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Quid quod nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit? utinamque falsum hoc, et non a vate dictum quam plurimi judicent! Varia mortalitas, et ad circumscribendum seipsam ingeniosa, computat more Thraciæ gentis, quæ calculos colore distinctas, pro experimento cujusque diei in urnam condit, ac supremo die separatos dinumerat, atque ita de quoque pronunciat. Quid quod iste calculi candore illo laudatus dies, originem mali habuit? Quam multas, accepta afflixere imperia, quam multas bona perdire, et ultimis mersere suppliciis? ista nimirum bona, si cui inter illa hora in gaudio fuit. Ita est profecto, alius de alio judicat dies, et tamen supremus de omnibus ideoque nullis credendum est. Quid quod bona malis paria non sunt, etiam pari numero: nec lætitia ulla minimo mærore pensanda? Heu vana et imprudens diligentia numerus dierum comparatur ; ubi quæritur pondus."

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Let us also acknowledge that we are not only in fear of losing what we possess, but vexed to see other people equal or surpass us, and that others will soon be able to come up to us, and afterwards get before us. Observe, that in order to prove that good is not so perfectly good, as evil is evil, I have made no use of the following argument; namely, that it rarely happens that a good use is made of the favours of fortune, and that it rarely happens that they do not lead us to great miseries. I have omitted this argument, because I do not here consider the causes and occasions of good and evil, but good and evil in themselves; and it would be departing from the state of the question to say, that man afflicts himself without a cause. For it is not our business here to inquire whether his grief is reasonable, or the effect of his weakness; but the question is, to know whether he grieves. This very thing, that a man grieves without reason, and makes himself unhappy by his own fault, is an evil.

*If we should make a true estimate of things, without being biassed by the allurements of fortune, we must conclude that no man is happy. Fortune is bounteous and indulgent to the man who may justly be said not to be unhappy. For as to those who are called happy, their condition is always attended with a fear lest fortune should change and forsake them; and where this fear takes place, there can be no solid happiness. What shall we say of this observation, that no man is wise at all times? I wish this was false, and that a great many people did not justly account it a true saying. Man is vain, and ingenious in circumscribing himself, and computes his happiness after the manner of the Thracians, who every day put into an urn either a black or a white pebble, to denote the good or bad fortune of the day; at last they separated these pebbles, and upon comparing the two numbers together, they formed their judgment of the whole of their lives. Shall that very day, which is distinguished by the white pebble, give rise to evil? How many have been afflicted by the power which they have accepted? How many undone and reduced to the greatest misery by good things-the same good things which were the cause of their former rejoicing. Thus, then, it actually happens, that one day judges of another, and the last judges of all the rest; so that no particular day can be relied upon. What shall we say of this observation! That the good things of this life are not equal to the evil, no not even in number? And that the least affliction is not to be compensated by any joy? Alas! how vain and imprudently diligent is man, who compares his fortunate with his unfortunate days by their number, when the question is concerning the weight and nature of them.

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. 18. VOL. 2.] LONDON, Friday, Oct. 31, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

QUARTERLY REVIEW REVIEWED.-MONOPOLY OF

THE LAND.

SEEING in an advertisement of the contents of the Quarterly Review, just published, that the first article was a review of Paley's Works, I expected to find a smart attack on modern infidelity, and so sent for the No.; but to my surprise, though an admission is made, that a sort of profligate infidelity grew out of the puritanism of the seventeenth century, it is asserted, that it was all annihilated by the various divines of the last century, and that the finishing stroke was given by Paley! To look fairly at this article, one would suppose the writer had dropped down from the clouds to read the history of this country, without ocular observation on its people, and that he had not read farther than the close of the eighteenth century. He does not even seem to know, that such a man as Thomas Paine, wrote in 1794, and that an English bishop answered him in 1796 or 7. Nothing must be looked at later than Paley, as if, when Paley had written, refutation were defied!

The great object of the writers or preachers on the subject of infidelity, seems to be not to give the least clue to the means of possessing any infidel books, and they generally refer to Lord Herbert, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Bolingbroke, or some hundred-year-ago-infidel, for their condemnation of infidelity. To read or to hear them, one would be led to conclude, that they had written and preached down infidelity, and that not a particle of the spirit now exists! How opposite is the fact! We, who now support the infidel argument, or rather present its towering claims to truth, count as nothing the infidels of the last century. We are willing to hand over the whole bunch of them to the Unitarians or other Christians. We now take such grounds as they had not contemplated, and thus it is, Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62. Fleet Street. No. 18-Vol. 2. 2 N

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that our modern divines and faith-defenders dare not turn an eye towards us. The one master demonstration, that such a person as Jesus Christ never existed, is worth more than all the arguments that had been heretofore advanced, against the validity of the claims of the Christian Religion. This proposition has been maintained to demonstration for five years past, and where is the reviewer who has noticed it? The second demonstration, that, the Jews inhabited not Judea before the Babylonian captivity, is decisive against all the pretensions of the Jewish religion, uniting with them the Christian pretensions. The third demonstration, that draws the key-stone of the whole arch of Deism, or religion, or superstition, that intelligence requires animal organs for its production, that God has or can have no animal organs, and that, consequently, there can be no intelligent and directing God, is a proposition that Paley has not surmounted, and that is a complete refutation of all the Deistical deductions of his natural theology. Let our Quarterly Reviewer review these alleged demonstrations, and he will find that somebody greater than Paley, or Hall, or Warburton, or Leslie, or Butler, or Bull, or Taylor, must be found to refute them. There were no really serious objections made to the Christian Religion, before the present century. These serious objections have not yet been seriously met by the divines of the day. Dr. Pye Smith, thought he had some flaws to deal with in the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, and he assailed them with a most malign virulence; but he stands dumb-founded before SYNTAGMA! And who is the divine that shall step forth to refute the forth-coming DIEGESIS? Who the Reviewer to review it? To me it is astonishing, how these heavily written Reviews find readers, when they so clearly misrepresent the spirit of the country; when they dare not meet the most important political propositions that have ever been presented to the human race.

