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more seductive arts of Philip and his myrmidons, who, by bribes, promises, and intrigues, were able to corrupt the majority of her best citizens, and ultimately undermine and overthrow her best and noblest institutions, and prepare the way for Alexander the Great, who, by his conquests in Greece, Persia, and India, ex hibited himself as one of the greatest madmen and murderers that the world ever beheld. It is much to be regretted, that he suffered himself to be bribed by a small golden cup from Harpalus; this caused his banishment from Athens. But to show the respect which the Athenians had for his shining abilities and wonted patriotism, it need only be mentioned, that when Antipater made war against Greece, he was recalled. This triumph over his enemies was short, for Antipater and Craterus were near Athens, and demanded all the orators to be delivered into their hands. Demosthenes, with all his companions, fled to the temple of Neptune in Calauria; and when he saw that all hopes of escape from his persecutors were visionary, he poisoned himself. Notwithstanding his being open to this single instance of bribery, he may be justly considered, on the whole, as the brightest ornament of his country; and is deservedly entitled to a niche in the temple of liberty.

Cicero was another noble and undaunted advocate in the cause of Liberty, and by his masterly eloquence as an orator, his erudite acquirements as a scholar, and his highly cultivated and refined taste as a critic, has caused his orations and criticisms to be admired as standards of excellence by all learned and liberal minded men. Cicero was a determined enemy to Sylla, for the cruel means he adopted to gain the ascendancy in the affairs of the Romans, particularly in his revenge towards the citizens of Rome, for their supporting the cause of his rival Marius; and though he had a good opinion of his cause, yet he hated the cruelty of his victory, and never speaks of him with respect, nor of his government, but as a proper tyranny, calling him "a master of three most pestilent vices, luxury, avarice, aud cruelty." After the memorable delivery from the Catiline conspiracy, Cicero was styled "the father of his country, and a second founder of Rome." But the great enmity which existed between him and Antony proved fatal. When Cæsar was stabbed in the senate, Cicero recommended a general amnesty, and was the most earuest to decree the provinces to Brutus and Cassius; but when Antony came into power, he retired to Athens; he shortly afterwards returned to Rome, but lived in perpetual dread of assassination. When the triumvirs, Augustus, Antony, and Lepidus, to destroy all cause of quarrel, and each to despatch his enemies, produced their lists of proscriptions, about two hundred were doomed to death, and Cicero was amongst the number on the list of Antony. Cicero fled in a litter towards the sea of Caieta; and when the assassins came up to him, he put his head out of the litter, and it was severed from his body by Herenicus.

Cato was certainly a great and worthy man, and a real friend to truth, virtue, and liberty, as was fully proved in many cases during the intestine commotions which took place in Rome previous to the extinction of the republican form of government especially in his opposition to Pompey, when he wanted to assume the dictatorship. But being unfortunately a disciple of the Stoic philosophy, he measured all his actions by the absurd rigour of the rules of that sect. The last act of his life accorded with his nature and philosophy; for when the ills of his life overbalanced the good, which, by the principles of his sect, was a proper cause for dying, he put an end to his life with a spirit and firmness which might make one conjecture, that he was pleased to have found an opportunity of dying in his true character.

Junius Brutus, delivered the following sentiments in favour of liberty, over the dead body of Lucretia, who had stabbed herself in consequence of the rape of Tarquin, the last of the Kings of Rome, and which was the origin of the consulate: "Yes, noble lady, I swear by the blood which was once so pure, and which nothing but regal villainy could have polluted, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinus the Proud, his wicked wife, and their children, with fire and sword.—There, Romans, turn your eyes to that sad spectacle! the daughter of Lucretius, Collatinus's wife, she died by her own hand! See there a noble lady, whom the lust of a Tarquin reduced to the necessity of being her own executioner, to attest her innocence. Hospitably entertained by her as a kinsman of her husband, Sextus, the perfidious guest became her own brutal ravisher. The chaste, the generous Lucretia, could not survive the insult. Glorious woman! but once only treated as a slave, she thought life no longer to be endured. Lucretia, a woman, disdained a life that depended on a tyrant's will; and shall we, shall men, with such an example before our eyes, and after five-and-twenty years of ignominous servitude, shall we, through a fear of dying, defer one single instant to assert our liberty? And shall those warriors who have ever been so brave when foreign enemies were to be subdued, or when conquests were to be made, to gratify the ambition and avarice of Tarquin, be then only cowards, when they are to deliver themselves from slavery? Some of you are perhaps intimidated by the army which Tarquin now commands; the soldiers, you imagine, will take the part of their general. Banish such a groundless fear: the love of liberty is natural to all men. Your fellow citizens in the camp feel the weight of oppression with as quick a sense as you that are in Rome; they will as eagerly seize the occasion of throwing off the yoke. But let us grant there may be some among them, who through baseness of spirit, or a bad education, will be disposed to favour the tyrant: the number of these can be but small, and we have means sufficient in our hands to reduce them to reason. They have left us hostages more dear to them than life; their wives, their children, their fathers, their mothers are here in the city.'

So it evidently appears that a brutal ontrage upon female chastity was the cause of the Roman form of government under the consuls. What an awful and melancholy specimen of monarchy does this odious and unmanly crime exhibit !!!

