again! I would use them up-then they could not get on their legs again and use me up. This is a commercial age, and I would level on commercial principles. I would not waste a single tyrant-I would sell his old material to the Reformers, to make something useful of. I would apply Cobden's Free Trade rule to them- buy them in the cheapest market and sell them in the dearest.'

Tyranny should not be suffered to escape into an idle grave. It should be turned to a good account.

Permit me to subscribe myself,

A leveller upon commercial principles,

G. J. HOLYOAKE.

(From Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, Dec. 1.)

'WHAT HAS THB CHURCH DONE FOR THE PEOPLE?'

SIR,-At the present moment Great Britain rings with clerical applications to the people to assist the Episcopalian establishment against what they denominate Papal aggression. It may not be inappropriate at such a moment to ask-What has the Church done to merit or deserve public support? In answering this question, I must necessarily occupy your valuable space at some length; but I trust the importance of the subject will be a sufficient justification. All men know the vast difference between profession and practice. It is not the former by which I intend to test the value of Mother Church, as in that particular I apprehend by the exercise of but very little of that religious qualification, Faith, we might consider the church to be indeed a nursery mother to mankind, but it is my object to place her professors in one scale and her practice in another; if the latter bears the least proportion to the former, I shall at once say it is the duty of the masses to support the Church against any aggression, let it come from where it may. It must never be forgotten, in arriving at a definite decision as to the merits of these theological combatants, that the Church of England is not the church in whose favour the immense grants of land and wealth were originally made; and it must not also be lost sight of that the revenues derived from the thousands of charitable bequests were not entirely absorbed by that dispossessed church for their absolute use, but were in great part expended upon the poor, upon travellers, and often in education. The ques

tion of whether that church did or did not do all this to serve their own ends and aims is foreign to the argument. That they did expend money in this way is matter of history; and that the Church of England, the usurpers of the wealth of that church, do not thus expend their revenues, is also an historical fact. Consequently, at the first start in our examination we find first, the original church did, in a Samaritan spirit, expend some portion of their revenues in accordance with the wills of a majority of the testators;

secondly, that church who abstracted the revenues of the Roman church retain the whole of the proceeds for their own use exclusively, contrary to the spirit and letter of the testators' documents: consequently, as far as we have gone, the Anglican Church has not a good case with which to come before the public, and does not deserve its support.

The next question is in what mode or manner the Anglican Church dispossessed its predecessor? Here a very black tale must be told. Among the evils entailed upon mankind through hereditary monarchy, not the least was the infliction upon society of such a monster as Henry VIII. He was a compound of the worst kind; and we doubt if one like him could be produced at all unless one of the ingredients in his formation was a species of religious enthusiasm. Such an animal was the founder of what is called the Protestant religion in England. And in order to exhibit whether the part taken by the Anglican Church was worthy of their professions, I am compelled to recount some of the atrocities of that most worthy monarch, the first titular defender of the faith. It was in this monster's reign that Martin Luther-chagrined, vexed, and disappointed because the Pope, Leo the X., had granted a bull authorising the sale of indulgences to the Dominican community of monks instead of that to which the disinterested Martin belonged, the Austin friars, and which sect had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly of the sale of the said article, commenced the celebrated agitation against Papal supremacy which ended in a recognition to some extent and in some countries of the right of mankind to think as they liked. This is called the Protestant Reformation. At the time, Henry was married to Catherine of Arragon-and independently of his having been educated in the Romish faith, his ties were additional reasons why he should support it; and Luther having abused an author who was a sort of titular saint with this would-be-thought literary king, he wrote a pamphlet, for which he obtained from the pope the title of Defender of the Faith -which title, obtained for a service rendered to popery, has been dishonestly appropriated by all our monarchs to this day, though they repudiate the Romish Church.

