appeared as often as I contracted for,) and will continue to sell them, as a matter of fair play and free discussion, until I am convinced of religion being well founded. I have done this in the face of a government partly composed of a set of bloated, hypocritical tithe eaters, and at a time when the hag superstition was glutting herself with victims; and shall I be denied my right and liberty of free discussion in this so much boasted free country!

Mr. Thayer says he hopes they will frown indignantly on the wretch who has the hardihood thus to attempt the destruction of their religious and civil institutions-to invalidate the obligations which religion and morality impose and, finally, to destroy the best hopes of man as a social and immortal being." My hardihood in opposition to religious institutions proceeds from as pure motives as the hardihood of the primitive Christians in opposition to the Pagan idolatry. But what have I attempted against your civil institutions? It was your republican system of government, and the opportunity this gave of promulgating truth, that allured me to accept of my present engagement. I only wish "to invalidate" that which is ill founded, and only "to destroy" such hopes as are chimerical. The "obligations that morality imposes" I know it is my interest and duty to attend to, because on them rest the happiness and well-being of mankind. But I know nothing of the obligations of religion that relate to morality. To me it appears separate from morality-allied to falsehood; and that man cannot call himself a lover of truth, but acts immorally, who attempts to retard free discussion. Unrestrained inquiry is the only way to beat down bad systems, and make virtue predominate over vice.

It is not true that my motive was to "give myself currency" by claiming a connexion with the Dover Manufacturing Company, and "avowing myself as their pattern designer," as the Repository states; yet I will admit it may appear so. I did it as a matter of address, as the street I reside in is new and nameless, built and tenanted this summer. I found myself at a loss for a proper address: I could have given myself currency in the same way in England, if I had had the motive attributed to me; but I did not require it, nor do I now. I am sorry I did so avow myself, but it is no more than true. The Repository says, "this foreigner ought to have known, before he set foot in New England, that this is a Christian country, and that Christians look upon such men as he is with feelings of mingled pity and disgust." That foreigner knew, long before he engaged himself for Dover, the character of the place he was coming to; and, the more Christian it was, the greater the necessity for anti-Christian publications; so that "the man has certainly (not) mistaken his market." Wherever Christianity exists is the right market; and, though you may boast of your missionary progress, and reviving the superstitious and ignorant to the practice of Christianity, you only pull down one idolatry to set up another; while "infidels nearer home" are increasing, and becoming more formidable as knowledge spreads. Your "good tidings," which have been only good to the priests, and " everlasting gospel," which will only last so long as you can keep people ignorant, have been well discussed publicly in England, and exposed as false in all their bearings. That discussion rebounds on America, and will find its way wherever your missionaries have carried their knapsacks, until the “hag superstition” be banished from civilized nations, and give place to the Goddess of Reason, which will consummate the true millenium of man.

I should suppose the Repository is opposed to the missionary system, as the missionaries might be told by those to whom they are sent the same as he tells me, that they ought to have known theirs was not a Christian country, and that they looked upon them with pity and disgust. Until I am convinced of the truth of religion in any shape, I must look upon it and its professors with as great "pity and disgust" as they say they look on me and my opinions. JOSEPH LAWTON.

Dover, N. H., Nov. 3d, 1827.

ROBERT OWEN.

WHEN we alluded to the proceedings of this gentleman during his stay at New Orleans, we were only enabled to give the substance of his challenge" to the clergy. Having since received a complete copy, we subjoin it for the satisfaction of our readers :

MR. OWEN, TO THE CLERGY OF NEW ORLEANS.

Gentlemen, I have now finished a course of lectures in this city, the principles of which are in direct opposition to those which you have been taught it your duty to preach. It is of importance to the world that truth upon these momentous subjects should be now established upon a certain and sure foundation. You and I, and all our fellow men, are deeply interested that there should be no farther delay. With this view, without one hostile or unpleasant feeling on my part, I propose a friendly public discussion, the most open that the city of New Orleans will afford, or if you prefer it, a more private meeting, when half a dozen friends of each party shall be present, in addition to half a dozen gentlemen whom you may associate with you in the discussion. The time and place of meeting to be of your appointment.

