which of itself is appalling power, are to be regarded with supreme pity.

the most cogent argument of the Atheist is to Sometimes theologians skilfully aver, that them "a confirmation strong" of the very opposite truth. Let us exercise what every phrenologist will approve, namely, our organs of imitation. It is pretended that the magnitude of nature is a strengthening testimony of belief in a god. The same consideration to our minds is so conclusive of the sufficiency of its power, inherent properties, and creative essence, as to render the assumption of indepenThe popular notions instilled into the na- dent agencies, more than superfluous-actually tional mind by poetry, in some cases, has been ridiculous. While its extent defies the full humanising; no doubt that the greatest of conception of itself, and renders impossible poets have aimed at this. Still much mis- the belief in anything else. Congenial with chief has been done, and great advantages the feeling of the ancient sage, on his bed of taken of the lucubrations of the sons of Par-death, are our views: "Mother of life, from Dassus. If poetry could prove anything upon thee I came, to thee I go."

We bid now farewell to all poets. They A HINT TO THE PIOUS.-Economy is the are not all unwise. Many mingle philosophy feature of the age-it might advantageously with their songs, and the deep teachings of be applied to religion. If the men who offer the universe with their muse. Their produc-up innumerable prayers for deliverance from "tions, when taken as a standard of truth, must sin would make a bold stroke (query strike), be analysed by thought; the chaff separated and pray that their god would call in the devil from the wheat; the bad from the good; the and stop his roaming about like a "roaring fancy from fact; the daguereotype images of lion"-what an immense saving of Christian truth from the paintings of fiction: then breath would be effected. If faith is good for will men derive profit from their productions, anything, this could be accomplished. We and avoid superstition's thorny roads; the recommend the trial. ways of science become ways of pleasantness, and the paths of truth be peace. Purified from all grovelling notions, the antidote will be found to be the bane of religion; and the truthful mind, in the words of Dr. Olinthius Gregory, to his mathematical pupils, "will gather to itself all that is good, subordinate to itself all that is good, and sit enthroned on the riches of the universe." G. J. H.

MORALITY OF CHRISTIANITY AND OF ENGLISH
LAW, of which it is part and parcel.-Prosti-
tution in Leeds :-
Number of houses

Average number of prostitutes, four
in each house

Number of bullies

Ditto mistresses

Total living on prostitution.

Number of men visiting daily each house, 80; equal for 175 houses

The girls, on an average, receive £1 10s. weekly

.....

Spent on drink, 1s. 6d. each visitor
Robberies, 2s. 6d. each, low average
Money received by girls and obtained

175

700

350

175

1225

14000

£1050

1050

1750

It is always a bad sign, when people are more attentive to words than to the idea they convey. No words can be either vulgar or indecent if the ideas they convey are just and true. When public bodies, or society at large, are shocked at truth without a veil, it proves corruption is present with them. The man in full health don't mind rough handling, it is people full of disease, that cannot bear to be touched.

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HATE. Hate may be called the offspring of good, begotten by evil, when it means the laudable detestation felt by virtuous minds for the "frightful mien of vice." Taking a liberty poets take without asking, namely the permis sion to personify, light may be said to hate darkness; sincerity hypocrisy; and benevolence cruelty. Hence hate is natural to rightly constituted minds, and will ever live until hateful men cease to exist, and odious things are known no more. No man, let modern moralists say what they please to the contrary, can love the tyrant, the cruel, and the hypocritical, unless some fellow-feeling make him wondrous kind." We can only love the lovely, and like that which is pleasing. Were it not so we should want the motive which induces us to strive to become pleasing to others, and impels us to render all around us lovely. It is a mighty agent in perfecting man's progression. Proper and vigilant exercise appertains to it. Care must be taken that we do not hate the good. Scrutiny should precede it. Attention should be fixed rather on the cause than the instrument of evil' manifestation. The moral, like the physica world is full of antagonisms. Let hate bu steadily be directed against evil, and love wil soon enjoy a wider domain than it now ca boast. Hate like many other things require If sound opinions may be called truth's sound and just direction. In itself it is a use shadow, just actions are properly truth's sub-ful principle, or rather feeling of the mind. stance; opinions, like shadows, having in themselves nothing tangible, whereas a just act is the realisation of a good. Virtue is not an empty name, but the fulness of just conduct: action, action, action! being the essential of moral greatness.

by robberies is what the 1225 individuals have to live on (the lastnamed £1050 being consumed on drink at the time).

