Cap of Liberty. A London Weekly Political Publication. No. 4, Vol. 1.], Wednesday, September 29th, 1819. If Humanity shows to the God of this World, "Tis that of a PEOPLE with banner unfurl'd, [PRICE 2d. C. PHILLIPS. LETTER FROM LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH, LATE KING OF FRANCE, TO GEORGE PRINCE REGENT OF ENGLAND. SIR, Your situation is so very critical, and at the same time so very similar to what mine was a few years prior to the period when my subjects conducted me to the scaffold, that I take the liberty of warning you against those, who, from interested motives, will not hesitate to render you contemptible and hateful in the eyes of your people, by advis ing you to measures which their attachment to liberty and independence will induce them to resist. After I had expiated my offences towards my country by my death, the delusion which had clouded my understanding while in pos session of the crown of France, disappeared, and I reflected with astonishment on the principles which have been imposed upon the world by religious as well as political despots. I immediately perceived the justice of the principle that the sovereignty is in the people," and that consequently a king has a right to the crown no longer than while such right is sanctioned by the people over whom he is elected to preside. You must not persuade yourself that you are to enjoy the crown by right divine, because Heaven has created you the first-born son of your father. No, sir, such you would have been had your father been a tailor and your mother a fishwoman from Billingsgate; but when George the First was chosen to fill the throne of England, his eldest son, and the heirs of his body were chosen by the people to suc ceed to it. It therefore follows that you are, or rather .. T. Davison, Printer and Publisher, 10, Duke Street, Smithfield, have been, elected (for were the election now to take place I fear you would be ousted) to succeed to the crown by the free voice of the people of England, and when the purposes for which you were elected be abused, you of course should forfeit your right to the retaining a misplaced authority. I acknowledge that I did not act on this principle while living, nor did I view things in this light, or I might have avoided the dreadful doom 1 suffered, and saved my country from the revolutionary tide of blood which followed my dethronement. A wish to atone to humanity for the deeds of which 1 was in a great measure the author, induces me now to address and advise you to shun the rock on which I perished, and which will prove equally destructive to you, who are pursuing exactly a similar course of proceeding, unless your pleasures and debaucheries cease to interfere with the interest and welfare of the British Nation. In the first place you must be aware that your own conduct and the conduct of your ministers have rendered you despicable in the eyes of the people, who in a very short time would bring you all to a death of infamy, but for schisms which prevail amongst themselves. These differences it is apparent are gradually vanishing, and consequently the preca iousness of your authority becomes every day more imminent. Reflect seriously on what you have to depend should a convulsion take place, and also bethink yourself on whom to place reliance. Is it on your ministers? Look to their characters, their future views, and their former conduct; ́one of them is a well-known canting hypocrite, and hypocrites in religion never can be depended on as friends, when the dreary hour of adversity banishes the golden harvest which prosperity afforded. Is it on that traitor to his country that plunderer, whose first and only principles are avarice and cruelty; who would never leave the rack, where his eyes are glutted with the writhing tortures of the victim of his villainy, but to grasp at the plunder thereby acquired, without a single pang from a conscience seared up by a long career of infamy. Take this, sir, for an undeniable and unexceptionable truth, that a traitor to his country, if opportunity offered would be a traitor to his friend. In short such a miscreant would rival the devil in ingenui tyto fill his greedy coffers with the sport of others. Is it on the yeomanry of the country you would depend? You have had a sample of yeomanry courage in Manchester, where they attacked and drew their coward sabres reeking from the bosom of defenceless woman. If the yeomanry of the other parts of the country shew a similar deficiency in true courage, I fear you would throw yourself on the protection of a broken reed. Is it on the regular forces of the kingdom you would rely? They, sir, who have nobly shed their blood in the field of glory, will never tarnish the honor they have there acquired, by bathing their yet unsullied weapons in the blood of their countrymen. I suffered myself to be thus deluded, and relying on the allegiance of the French army, sanctioned deeds of despotism which, though not so revolting to the feelings of freemen as those to which your name has publicly appeared, still were they sufficient to rouse the dormant energies of a powerful nation against my person and my government. By the advice of evil ministers I conceded, and retracted my concessions as the people became more or less powerful, till the whole nation became disgusted by such tergiversations. They rose en masse. I appealed to the military, but (mark me, sir) they refused to raise a finger against their countrymen -they declared their allegiance to me was only secondary, but that it was primary to the nation; that when a king opposes, on his own judgment and the advice of a few interested individuals, the wishes and demands of his subjects, he betrays the purposes for which the sovereign authority was vested in him by the people, and forfeits his right to the crown. You know, sir, the result, the lamentable result to me and to my country. Again, sir, I ask you, do you rely upon your generals? Remember who and what they are! The Commander in Chief is your own brother, and next in succession to the crown. If you were reduced to the necessity of