But the course of love never runs smooth, and the religious and scrupulous king had a qualm of conscience about his marriage with his brother's wife. Now this wife was a Catholic, and that party was dominant; but the actuating motive of the king was the existence of one Boleyn, on whom he had fixed his lascivious eyes, but who belonged to a powerful family of the Protestant way of thinking: here, then, was a dilemma. The king, nothing daunted, applied to Rome for a divorce. The Emperor of Germany threatened he would infallibly dethrone the infallible pope if he consented; and he ultimately, after much prevarication, did refuse the divorce. There was nothing left but to patronise the Protestant party, who, for the sake of party purposes, were obsequiously ready to become panders to the royal voluptuary. Catherine and Catholicism, as all know, were thrust forth, like Hagar, with hardly a pitcher of water to drink, and Anne Boleyn

and Protestantism were taken into royal keeping. This is the history of the rise of the Anglican, and fall of the Roman, Church in this country; and I ask, was the conduct of the Church in the matter such as to warrant the respect, the admiration, or the support of the honest and virtuous masses of this country? I say it is not.

But to go on. We hear much of Catholic persecution during the reings of those monarchs favourable to the Roman religion; let us glance at history, to see whether the Church now appealing for public support and sympathy have abstained, since their accession to power, from similar base and bloodthirsty deeds—and, in doing so, we must not blink the fact, that the Protestant party has had the cooking of the histories to which I call attention, and has not hesitated to treat all Catholic victims as if punished for treason instead of religion, calling special attention to their great fact, that all Protestant victims were burnt or tortured because of their religious belief alone. One of the first victims in Elizabeth's reign was the Catholic Duke of Norfolk; then the judicial murder of the Queen of Scots, and the awful murderings in Ireland, by order of the Earl of Essex. But to return to Edward. Almost the first act in the reign of this boy king was the imprisonment of Gardiner in the Fleet, and the dismissal of the Bishop of Durham for supposed Catholic preferences. The assassination of Cardinal Beaton followed. Then the attainder and judicial murder of Lord Seymour, respecting which the historian timidly remarks-' It could only be said that his bill of attainder was somewhat more tolerable than preceding ones to which the nation had become inured, for here, at least, some shadow of evidence was produced.' Bonner was displaced from his see for his opinions, and Gardiner sent to the Tower; and, as a wind up, a commission was appointed to search for and find out all heretics, anabaptists, and dissenters from the Prayer Book; and these instructions were (see 'Hume') to imprison them and to deliver them over to the secular arm, to absolve them from the use of the ordinary methods of trial; and, if any statutes were in the way, they were then and there overruled by the mere dictum of the council. Thus numbers suffered under this bloody Protestant tribunal.

Historically speaking, therefore, this church, instead of having done aught worthy of veneration or love, has done much to excite the disgust and contempt of the virtuous: but let us examine their actions of a later date, perhaps they may have redeemed their former character, and by subsequent actions may merit the support they ask; but here also evidence and fact is dead against them. This church fought against the emancipation of their fellow-men, the Catholics, till it was no longer safe so to do. They have been the supporters and hireling advocates of the fiendish enactments passed in the reign of that idiot, George the Third. One of the worshipful fraternity wrote a book to prove George the Fourth a miracle of virtue and morality. They sanctioned the Duke of York, being at the same time both a bishop and a general. The bench of bishops opposed what is usually known

as the Reform Bill, as a body. The church have always opposed all attempts at national education, unless in that system they were to be the exclusive teachers, which was tantamount to opposing education altogether. It was the church who have originated and fostered tales and legends blasting the character of all great men, who, rising from the people, have advocated the rights of the millions, as in the cases of Thomas Paine and Robespierre. It was the church who, by their influence, or rather by the withholding of their sympathies, enabled that contemptible special constable to suppress democracy in Rome. It is the clergy who, as magistrates, are most severe against the infringers of the most unholy game laws. The church, as a body, have been ever silent when freedom was being sacrificed in the persons of patriots who, in spite of all, have still arisen in every generation. And, lastly, the heads of the church themselves have been tutoring and compelling their followers to sail as near to Romanism as the laws of premunire would allow.