I propose to prove, as I have already attempted to do in my lectures, that all the religions of the world have been founded on the ignorance of mankind; that they are directly opposed to the never changing laws of our nature; that they have been and are the real source of vice, disunion, and misery of every description; that they are now the only real bar to the formation of a society of virtue, of intelligence, of charity in its most extended sense, and of sincerity and kindness among the whole human family; and that they can be no longer maintained except through the ignorance of the mass of the people, and the tyranny of the few over

that mass.

With feelings of perfect good will to you, which extends also in perfect sincerity to all mankind, I subscribe myself your friend in a just cause. New Orleans, Jan. 29, 1828.

ROBERT OWEN.

P. S.-If this proposal should be declined, 1 shall conclude, as I have long most conscientiously been compelled to do, that the principles which I advocate are unanswerable truths.

To the Editor of " The Lion.”

SIR,-Your remarks in page 644, vol. 1, on those who particularly call themselves Christians, lawyers, when clothed in power and place, and live by what is termed law, is so just, that it calls to my mind Mr. Henry

Constantine Jennings' (the curious and learned antiquarian, of Chelsea) remarks which he printed and published to give away among his friends in 1784. I will transcribe it, and if you think it worthy of a corner in your LION, it is at your service. I am, your respectful subscriber,

London July 15, 1828.

I. S.

An extract from a free enquiry into the enormous increase of Attornies, with some serious reflections on the abuse of our excellent laws. Dedicated to John Sawbridge, Esq., 1784.

"The object of my enmity is not the law, it is the wretched, quibbling, prostitute habits of its practisers, the expensive grievances of its formalities, the insolence and roguery of its professors, when they impudently reject fair sense, unless delivered in the technical obsolete jargon of a special pleader. The affected zeal, but callous indifference, with which a hungry prowling advocate, newly hired by a litigious villain (like a bloodthirsty Brabancon, gaping for plunder, eager to enlist on every side) deems himself venally bound for a paltry guinea, without the merit of personal risk, not only to browbeat and intimidate an honest witness, but basely to avail himself of a mere unguarded informality which shall yet defraud a worthy family of its rights, and effect its ruin.

"These destructive nuisances, each of which I have unequivocally experienced, and others without number, which I know exist, added to the insupportable charge of a just, though, for these reasons only, a precarious suit; these, I say, are what every honest man must of force join with me to reprobate, and what all lovers of their country should unite with one heart, radically to extirpate.

"I would commence this Augean task, with the inferior class of those devouring locusts; for their unlimited existence necessarily involves that of a proportional body of counsel. Let any man then reflect, with temper if he can, on the many thousands of licensed and practising attorneys now actually preying on the vitals of their country, and that in barefaced evasion and defiance of repeated statutes for their limitation.

Their number, inclusive of their counsel, is, I think, computed at twenty-four thousand; so that, rating the yearly gain of each, at the low average of 1301. per annum, not to reckon the mischief they create, and the loss of their real services to the community, their annual drain upon this distressed country, considerably exceeds the enormous sum of three millions sterling. Is not this serious? Can there be a more palpable proof, either of their multitude or of the wide spreading mischiefs it has occasioned, than the oppressive expedient, that men of opulence are reduced to, that of retaining, in imitation of the first Tudor, each an Empson or a Dudley? And the princely fortunes rapidly realized by these pests of society, sufficiently proclaim the iniquitous profits of their stewardship.

Lawyers, it is urged, if you have laws, are necessary to enforce them. Allowed. So in that case are hangmen; so is the gallows; and would you therefore multiply them like lawyers, at least fifty-fold upon the face of your country? Would you therefore associate the one into your household or adorn your parks with the other?

Chelsea, 1784.

"HENRY CONSTANTINE JENNINGS."

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 69, Fleet-street, where all Communications, post-paid, or free of expense, are requested to be left.

The Lion.

No. 5. VOL. 2.] LONDON, Friday, August 1, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

PILGRIMAGE TO OAKHAM.