The speech of Brutus to the Romans, in extenuation of the moral guilt of the murder of Cæsar, is a fine specimen of the sacrifice that a brave and honourable man will make from a love of freedom.-Much, however, as we may lament the crime of murder in any shape or circumstances, we cannot help applauding his motive for this act, and the candour in avowing it; and he deserves a higher eulogium from all sensible and humane men than any of the conquerors since his time, who have superstitiously and wickedly, even according to their own creeds, ascribed all their bloody and cruel victories over the inherent rights of mankind, to the providence and mercy of their God !!!

To conclude, I consider that in pointing out the advantages and necessity of liberty to the welfare of society throughout the world, and supported, as I am, by some of the brightest luminaries that ever shone in the political hemisphere I have shown a little loyalty, and I flatter myself, I may say, without vanity, in the language of Nebuchadnezzar, “ Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the honour of my majesty."

Clerkenwell, Aug. 19th, 1828.

HUMANITAS.

SUPERSTITION.

From Dr. Blundell's 31st Lecture on Midwifery.

Students at Guy's Hospital.

Delivered to the

"A GREAT fish has a large swallow; but Superstition-grave, argumentative, insolent, arrogant, silly Superstition, has a swallow still larger; it enjoys a sort of omnipotence this way: nothing is too big for it, nothing too small. Alas! poor human reason! According to the mood of the mind, we may weep or laugh at thee."

Lancet, 19 July, 1828, p. 432.

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet-street, where all Communications, post-paid, or free of expense, are requested to be left.

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The Lion.

No. 9. VOL. 2.] LONDON, Friday, August 29, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

JOURNAL OF MR. CARLILE'S TOUR THROUGH THE COUNTRY.

(Continued from page 233.)

Nottingham, August 25, 1828. My long stay in this town has made me feel as if I were at home in it and not touring, and the longer I remain the more generally I feel my company in request. I have visited several large companies, and begin to desire more ample space in which I can have a congregation of all the persons in the town and neighbourhood, who would like to hear how simple and how very easy to be understood are the principles which 1 am advocating. I should now like nothing better than to meet Mr. Gilbert, or Mr. Any-bodyelse, who thinks I am wrong, in the Market-place of this town, to show the largest possible number of people the great distinction and difference, between what they consider infidelity to be, and what it really is. I should like to show them, that a child may understand all that I teach, while the most clever man knows nothing of what is preached about religion, save that it must be an error. I fear I shall not have the opportunity to do this on a large scale; but I flatter myself, that I shall have done enough in Nottingham, to prepare the way for a very important mission into this neighbourhood, in some future year, in company with Mr. Taylor. The dissent from all dissenters, the real emancipation that is now wanted is that, which infidelity, in the sense in which I maintain it, connected with the other political and moral principles which I advocate, offers to the people of this, and of every other country. Embodying all that is good in every religion, or what is called the moral part of every religion, with all that is good in political economy; embracing and confirming by

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62. Fleet Street. No. 9.-Vol. 2.

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observation the ripened judgment of the most eminent men on social economy, and the spotless political principles of Thomas Paine on the subject of government, I feel, that I stand forth, not only the advocate of the rights, but of the happiness of man. It does not necessarily follow, that the possession of rights will make a man happy, he must be taught not only to free himself from the tyranny of others; but also from the worse tyranny of his own prejudices, bad passions and bad habits. This is what I feel that I am doing, and this is what I am endeavouring to stimulate others to assist me in doing.

I have the mortification to find, as I did in conversation with Mr. Bailey, before mentioned, in the Market-place, on Saturday last, that my opponents for the want of all argument wherewith to oppose me, will impute to my conduct a tendency to effect the very reverse in principle of that which I desire to accomplish. Thus Mr. Bailey persisted in trying to persuade me, that my principles were without morals, and all tended to the establishment of monarchial despotism. One argument for this absurd and monstrous conclusion is, that Hobbes and Hume were atheists, and also the advocates for monarchial despotism or government, founded in the absolute will of one individual. How would Mr. Bailey like it if, when I had detected one bad man, among Mr. Gilbert's congregation, I were to say, that all must be bad, and all of the same religion must be bad? I do nothing in this wholesale way. I find the question of morals to be wholly distinct from the question of religion, and that there are good and bad men of all sects and of no sect. I find the question of political government to be wholly distinct from the question of religion. God of this kind, or of that kind, or of no kind, is a very distinct question from king or no king. The one is a question of physical research, the other of morals and politics. I retorted on Mr. Bailey, that there would be more reason in the assumption, that the religious man, who maintains a tyrant in heaven, would also maintain a tyrant on earth, making the one to be the vicegerent of the other, than that the atheist, or man without religion, who hates and rejects the presumed tyranny of the gods, should present a subjection to, and encourage the tyranny of his fellow-man. The one is coherent, the other improbable. Pope has exemplified the subject better, in the following lines, from his Essay on Man:

"See from the rending earth and bursting skies
Fierce gods descend, and fiends infernal rise;
Here fixed the dreadful, there the blessed abodes;
Fear made her devils and weak Hope her gods.
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge or lust,
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe."

There, Mr. Bailey, that is the way in which every man makes his gods, and this the sort of morals that is deducible from reli

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