throwing yourself on his protection, it would be impossible to answer for the consequences; ambition is imbibed by man at an early age, and rather increases than otherwise with his ripening years. Duke of York is beloved by the army; you, sir, are be loved by no one! Thus, you see, the crown would be within his reach, and few men possess sufficient fortitude to resist such a temptation. Your next General in command is his Grace the Duke of Wellington. You surely would not rely on him? He who has blighted the honors he obtained by his generalship in the field of battle, by his perfidious and dishonourable conduct subsequent to the Treaty of Paris. He signed his name to that treaty, a d guaranteed its fulfilment to the inhabitants of that city; but how did he fulfil his contract? One article of the treaty declared that no person should be persecuted for the part he had taken in the preceding transactions; and a subsequent one declares, that if any mistake or ambiguity The should be detected in the foregoing articles, such ambiguous part should be interpreted in favour of the French. Were these articles adhered to? No: while he was yet commander of the army which held Paris in subjection, he consigned his name to eternal infamy, by suffering the violation of that contract in the death of Labedoyere and of Ney. His punishment on earth is decreed; the ghosts of the murdered heroes shall haunt him through the world, and in his dying hour will howl into his affrighted soul the requiem of the damned. More I am not permitted to reveal, but I ask you, can you rely on him who was weak enough to be made a tool of by your ministers, for the execution of those measures which have consigned his name to the execration of the present, and to the scorn and contempt of the rising generations? Again, I warn you to discard the servile flatterers who swarm round your person; concede to the desires of the people, and my next letter will be one of congratulation and esteem. You have no other prospect of retaining your crown and your life, for, as I have already pointed out, you have no friends as George Gwelps, though you have many as Prince Regent of England. I remain, Sir, THE SHADE OF LOUIS XVI. MR. CARLILE AND "THE DEIST." A bold assertion, if allowed to pass uncontradicted, will (though unsupported by any sort of evidence) make an impression upon weak and timid minds. It is for this reason that we think it necessary to comment upon the Review, which appeared in a Daily Paper, of a work entitled "Deism Refuted by THOMAS HARTWELL E'ORNE, M. A. of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Curate of Christ's Church, Newgate Street, London." When we likewise consider what a prejudicial effect such assertions may have upon the minds of some Jurymen, who may shortly be impannelled to try the question at issue between liberty of thought, in the person of Mr. Carlile, and oppressive intolerance, in the persons of the Attorney General and of the Members of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, individually and colfectively. We will, without further preamble, proceed to our remarks. In the first place, then, the Reviewer boldly lays down the following as a maxim which he would have us believe to be undeniable. "The safety of all states depends upon religion; it ministers to social order, confers stability upon .. civil government and the laws, and gives security to property. Surely this gentleman never read Palmer's Principles of Nature, which have appeared in several numbers of that moral and eminently useful publication, The Deist. As, however, he has not specified any particular religion, we must suppose that he means to say, that it is necessary to the stability of a Government, that some species of superstitious error be encouraged, to hold the minds of the people in as abject subjugation as their bodies; for as there are many religions, viz. the Mahometan, the Christian, Jewish, &c. and as all these proclaim each other heretics, and their doctrines blasphemous, and since the States which sanction each, still continue to exist, it of course follows that a Government can be as well supported by heresy as by religion; for that belief which is designated by the latter name in this country, is scouted and derided under the former appellation in another, and vice versa. He next says, that "it ministers to social order." Alas! the ensanguined plains of the Holy Land will tell a different tale of Christian social order, as will likewise the religious wars which for centuries deluged Europe in the blood of her children. Greece and Algiers will boast of the social order instituted by Mahomet, which is only to be equalled by the social order so religiously adhered to within the walls of the Spanish Inquisition. We really did not imagine that any person would, in England, in the year Eighteen Hundred and Nineteen, have the hardihood to say that "religion gives security to property." We should like to know in what manner we are indebted to the ministers of the Established " No Church for the security which they give our property—the fact is, that in this blessed "Isle of the Ocean" we are plundered of that money by Government and Religion, to which, without them, we could give very good security. The Clergy take one-tenth of the property of the whole kingdom, the taxes the remainder, while the people are destitute of the means of existence. Who can grumble at religious security? We would earnestly request the attention of our readers to his next remark, which (however erroneous his conclusions) is certainly blended with liberality! man can write down truth. Inquiry is to truth what friction is to the diamond: it proves its hardness, adds to its lustre, and excites new admiration. Some of the ablest defenders of the Christian religion have acknowleged it to have been benefitted by the attacks of Deistical writers, who have provoked such an examination of it as it could not otherwise have undergone; and the more rigorously it has been investigated, the more clear have its evidences been found." His two first assertions are a complete vindication of Mr. |