less to answer for in the world hereafter. He who has deluged his native country with the blood of her children, and reeking with the gory stream of injured innocence, embarked for a happier Island, to blight its liberties and plunge it into anarchy and revolution, similar to that experienced by the unfortunate inhabitants of that country which he so lately dishonored. While he filled his coffers with the spoil, his myrmidons, with the dagger in one hand and the torch in the other, carried desolation and terror from the northern to the southern shores of the Island, Vain were the efforts of a brave People to free themselves from his tyranny-they rose, they fought-they poured forth their hearts' blood upon the soil which cherished them-but, alas! foreign troops were paid to crush them, and they were slaughterd or subdued. Thus, we predict it will be with England, if Englishmen do not rouse themselves. A system of tyranny pervades all Europe, France excepted. As long as France continues independent, we need be under little apprehensions of the introduction of a foreign army into England under any state of things; but in kingly governments that which to-day is free and independent, may, ere to-morrow, be despotism itself; thus it is obvious that we must exert ourselves now or never. When Parliament meets, if any attempt be made to suppress Public Meetings, or the Liberty of the Press, which would be still more injurious, we would convene an instantaneous assemblage of the People throughout the kingdom, at which Resolutions should be entered into indicative of their intention to resort to arms, if the House of Commons persisted in their attacks upon the liberties of the People. The House of Commons has no right to pass laws which can in any way infringe upon the provisions of the great and glorious Charter upon which our privileges are founded. They never had a right nor were they ever invested with the power of lengthening the period allowed for the existence of each Parliament to seven years. Such power was usurped, and on the same principle of usurpation they might have abolished elections altogether, and made the seats in the House of Commons like those of the Peers, tenable for life and hereditary. If it was thought necessary to make any alteration in the Constitution, the People should have been appealed to and the sense of every man over one and twenty years of age throughout the kingdom should have been taken on the subject. But this would not answer the views of the Boroughmongers; when they got into the House they argued that by lengthening the duration of Parliament, their purses would be seldomer called upon by their constituents.

Thus it was that the right of the People was usurped and bartered; thus it was that a House of domineering hectors, under the title of Representatives, were entailed upon the nation, and thus it was that the country were cajoled and plundered by a set of villains, whose patriotism consisted in selling that country to the highest bidder. These are the characters who are now about to assemble, according to the Courier, for the purpose of putting down Treason. But we tell them to divest themselves of the profits of their own treason, ere they seek to immolate more victims at the shrine of their avarice and hypocrisy. The fact is, the system by means of which they have overflowed their coffers is rapidly falling; upon this fact they cannot close their eyes, but are determined to make one last effort to retain their power and their emoluments by subverting the Government altogether, and establishing on its ruins a military despotism. If the People stand boldly forward and assert their resolution to be free, the cowards will hide their diminished heads, and cease to gorge upon the wealth and property of the kingdom. Paine has said that "the best of argument is a vigorous preparation;" and unless in this instance his advice be followed, England will become the seat of tyranny, and Englishmen, forgetting the noble and independent spirit of their ancestors, will kneel and cringe in abject submission before the throne of some Bashaw, more cruel and more imimperious than Turkey could ever boast of. But we will turn from the picture, with the conviction strong upon our minds, that we are creating to ourselves imaginary horrors; with the conviction that Englishmen and Freemen will shed the last drop of their blood to oppose the establishment of such despotic power, and sweep from their soil the Traitors who have contaminated it by the attempt. It is in vain to argue with your present oppressors, while they are prepared to wreak upon you military execution and you are unprepared for resistance or revenge. If your arguments were even given by inspiration, they would still be scoffed at, unless physically supported. From what we have hitherto seen of the present Government, (and we have watched their every movement) we venture to predict that no attention will be granted to their demands, nor sympathy entertained for their sufferings, until they add weight to them by appearing formidable in number and in arms.

We are well aware that at the meeting of Parliament Peel-ing Bills may be passed for this country as well as for Ireland, preventing every person from having arms in their houses unless licensed, and also from being absent from

their houses after sunset under penalty of being sent to the farthest prison in the kingdom, by the mere authority of a magistrate, for such term as that magistrate choose, without a trial by Jury, according to the rules of the Constitution. Such laws as these have been passed with respect to Ireland, and that unhappy country has been compelled by a military force to submit to them. But whether the military power of this country will be sufficiently strong to quell the efforts of the People to restore themselves to freedom, is a question which we hope will be effectually answered in the negative.

CHRISTIAN TOLERANCE.-No. 11.