At page 312, our Reviewer says:-"We think it next to impossible for a candid unbeliever to read the Evidences of Paley, in their proper order, unshaken." Perhaps the reviewer does not allow the existence of a candid unbeliever. But for myself, I can say, that I have weighed every proposition made by Paley, unshaken, and still allow the phenomena of animal and vegetable life to be to the human mind most wonderful. I can admire the phenomena; but I cannot settle their source so easily and so presumptuously as Paley has done; because, in such a settlement, a greater phenomenon is involved, the major adds but to the difficulty of the minor. The solution is but another unsolved problem.

In illustrating his subject, the reviewer, among other points, notices, that " Paley, (who was probably scratching his head at the moment) offers no other confirmation of his assertion, than that it is the most difficult thing in the world to get a wig made even, seldom as it is that the face is made awry." Here two points are involved which may be turned upon our reviewer and

Paley. The variance in the figure of the human head renders it necessary that the wig-maker should examine the skull which he has to fit after the manner in which he has to study the science of phrenology, and this variance being so common, and leading to variety of character, is an argument against designing or directing deity. And secondly, when our reviewer thinks that it is seldom that a human face is seen awry, he may be informed, that it is seldom one is seen not awry. He may look into the best formed faces about him, and he will find that there is not a nose placed in a strait line with the forehead, that every nose has a curve to the right or to the left, and that some good looking faces have very striking curvilinear or angular noses. Paley sought for facts and arguments to support the theory of an intelligent and all directing God; but he neither sought for any, nor admitted any that presented themselves, in opposition to that theory. He was, in fact, not a philosopher; but a hired and hireling advocate of a profitable system, and was known to say, that he could not afford to keep a conscience.

MONOPOLY OF THE LAND. This subject, which is treated under the head of CULTIVATION OF WASTE LANDS, is, perhaps, one of the most important subjects that has been discussed in this Review. The reviewer asserts the right of the un-employed or ill-employed labourers, to seek a sustenance from the land, and the cultivation of waste or idle lands at home is asserted to be preferable to the proposals for emigration, and the cultivation of waste and idle lands elsewhere. I entirely agree with the principle; but how is it to be carried into practice, where every inch of land is individual or corporate property? To legislate on this property will be to set the example that shall uproot the monopoly of the land. And if rents be exacted from these labourers, as they are exacted in Ireland, then the cultivation of waste or idle lands will be no benefit to the possessors or cultivators; the principle will add to the misery of an already sufficiently miserable population.

The great end which I keep in view, as a principle of reform, is to free the land from those imposts which render its possession and cultivation impracticable to the poor man, and which establish an order or class of paupers. There are divers ways of working to this end; but the most immediately effectual appears to me to be the blowing up of the religion of the country. This will be a getting rid of nothing but pure vice, taxation, and monopoly, without shaking any one of the bulwarks by which a nation or society is made strong. Superstition cannot be morally and lastingly necessary to any social good, and all religion is intrinsically, essentially, and without exception, superstition. We are now irresistibly strong in a knowledge of historical and scientific facts, sufficient to this end, and all that is needed for its accomplishment

is, discussion, and a presentation of those facts to every person. We have only to beg our opponents to look at them, to assure a conviction, that we are truly right, and that they have been in

error.

William Allen, the Quaker, and Mr. Jacob, the Corn Inspector, have each published a tract on the subject of pauper colonies in cottages at home. The former has gone practically to work; the latter makes his observations on some police regulations for the formation of such colonies, with the pauper vagabonds in the kingdom of the Netherlands. Our Quarterly Reviewer reviews Mr. Jacob's tract, and, from the connection of Mr. Jacob with the government, we may indulge a hope, that some project for domestic colonization upon free land is under consideration. If the land be not freehold to the cultivator, the effect will be but a new and more severe kind of slavery, poverty, and degradation than now exists. If it be made freehold, much good may be done. I object not to the government taking its proper share of the revenue from such land, when profitably cultivated; but a protest against the interference of the priest for tithes should be at once made and legislatively enacted. This is an impost which outrages every principle of honesty and common sense, without even the warrant of the founders of the Christian Religion.

I am not one of those who can look at a cottage or colonization project of this kind, as a cure for all the pauper and pauperizing evils of the country. In relation to the country at large, the remedy is but partial and temporizing, and in such a man as William Allen, is really a fault, where he uses no other means to disabuse the country of its abuses. It is commendable, as far as it can be made a means of lessening human pain; but not politically commendable, if it be meant as a prop or encouragement to the present state of things in the government and religion of the country.

Almost every political evil in the country may be traced to its present established religion. Before that religion was established, there were no paupers in the country subsisting on alms and rates as we have since found them. There were neither Poor Rates nor Church Rates levied, as they have been since levied; and the old Roman Catholic clergy was heavily taxed for the purpose of carrying on a war, or subsidizing an army. To make the church luxuriantly rich, and a large portion of the people miserably poor, has been the work of the Protestant constitution, in church and state, as by law established. The profligacy of Henry the Eighth, induced a change in the religion of the country, which has introduced a profligacy into the present religion unknown to the Roman Catholic Church. There has since been a perpetual grasping and overreaching on the part of the aristocracy and the clergy, without mercy, which has pauperized the whole peasantry and a multitude of others, and reduced them to such a degree of want of the necessaries of life, as, Ireland excepted, was never

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