NECESSITY OF ABSTAINING FROM THE USE OF EXCISABLE ARTICLES. It is the duty of Reformers to endeavour in every way that is within their reach, to straighten the Ministry in their resources both financial and otherwise, and therefore would we still recommend and entreat, as they value the privileges of freemen, so would they make every sacrifice by abstaining from numerous articles of luxury, the excise upon which is very great, to attain the summit of their wishes, their hopes, and their expectations: Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and Vote by Ballot. We understand that the revenue is still amazingly upon the decline, this is as it should belet the Reformers persevere in this system, and Lord Castlereagh must soon, very soon surrender the hold, he has acquired upon the very life-springs of the constitution. The great body of the Irish Nation, have joined upon this occasion with the Reformers of England, and have by an abstinence from Whiskey, which is as praiseworthy as it is patriotic, and conducive to good morals, not a little contributed towards the diminution of the revenue. Whiskey is used in Ireland by the working classes, in a similar manner to that in which Porter is consumed in England! it is equally as wholesome, much pleasanter, and more luxurious to the taste and a great enlivener of the spirits when taken in moderation; yet we see that when it interferes with the welfare of the country, the Irish have given it up, why then we ask may not the English give up the use of Porter? It would be a libel on their national character, to say that they are less patriotic. As for the other exciseable articles they are easily given up, there being numberless substitutes for most of them, sugar excepted. The duty on sugar is however trivial when compared with that which is paid by tea and coffee, and a good substitute for either of these articles, would tend materially to break the already tottering bank of Messrs. Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Liverpool, and Company. The principal difficulty which appears to us, to prevent the general adoption of a substitute for one or either of the beforementioned articles of daily consumption, is a sort of inertness on the part of individuals, joined with a species of incredulity, that articles of British growth should at all equal the product of the Levant or the West Indies. In nine cases out of ten they sit down without even hazarding the experiment, although its success would materially tend to relieve their own pecuniary distresses, as well as the sufferings of the whole community. We feel extremely happy, to announce to the Reformers in general that a substitute for coffee, equally pleasant and agreeable, is preparing, and will in a few days be offered for sale to the patriotic and independant inhabitants of the metropolis, at No. 10, Middle Row, Holborn, opposite Grays Inn Lane. It must be used in a manner exactly similar to coffee, one ounce being fully sufficient for breakfast for two people. It will be a saving in that article of nearly £200 per cent, besides the satisfaction of not contributing to defray the expences of Lord Castlereagh's table. ON READING PAINE'S WORKS Tyrants and Despots, vent your rage, And curse the Rights of Man; Were but Paine's Godlike schemes pursued, The gen'rous and the wise; This earth would be, as Heaven above, Philanthrophy shall hail the hour, Then hellish, wasting War, no more, Nor Slaughter strew the plain. Shall each his own best int'rest know; O'er renovated Earth below, Justice and Truth shall reign. ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. Tis is a subject that has occupied the attention of the philosophers of every age and of every country. The votaries of kings and priests hold it as impious to search into the notion of that which is called the soul; but the virtuous mind, anxious for the welfare of human nature, spurns the trammels of priesteraft and superstition, and deems it his duty to search into the principles of his existence, as far as his understanding will permit him. The prejudices of every, country where priests have got a footing, lead them oftentimes to believe in the greatest absurdities. The Grecians once believed as firmly in the Heathen Mythology as their descendants do now in the Christian. Socrates dared to use his reason, and he, like Paine, used his rtmost exertions to remove the veil from before the eyes of his prejudiced countrymen. Less fortunate however, than the immortal Paine, he fell a sacrifice to the blind superstition of those whom he sought to enlighten. Time has since fully demonstrated that he was right in the opinions which carried him to an early grave. We are led into these ideas by some of the best remarks upon the subject we ever met with before, and which we beg to present for the serious consideration of our Readers. Palmer, in his "Principles of Nature," made some excellent observations, or more: properly reflections, upon this head, but they were considered by many as rather abstruse. This, however, is not the case with Mirabaud, and we are confident that gratification must be the result of an attentive perusal of the following extract: "Thus it will be seen, that those who, to conquer insurmountable difficulties, have supposed in man an immaterial substance, distinguished from his body, have not thoroughly understood themselves; indeed they have done nothing more than imagined a negative quality, of which they cannot have any correct idea: matter alone is capable of acting on our senses; without this action nothing would be capable of making itself known to us. They have not seen that a being without extent is neither in a capacity to move itself, nor has the capability of communicating notion to the body; since snch'ar being, having no parts, has not the faculty of chang ing its relation, or its distance, relatively to other bodies, nor of exciting motion in the human body, which is itself material. That which is called our soul moves itself with us; now motion is a property of matter this soul gives impulse to the arm; the arm, moved by it, makes an impression, a blow, that follows the general law of motion: in this case, the force remaining the same, if the mass was twofold, the blow should be double. This soul again evinces its materiality in the invincible obstacles it encounters on the part of the body. If the arm be moved by its impulse when nothing opposes it, yet this arm can no longer move, when it is charged with a weight beyond its strength. Here then is a mass of matter that annihilates the impulse given by a spiritual cause, which spiritual cause having no analogy with matter, ought not to find more difficulty in moving the whole world, than in moving a single atom, nor an atom, than the universe. From this, it is fair to conclude, such a substance is a chimera-a being of the imagination. That it required a being differently endowed, differently constituted, to set matter in motion-to create all the phenomena we behold: nevertheless, it is a being the metaphysicians have made the contriver, the Author of Nature. As man, in all his speculations, takes himself for the model, he no sooner imagined a spirit within himself, than giving it extent, he made it universal; then ascribed to it all those causes with which his ignorance prevents him from becoming acquainted: thus he identified himself with the Author of Nature-then availed himself of the supposition to explain the connection of the soul with the body: his self-complacency prevented his perceiving that he was only enlarging the circle of his errors, by pretending to understand that which it is more than possible he will never be permitted to know; his self-love prevented him from feeling, that whenever he punished another for not thinking as he did, that he committed the greatest injustice, unless he was satisfactorily able to prove that other. wrong, and himself right: that if he himself was obliged to have recourse to hypothesis-to gratuitous suppositions, whereon to found his doctrine, that from the very fallibility of his nature, these might be erroneous: thus GALLILEO was persecuted, because the metaphysicians, the theologians of his day, chose to make others believe what it was evident they did not themselves understand. "As soon as I feel an impulse, or experience motion, I am under the necessity to acknowledge extent, solidity, density, impenetrability in the substance I see move, or from which I receive impulse: thus, when action is attributed to any cause whatever, I am obliged to consider it MATERIAL. I may be ignorant of its individual nature, of its mode of action, or of its generic properties; but I cannot deceive myself in general properties, which are common to all matter: this ignorance will only be increased, when I shall take that for granted of a being, of which from that moment I am precluded by what I admit from forming any idea, which moreover deprives it completely either of the faculty of moving itself, giving an impulse, or acting. Thus, according to the received idea of the term, a spiritual substance that moves itself, that gives motion to matter, and that acts, implies a contradiction, that necessarily infers a total impossibility. "The partizans of spirituality believe they answer the difficulties they have accumulated, by asserting that "the soul is entire-is whole under each point of its extent." If an absurd answer will solve difficulties, they certainly have done it. But let us examine this reply:-it will be found that this indivisible part which is called soul, however insensible or however minute, must yet remain something: then an infinity of unextended substances, or the same substance having no dimensions, repeated an infinity of times, would constitute a substance that has extent; th.s cannot be what they mean, because according to this prin ciple, the human soul would then be as infinite as the Author |