at once upon my credit with your readers for my own current translation, for want of a better, from Cicero's Second book of Laws, in which the connection of Church and State is shown to have existed long before the modification of Paganism into its present form, and that exactly what the augurs were, our bishops are, having hardly changed their doctrine, and not at all improved their character. "No order of true Religion* passes over the law concerning the description of priests. For some have been constituted for the business of pacifying the gods,† and to preside at sacred solemnities, others to interpret the predictions of the prophets. Not of the many, lest the number should be infinite; but that none beside the College should understand those predictions which had been publicly recognized. For augury is the greatest and most excellent thing in the Republic, and naturally allied to authority. Nor do I thus think, because I am an augur myself, but because it is absolutely necessary for us to think thus. For if the question be of legal right, what is GREATER than the power to put away from the highest governments and the highest powers, their right of holding counsels and issuing decrees, or to abolish them when holden ? What more AWFUL than for any thing undertaken, to be done away, if but one augur hath said otherwise? What more MAGNIFICENT than to be able to decree that the supreme governors should resign their magistracy? What more RELIGIOUS than to give or not to give the right of treating or transacting business with the people or the commonalty? What, than to annul a law, if it hath not been duly passed?-and for nothing that hath been done by the government either at home or abroad, to be approved by any one without their authority."

The Popes, then, were not the first usurpers of spiritual power. Nor is it in virtue of their succession from a race of barbarous fishermen that our prelates sit in the House of Lords: nor is it true that any general conversion from one degree or species of absurdity to another ever came to pass in a sudden or extraordinary manner. The fashion of piety, like all other fashions, has had its vicissitudes and revolutions; but it was ever the more knowing ones that led the fashion. The fishermen of Galilee had no more to do with the origination of the present most disgusting and egregious form of Paganism than with the present state of the arts and sciences: and I believe there are few reflecting men, who, if the system must be kept up, would not a thousand times rather have it under the control of the better informed, and more rational hypocrites, than be dunned and dragooned with the

When was the religion of the state any other than true religion? + Pacifying the Gods. "Spare us, good Lord! Spare thy people, and be not angry with us for ever."-Liturgy.

Predictions publicly recognized, i. e. their Isaiah and Jeremiah, as distinguished from their Behmen's, Southcote's and Brothers.

ruffian piety, and blackguard holiness of O'Connell's Papists, or Lord Mountcashel's Methodists.

I know not whether it is the peculiar engagement of my observance, or the real aspect of the landscape that makes the signs of the times in the moral world seem as gloomy as the weather to the promise of harvest; but, I have only wishes that my calculations may be wrong to put in counterpoise against the evidence that seems to come in from all quarters of the increase of fanaticism. Sir James Scarlett's impudent and obscene rebuff of Parson Cunningham's sanctimonious impertinence, is but a poor atonement for his helping hand lent to the business of religious persecution.* In which, however they may differ on all other subjects, the licentious, filthy lecher, and the canting, wily jesuit, the lawyer and the priest, that is to say, the thief and the thief, will pull together as the heart of one man. Was there found in the English House of Commons, a single individual who would feel or speak as became an honest man in behalf of one really suffering for righteousness' sake? I am only sorry that four months ago, I suffered an impatience of captivity, to which I have now become superior, to betray me into the error of paying to such a man as Mr. Peel the unmerited compliment of expecting justice at his hands. I had indeed forgotten the lesson my knowledge of the world's history had given me that there never was, (and ergo, never will be) an instance in which Christians had the enemy of their faith in their power, and failed to do their very worst upon him. But I may be forgiven for having thought that it would not be with a document in direct contradiction of his assertion, on the table, that a Member of the House of Commons would have uttered such an atrocious malignant falsehood, as that which fell from Leslie Foster; and that Mr. Hume should advocate my cause so, (so-I have no word for't) as to suffer the slander to go unrefuted. It is convenient to the cause of Christianity, that I should be represented as an immoral character, and the principle more honestly avowed in the first century, covertly obtains and prevails in the nineteenth, that " It is better to tell lies for God, than to tell truth for the Devil.” And so,