Crown Inn, Oakham, Tuesday morning, July 29, 1828. ON Sunday evening last, under very acute rheumatic pain, which makes my pilgrimage the more efficacious, in the certainty toward salvation, I placed myself on the Leeds mail, to reach Oakham. We infidels, are riding pilgrims. Having no sins to rub out at the feet, there could be no good done by my walking barefooted to Oakham, as the more sinful christians would have necessarily done to accomplish their religious purposes. Had I not been free from sin, the jolting of the coach, acting upon my rheumatic hip, would most assuredly have been, in the shape of punishment, satisfaction enough to god or devil.

I had not been five minutes on the box of the mail, before I found, behind me,an elderly gentleman and a younger one near my own age, exchanging, not blows, reader, but their expression of contempt for the religion of this country. I allowed them to proceed far enough to be assured of the reality of their sentiments, and then I did not fail to make up in conversation the rational trinity in unity. The old gentleman, who represented himself as having left his book and his chair rather than sleep in it, had put himself on the mail, for a short ride into the country, and seemed indifferent whether he returned the same night or the next morning; but the agreeableness of the conversation induced him to ride to Barnet, and had it not been for rain, I think he would have come farther on the road. We talked of the Catholics, of O'Connell, of Cobbett, of all the political and theological topics of the day, and our elder traveller was in raptures. Well, said sir, to me, you are quite a reader. I find you have read every thing. I wish I could have more of your company. As the old

No. 5.-VOL. 2.

K

gentleman left the coach at Barnet, I held out my card to him; but the rain hurried him, and he did not perceive my intention. On mentioning to him that I deemed the present bad system of government strong only in the vices and ignorance of the people, and that it would only fall before a better informed and more virtuous people; that is good, he exclaimed, that is precisely the view of Mandeville. We were entirely agreed, that morality constituted the only good religion; and though my younger fellow traveller was, in toto, a disciple of Cobbett's, which I was not a minute in discovering, I knew the source of all his reasonings so well, as to make him assent to all that was advanced. The younger man came on to Bedford; but we had exhausted our conversation on politics and religion by the time we got to Hatfield. A young soldier, on a furlough from the Guards, got on the coach, and as he had lately been in Portugal, we turned the conversation, so as to make him prominent in it. He quickly acknowledged, that the religion of love knows no sectarianism, and however bitter the Portuguese generally were toward the English heretics, their young women had no objection to the love of an English soldier. Before I reached Bedford, about twelve o'clock, the night being cold, I got inside the Mail and slept, as well as my pains would let me, the remainder of the way to Oakham. By nine o'clock, on the Monday morning, I had thrown myself on a bed for an hour, shaved, breakfasted, and was on my way to the gaol. Rutland is but the miniature, and a very shabby one, of a county, a county town, and a gaol. In the town, I cannot find a street, or any row of houses that deserves to be called a street. What is called the castle, where the assize and sessions are held, is a mere barn converted into a country theatre, the church is the only building that does not offend the eye of the common traveller, aud I grieve to think, that that parish pesthouse should so far impoverish the parish, as to check all improvement in it. The gaol is a low building, presenting nothing of the exterior of a gaol, and until I was shaking hands with Mr. Taylor, I doubted if I had reached the right place. Being somewhat of a connoisseur in gaols, I expected the usual formalities of entering names, of difficulty, of locks, bolts, and bars innumerable, before I reached the reverend prisoner; but I met Mr. Orridge, the gaoler, at the outer gate, and on saying who I wanted to see, I was without a word, other than of consent, shown into Mr. Taylor's parlour. There is confinement within an acre of ground; but this is not a gaol, such as my gaol at Dorchester was to me. Mr. Taylor has never a lock turned upon him, except the outer lock of the building; and that he pledges his honour not to converse with the felons, he is free in the interior of the gaol. With the consent of the gaoler, he took me into every part of the gaol, and I was pleased with the contrast, that, unlike my gaoler Andrews, Mr. Orridge was not afraid to have every person and thing under his care examined. It was forbidden to any prisoner