Is patriotism in England sunk to so low an ebb, that the advocate, the most strenuous advocate of freedom must lie in the King's Bench prison for want of bail? We allude to Mr. Carlile, who has fallen in the contest against intolerance and despotisin. We have a precious specimen of the Religion whose doctrines, or rather whose evidences, he denied, in the Observer of last Sunday. The Editor of that Paper exerts his portion of Christian Charity to reduce to greater straights, if possible, the fallen Champion of Deism, and this hesitates not to do by the most barefaced falsehoods. "Mr. Carlile," he says, has been receiving by blasphemous publications for the last three months, at the rate of £300. per week;" and he adds, " this will be remembered in his sentence. Justice will be cheated if a single shilling of this profligate gain is left in his hands." The malicious intention of this very Christian Editor must surely be an honor to Christianity; but we will tell this Editor, that if a heavy punishment is inflicted, Deism will gain ground thereby, for it will be evident that such punishment is dictated by a spirit of persecution, and even Christians will ask, of what service is Christianity to the world, if it. does not instil into the hearts of its votaries better principles than those of persecution and oppression; and can that religion be divine which is neither useful nor beneficial to the world.

The Editor goes on to advocate the principles of intolerance and Christianity by nothing but the most impudent assertions, devoid of all argument and reason. He apes the speech of Phillips to the Glocestershire Missionary Society, and to shew his profound learning, quotes from Tacitus to prove that, which few Deists wilt deny, viz. that such a person as Christ existed, and reasons upon his quotations, leaving without any comment, those parts which did not exactly suit his purpose. The quotation from Tacitus is as

follows: "But neither his bounties to the populace, nor his sacrifices to the divinities, could clear away the infamous charge of having ordered the burning of Rome, under which Nero lay. To destroy the charge, he laid the guilt and inflicted the most cruel punishments upon a set of people which were held in abhorrence for their crimes, and called by the populace Christians. The founder of that name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of Tiberius, under his procurator Pontius. This pernicious superstition thus checked for a while, broke out again, and spread, not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but through Rome also, where every thing bad upon earth finds its way and is practised. Some who confessed their sect, were first seized, and afterwards by their own confession a vast multitude were apprehended, who were convicted, not so much of the crime of burning Rome, as of hatred to mankind. Their sufferings at their execution were aggravated by insult and mockery; for some were dressed in the skins of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs; some were crucified; and others were wrapped in pitched shirts, and set on fire when the day closed, that they might serve to illuminate the night. Nero lent his gardens for those executions, and exhibited at the same time a mock Circensian entertainment, being a spectator of the whole in the dress of a charioteer; sometimes mingling with the crowd on foot, and sometimes viewing the spectacle from his car. This conduct made the sufferers pitied, and though they were criminals and deserving of the severest punishment, yet they were considered as sacrificed, not so much cut of a regard to the public good, as to gratify the cruelty of one man.

Such is the quotation from Tacitus, and we will now see the deductions which this Editor draws from it in favour of Christianity. First, then, it is a proof," he proof," he says, "that there was a religion called Christianity in the days of the Emperor Nero-that its founder, Christ, was executedthat his Religion, sustained a check in consequence of his execution, rapidly appeared again and was extended, and that within thirty-four years from the death of Christ, the Roman Christians were a very considerable number." Now we will grant him these facts, and we will appeal to the

* He should have said that God commanded it, and by that means all cavillers would be silenced; he evidently did not possess the assurance of either a Mahomet or a Moses.

It was from this, we suppose, that Derry-Down Triangle took the hint of the Piteh Cap, which we have described in the first num~ ber of this work.

same authority and draw from the same quotation the following facts, which the Editor of the Observer must admit, or else give up the evidence of his own, by declaring that Tacitus is not to be relied on. First, then, it is a proof that the Christians in the reign of Nero were held in abhorrence for their crimes ;-that Christianity was a pernicious superstition;-that it was an evil which originated in Judea, and found its way to Rome, which was then the very theatre of iniquity, or, as Tacitus says, where every thing bad is prac tised; that the crime for which they were found guilty was "hatred to mankind;”—and finally, that they were deserving of the severest punishment.

He next quotes from Suetonius, who in describing the principal features of Nero's reign, says, "The Christians, a set of men of a new and magical superstition, were pu

nished."

The younger Pliny, in his letter to the Emperor Trajan, speaks of the state of the Christians in his own district; and at the moment of his writing, seventy years after the death of our Lord.* "There are many ef every age and of both sexes; nor has the contagion of this superstition seizedcities only, but smaller towns and the open country." We will not trouble our Readers with any more of his learned quotations, but we will quote one sentence from his comment upon them. He says, "It is to be remembered, that though those men, as being Pagans, and in their philosophic contempt of the idolatry of their day, disdaining to enquire into the tenets of a religion coming from the loathed and captive land of the Jews, were yet alluding to events, either fresh in the general memory, or living before their eyes." Now it is evident that Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius, conceived the Christian Religion to be a mischievous imposition upon the world, and that they were proper judges, and such as ought to be relied upon, we have from the Editor himself, who says that "they held the idolatry of their day in contempt," and consequently must have been unbiassed and unprejudiced in giving their sentiments of any other species of idolatry. The Editor makes in the sentence we have quoted rather an awkward blunder, for he calls those celebrated historians, Pagans, in the very same breath that he tells us they held Paganism or idolatory in contempt. As to Christianity spreading rapidly, that is no proof whatever of its truth; for

"Can nothing less than the death of their Creator satisfy the gloomy pride of man." PAINE,