* Parson Cunningham's Letter from Harrow, of the 10th Instant, certainly throws on Lawyer Scarlett a stigma, that would make any man who had a proper sense of shame blush from scarlet into crimson. If it cannot or shall not be repelled, what sort of a man of honour can he be, who has the honour of being the parson's convert, and deterred in consequence of an ecclesiastical censure from the practice of locking young men in a room, and constraining them to drink toasts which their consciences condemned," a practice which in consequence of the parson's interference is only partly abolished;" Morning Chronicle, July 10, 11, or 12, 1828. I speak only on the hypothesis of such a damning blot remaining unexpunged, but so remaining, have I not a right to point the finger of scorn at one thus publicly attainted, and to bid my persecutors look at the champion of their cause, their guardian of public morals, the thief who called for judgment upon me, for disturbing a faith that was compatible with practices like his. Ah, I will not call him THE BEAST.

though he who said so, knew it was a lie, and they who heard it knew so too, 'twas better to say that "that person had been guilty of a shameful violation of the law," and that "he gloried in being not only a Deist but an Atheist," than to admit it to be possible that an alderman could be a bigot, or an unbeliever entitled to expect justice. I find that in all their Protestant, and Religious Liberty Associations all over the kingdom, not a sentence, not a sentiment, not an allusion, has ever fallen from the lip or pen of any of their reporters, orators, or writers, glancing at the wrongs of persecuted infidels. It is no part, and involved in no sense of the words RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, that that Liberty should be extended to any who are not religious. Nothing more is meant by it, than a term of compact between the sects, for mutual forbearance with each other, for the covenience of conjoined hostility against infidels. Better 'twould be for such as you and I, Mr. Carlile, that there should be no Religious Liberty at all: I hate the very name on't. It grates on my ear like a whistle to summons the vultures : honest men may reasonably quail when they see knaves shaking hands with each other. Their dissentions were only troublesome to themselves, their unanimity would be fatal to us. O'Connell and his saints, should they ever come into power, could only roast us on one side; the murderer of, who was it, and his saints, can only roast us on the other; but should the two gangs coalesce, we shall be roasted by both. Why is it that the law for cutting off the ears, and splitting the noses of unbelievers, was not enforced against you and your successor in an unjust captivity? Not surely from any principle of forbearance on the part of our persecutors, or of lenity towards us? Not surely from the prevalence of religious liberty, but from the want of religious liberty. The religious felt themselves not at liberty to deal with us as they would have done. The Protestant intolerants were afraid of what the Catholic intolerants would say of them, if they indulged too voraciously in the gratification of those cruel and tyrannous feelings, which are equally characteristic of both parties, alike esoteric to the sentiment of religion under whatever modifications it may exist; the same in the Grecian savage who slew his daughter, as in the baptized Ourang-outang who....... (Nothing! God forgive those who have wicked thoughts.) I only mean to say, that 'tis all one to those who are in prison, whether 'twere Protestants or Papists who put them there 'twas never one of either sort, that ever shewed more mercy than he was obliged to do to an infidel.

I shall be happy to. learn from those who expatiate over a wider range of prospect, that my view of the signs of the times is erroneous. But to me it seems as if we were threatened withwhat the Methodists call a revival; as if fanaticism were gaining ground on us, that we may in our persons, or those of our imme

diate descendants, be completely crushed and run over by the wheels of the Christian Jugernaut, and as if our feeble resistance had only given impetus to its movement, and triumph to its progress. We are hardly yet out of the reign of miracles. Every paper gives account of the magnitude of subscriptions and the munificence of donations made to religious tract, bible, and missionary societies; or discovers in its advertisements the use to which the prevalent superstition may be turned, and almost excuses the necessary hypocrisy of professing evangelical piety, as the condition upon which alone it will be allowed to get a living among Christians. I find the Earl of Mountcashel presiding at a Wesleyan missionary society in London, and solemnly attesting the Protestant miracle of God's judgment on a Popish priest, who pointing to a tree under which one of their holy men had on a preceding day delivered the word of life, and uttering those blasphemous words, "Behold the place where that cursed Pharisee preached last Lord's day," the Lord smote him with an instant paralysis, he was struck dumb on the spot, and his arm withered so that he was unable to draw it to his side again.