Total for prostitution weekly.

Yearly.

Leeds Mercury, Jan. 4, 1840.

£3850

£200,000

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ORACLE

OF REASONS

Or, Philosophy. Vindicated. (THULENICE

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

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No. 15.]

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

THE PHILOSOPHY OF

FORBEARANCE.

Our daily intercourse is with fallible beings, most of whom are undisciplined in intellect, the slaves of prejudice, and unconscious of their own mental energies. The essential condition of intellectual progress in such a world, is the resistance of social fluences, or of impressions from our fellowbeings."-CHANNING.

LET people say what they will, this is an anagonistic world, and is likely long to remain The spirit of resistance, not only to "inluences and impressions," but also to attacks, a prime element of existence, the right arm of life. With it virtue is supported, right Established, and men walk through the world. Without it justice is silent, injustice rampant, nd men, like friable stone, are trampled into fine dust, or lie down footstools under the feet of tyrants. How should resistance be conducted? What principles should regulate it? Some decry all resistance, but either they who o so are removed from oppression's sphere or do not practice their own precepts. Modern philosophy has done more to confound than clear up the subject. It may be affirmed of the doctrine of forbearance as the satirist wittily did of metaphysics:

[PRICE 1d.

A

resistance, and no philosophy can alter the
case; for true philosophy finds out what na-
ture is and busies itself only to provide the
proper conditions for her manifestation.
proper knowledge of human nature and how
it is ever modified by influences, how it is al-
ways at birth a fountain of goodness, and sub-
sequently changed independently of the indi-
vidual, may prescribe the mode of treatment
in antagonistic cases, but can never destroy
the fact of resistance, nor its justness nor
naturalness. To make the subject more clear,
we will suppose a case, perhaps the utility
will compensate for the formality. We shall
probably stumble over some differences which
must not be regarded disdainfully, seeing that
they make up variety which nature is said to
love.

66

In the first place the difference must be narrowly scanned. No man has made a contract to think as another may, nor to imitate the customs another may choose to follow, The primary duty is to feel certain we have our quarrel just." If annoyed by rudeness or cruelty, we merely see the influence of bad training upon an individual, which is to be considered the cause of his bad behaviour, and our first feeling must be pity for his misforIn non-resistance's subtleties crossed, tune, not anger for his offence: but with anger The more we jog on the more we are lost; nor without it, offences are not to be borne with Discussed eternally, it still appears impunity. No man could practice such a Like Paddy's ale, it thickens as it clears. principle and live. What is to be done to Suaviter in modo fortiter in re, said Lord obtain redress? The offender must be mildly Chesterfield to his son, and perhaps few max- remonstrated with, patience, forbearance, and ms better express the right course to pursue. kindness must be exercised. So far goes the Philosophy teaches gentleness, self-preserva- advice of moralists for curing the dissentions tion demands firmness. If we look at man- of the old world, which is all very good in its kind through the lenses of necessity, and see way, and especially so when it answers the inmen the creatures of circumstances, still we tended purpose; but when it fails, as it does are obliged to resist them. Truth resists every day even when applied to the advisers, falsehood; right, might; honesty, hypocrisy, what is to be then done our informant saith and so on through the category of all the vir- not. They who should boggle at every omisthes and their opposite vices. Passing from sion they find would not get through a case the moral to the physical sphere, resistance in one of Georgium Sidus's years, so we must there side by side with necessity. Ani- proceed and supply the deficiency as correctly mals are definitely constituted, are modified as our partial experience' will permit. ke men by situation and training, yet we According to our notion, patience under insult tread upon the viper, shoot the tiger, and do has two limits. One natural enough-when many other things at times not very remark- we can bear it no longer; the other, when our able for mildness and forbearance. So of our forbearance increases that insolence it is meant Treatment of each other; when we come in to repress. With regard to the first, seeing contacts fatal to peace and life, nature teaches how men are whirled about by the winds of