In what, then, I ask, does such a church merit our sympathy and support? It is their quarrel, not the people's; to the people it matters not which of the two parties pocket the tithes and revenues now enjoyed by the church; ́ and what is more, I believe they will not allow themselves to be inveigled into the unholy quarrel. The people are wise enough to see the true bearings of the case; they detect the loaves and the fishes in the business, and will not stir for any party that ignores the people, thus priests of all persuasions do; and until a sect arises recognising the people as the source from which all social and political power should emanate, the people will stand aloof and let the clerical combatants tear and rend each other, when they please, and as much as they please. Certain it is episcopalianism does not merit the support of the people. A FRIEND OF REAL RELIGION.

(From Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, Dec. 8.)

C WHAT HAS THE CHURCH DONE FOR THE PEOPLE?' Letter No. 2. MR. EDITOR,—In my last letter I took an historical glance at the rise and course of action of the Episcopalian Church, and I think I fully demonstrated that in the pages of history is contained ample evidence that such a church deserves not the support or countenance of mankind. I now propose to examine its internal arrangements-the manner and mode of ecclesiastical government-with the object of ascertaining whether it is such as, without change or alteration, ever can, by any possibility, be a church for the people. Great Britain is usually divided into divisions, which I shall follow: such as England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The second and third named I intend shall form the subject of a separate letter; because in the one, Scotland, we have a parallel to the present Papal Aggression; in which a foreign, anomalous, and hated church appoints-against the wish of the Established Kirk of Scotland—its bishops, and the accompanying paraphernalia of eccle.

siastical tinsel, in its towns and counties: and in the second, Ireland, we have the present agitating and exciting aggression merely transposed; for in England, while Episcopalianism shouts murder at the appointment of Roman Bishops in Ireland, they enact the same deeds that they repudiate here, with the difference that the Roman Catholics have no power here to take tithes, first fruits, Easter dues, and other cant terms for plunder; while in Ireland the law allows this meek and consistent Joint Stock Company to plunder at their will and pleasure. I shall therefore confine my present remarks to Wales and England.

Your readers are aware that in Wales the largest portion of the people are still unnatural enough to prefer their native language to the English, and it is a fair question to ask, therefore, how many of the right reverend fathers in God there located to watch over the spiritual interests of their flocks, and the temporal interests of themselves, speak the Welsh language, and the reply brings me to iniquity the first, which records the startling fact that none of them can speak the language of the country of which they have the spiritual governance. The next point is, how are the parishes supplied? and the answer to this is, there are in round figures 1,100 parishes, out of which 680 only have services once on Sunday. I admit at once that prayers and sermons read and preached in a language foreign to the hearers, cannot possibly, without the gift of tongues, be particularly edifying to the hearers, but at the same time that forms no excuse to justify parsons, who are paid to do duty twice a-day, to shirk one of the performances, unless they are prepared to throw up half the emoluments. Of course, I am aware that proposing some equitable arrangement of this kind to the clergy would be like singing psalms to a dead horse; all that I want to show is that in no imaginable instance has the Episcopalian Church acted to mankind with common honesty, much less carried out, either in spirit or letter, the precept ascribed to their master, of doing to others what ye would others should do unto you.'

We hear churchmen talking with great complacency about the impudence and presumption of a class of Dissenting preachers, who, with a tithe of their learning, but with a thousand times more purity and sincerity of heart, preach to large congregations, while they prate to empty pews and dozing dowagers. But let me ask whether a Welshman would not prefer a discourse, though illiterate, vapid, or illogical, in his own language, to a pompous, learned, and metaphysical one in a tongue of which the hearer was innocent of the ability to understand a syllable? And statistics prove this to be the fact in Wales, where Church of Englandism, having made little or no effort to provide spiritual food in the Welsh language, has consequently made little or no progress, even if its members do not suffer a continued regular reduction; while, on the other hand, Dissent, which in 1715 had only thirty-four chapels, in 1810 had 954, in 1832 they had increased to 1428; and at the