But the Lord it seems is at his old trick of working miracles on both sides, and O'Connell at the Clare election, with still greater solemnity, attests the Popish miracle of God's judgment on a poor man, who sinned against the Holy Ghost by voting for Mr. Fitzgerald. "The priest met him in Ennis and told him, the curse of God would be upon him for what he had done." The man became alarmed, and extremely agitated, returned home, fell sick, and died. This was instantly proclaimed abroad as the act of God, and the consequence was, that the following day, scarcely a man had the courage to resist the priest. Mr. O'Connell (now Mr. Carlile, for truth's sake, do imagine you see the man who is hereafter perhaps to legislate for our poor lost country.) Mr. O'Connell, whom well I know, came forward on a gallery or scaffold, before assembled thousands, and took off his coat and hat, and knelt down and begged the people to kneel with him, (which they did) in praying to the Almighty to forgive the man. Limerick Paper, July 8.

This is O'Connell, this is the man of the people, no more believing in the Christian religion than you or I do-exciting the madness that he can turn to his purpose-playing a part in the imposture he despises, and being conscious to himself of the most despicable meanness, and of the contempt of all rational men, curred for the poor pride of being the hero of slaves, and the demigod of idiots.

in

Is the day yet to come when we or our descendants shall be quite overborne by the tide-when we shall be washed back again into all the horrors of the dark ages-when resistance shall be as hopeless as to dash our heads against the wall, and the world

A

shall be no place for sincerity to breathe in? Such a cataclysin
can only be consequential on the moral guilt of neglecting our
opportunities, and deserting our several posts of service; as do
those selfish, most wicked, and most base hearted men, who act on
the principle of praising the bridge on which themselves have passed
over, indifferent to the ruin they entail on their posterity. The
misanthropists, who after having written and reasoned like philo-
sophers, retire in sulky selfishness into their studies, and cease to
feel as men. What was likely? what ought to be the effect of
the "Political Justice," written with a professed view to serve
and improve society, when its author has dashed down the pail
of milk he gave, by turning anchorite, locked himself up from all
communion with his fellow men, and forgotten the remonstrance
he himself had quoted:-" It's a bad world.-Then it can the
less afford to spare a good man's services." When a man has
left off eating and drinking, then, and not till then, can he
have a right to provide for his own happiness, in a state of indif-
ference to the present welfare or future improvement of mankind.
Nature knows nothing of such a monster, as an independent
animal. He only is a good man, whose maxim and principle
of living is that which Pliny gives as a definition of true glory,
"to make the world the better for our having lived in it." It
would be an injustice however to those whose struggling virtue
needs encouragement, and whose efforts are the life of our own,
to overlook the more cheerful aspect of the horizon,when estimated
in its relative bearings, and judged by the comparative results of
the means and effects on the adverse faction and on ours. They,
with the nation's wealth at their command, the power of the
mighty, the enthusiasm of the weak, the craft of the wicked, on
their side; with honours to bribe the vainglorious, emoluments
to purchase the avaricious, and penalties and pains to punish
honesty, are yet vulnerable. We, with not one single wealthy
patron on our side,-struggling even for subsistence; with neither
wealth to give, nor influence to promise, are yet strong enough
to be feared, and consequential enough to be hated. How will it
be on that happy day, when one honest man, that hath the heart,
shall with it have the means to show his honesty. Give us, an
earl or a duke on our side: give us but room to set our foot on,
or just but the thousandth part of their ammunition, and the
gods shall not be able to save their citadel. Delenda est Car-
thago.
Your's truly,

Oakham Archiepiscopal Palace,
July 19, 1828.

First year of our consecration.

ROBERT TAYLOR.

P.S. I learn by encouraging letters from my most respected friends that the very kind of work which I have been engaged in a long