66

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taken of your patience the oppressors shoul be removed like so many blocks of wood, with the least possible suffering to them, but thei power of making misery should be effectually taken away. Some are of opinion that mora force in our age is sufficient to secure huma rights. Sy be it. But if not, no nation o people should therefore give the pledge o submission. It is the nature of power to in toxicate, of oppression to grow rampan Teach that human endurance has no limit and you teach that wrong has no day of redres Assure authority that no ungentle oppositio shall ever disturb its repose or rectify it harsh extortions, and it will slumber for ages i the seats of injustice while the wronged and th slave would remain to die miserable students Job. In society those who have rights to gain d well to remember that they who withhold the are the children of fate like theirselves, an should proceed to obtain satisfaction with mild

fate, and blown through society with their early associations, like finger-posts, ever pointing the way they are to walk, and tyrant-custom driving them into the path, we confess that patient endurance, like the summer's sun Should be long in going down.. But if the end proposed is not answered, it must go down, or the truth of the trite saying, we may have too much of a good thing," will soon be evident. Forbearance, like eating, is capital in moderation, in excess it leads to disease. When he whose fault has been forgiven feels he has received a licence to repeat it, some measures must be taken to teach him better; the least possible pain should be inflicted, but a firm resistance must now be offered. To preach unlimited patient endurance under insult is to encourage tyranny and injustice on one part, shameful submission and cowardice on the other. Whoever gives such advice, do theirselves little credit, and whoever takes it render theirselves contemptible: the meekness, but nevertheless with firmness and resolu slave of every oppressor, and the helpless tion, and should early in the struggle nerve thei prey of every knave. The wise man will, selves for the worst. A different teaching w perhaps, never feel anger at wrong done to are aware is now fashionable, but tincture him, will remonstrate, strive to reform, en- more with fear and expediency than wit dure long, will never resent, never be driven truth and liberty. If society has unfortunatel to revenge; but when these fail he will take made the tyrant, nature has luckily made th the most effectual and mild means in his slave to resist. In the battle for freedom power to restrain the aggressor, in self-protec-man should rest with less than success, no tion. In any attack from others, endangering permit cajollery nor pusillanimity to prever life or person, the same principle of self-pro-him employing the proper means of securing tection should guide, and nothing which selfpreservation does not demand should be done. It is wise to step aside from the falling tree, conduct the lightning's flash away, but it is also right to kill the snake when scotching will not be safe.

The stupid precept, "resist not evil," which none but tyrants preach and slaves practice, is only recommended because in accordance with the prejudices of authority and power. He who will turn one cheek to be smitten when the other has been struck, will soon have his face disfigured. To rely on the power of love," as we are sometimes gravely told, is a very agreeable thing where love exists; but he who expects its embrace from the arms of hate, strangely mistakes the world and the nature of things therein. Nature teaches self-preservation. Philosophy dictates that it be effected, if possible, without the infliction of pain to others. Experience says, study the world, and do not look for it to exercise those virtues it does not possess.

What is true of individuals, applies to the masses; when oppression's iron paw is laid on them, it may be remembered that men of mistaken views are the oppressors, though in one sense they are more unfortunate than the oppressed. But iron rule is not, therefore, less grievous to be borne. What is to be done? Philosophy again assists us. Remonstrate, endure, if you can, and when advantage is

122

It

These opinions may lie open to some of jections, if not on the score of truth, on that policy. It will be thought we should dwe with confidence on the sufficency of mor forces for the work of regeneration. rather with the principle than the practi that we now have to do. The adoption physical means will be a matter of careful d bate among men of high toned courage, perhaps from the constitution of Englan despair, misery, and accident will more like at last determine it. We are of opinion th moral force, if left free to act through the pres would do wonders. But as an element in th calculation of the wronged under oppressio we think if physical means were exclude dignity would be taken from their suffering and their hopes lowered. Because of rece miscalculation and failure the whole thing h been condemned, which answers no better pu pose than showing how many sickly fish su vive on the waters of liberty. When men a reduced to the lowest stage of savage or anim wants, viz. the battle against famine, in which, sa the Quarterly Review five years ago, nine-tent of mankind are engaged, it is of little use to e patiate to such on the virtues of patience an intellectual redemption. Philosophers in su a state would laugh at it. It is hard to belie that the morality which let them sink will ra them again. Cases occur every day in whi it is better to die than to live. When men a

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