As to this second case therefore, religion (according as the kind may prove) is capable of doing great good or harm; and Atheism nothing positive in either way. For however it may be indirectly an occasion of men's losing a good and sufficient sense of right and wrong; it will not, as Atheism merely, be the occasion of setting up a false species of it; which only false religion or fantastical opinions, derived commonly from superstition and credulity, is able to effect.

P. 53. That it is impossible for a creature capable of using reflection, to have a liking or dislike of moral actions, and consequently a sense of right and wrong, before such time as he may have any settled notion of a God, is what will hardly be questioned.

Let us suppose a creature, who wanting reason, and being unable to reflect, has, notwithstanding, many good qualities and affections; as love to his kind, courage, gratitude, or pity. It is certain that if you give to this creature a reflecting faculty, it will at the same instant approve of gratitude, kindness, and pity; be taken with any show or representation of the social passion, and think nothing more amiable than this, or more odious than the contrary. And this is to be capable of virtue, and to have a sense of right and wrong.

Before the time, therefore, that a creature can have any plain or positive notion one way or other, concerning the subject of a god, he may be supposed to have an apprehension or sense of right and wrong, and be possessed of virtue and vice in different degrees; as we know by experience of those, who having lived in such places, and in such a manner as never to have entered into any serious thought of religion, are nevertheless very different among themselves, as to their characters of honesty and worth; some being naturally modest, kind, friendly, and consequently lovers of kind and friendly actions; others, proud, harsh, cruel, and consequently inclined to admire rather the acts of violence and mere power.

If there be a belief or conception of a deity, who is considered only as powerful over his creature, and enforcing obedience to bis absolute will by particular rewards and punishments; and if on this account, through hope merely of reward or fear of punish ment, the creature be incited to do the good he hates, or restrained from doing the ill to which he is not otherwise in the least degree averse; there is in this case (as has already been shown) no virtue or goodness whatsoever. The creature notwithstanding his good conduct, is intrinsically of as little worth as if he acted in his natural way, when under no dread or terror of any sort. There is no more of rectitude, piety, or sanctity in a creature thus reformed, than there is meekness or gentleness in a tyger strongly chained, or innocence and sobriety in a monkey under the discipline of the whip. For however orderly and well

those animals, or man himself upon like terms, may be induced to act, whilst the will is neither gained, nor the inclination wrought upon, but awe alone prevails and forces obedience; the obedience is servile, and all which is done through it merely servile. The greater degree of such a submission or obedience, is only the greater servility, whatever may be the object. For whether such a creature has a good master, or a bad one, he is neither more or less servile in his own nature. Be the master or superior ever so perfect, or excellent, yet the greater submission caused in this case, through this sole principle or motive, is only the lower and more abject servitude, and implies the greater wretchedness and meanness in the creature who has those passions of self-love so predominant, and is in his temper so vicious, and defective, as has been explained.

P. 57. If the habit be such as to occasion, in every particular, a stricter attention to self-good, and private interest; it must insensibly diminish the affections towards public good, or the interest of society, and introduce a certain narrowness of spirit, which (as some pretend) is peculiarly observable in the devout persons and zealots of almost every religious persuasion.

This, too, must be confessed; that if it be true piety, to love God for his own sake; the over solicitous regard to private good expected from him, must of necessity prove a diminution of piety. For whilst God is beloved only as the cause of private good, he is no otherwise beloved than as any other instrument or means of pleasure by any vicious creature. Now the more there is of this violent affection towards private good, the less room is there for the other sort towards goodness itself, or any good and deserving object, worthy of love and admiration for its own sake.

It is in this respect that the strong desire and love of life may also prove an obstacle to piety, as well as to virtue and public love. For if that which he calls resignation depends only on the expectation of infinite retribution or reward, he discovers no more worth or virtue here, than in any other bargain of interest, the meaning of this resignation being only this, "That he resigns his present life and pleasures, conditionally for that which he himself confesses to be beyond an equivalent; eternal living, in a state of highest pleasure and enjoyment."

P. 67. Whoever, by any strong persuasion or settled judgment, thinks in the main, that virtue causes happiness, and vice, misery, carries with him that security and assistance to virtue which is required.

(To be continued.)

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet-street, where all Communications, post paid, or free of expence, are requested to be left.

The Lion.

No. 4. VOL. 4.] LONDON, Friday, July 24, 1829. [PRICE 6d.

Ashton-under-Line, July 17, 1829.

An interval of three days elapsed, between our Sunday evening's exertion in Stockport, and coming in contact with another congregation in Ashton-under-Line. An appointment was made for Staley Bridge, on the Tuesday evening, but it turned out a disappointment, through misapprehension. We took chaise from Stockport on that day and returned gain in the evening. We were entertained in Stockport, in a spirit of generous hospitality, by a surgeon, and derived much useful knowledge from his intimate acquaintance with the character and condition of the people of that town. A public man may sit down in London and read all the provincial papers, but he can gather but little of what is really passing. He must come in more immediate contact with the mass of the people, must see them, hear them, converse with them, and with those who know them, to judge well of the necessary points for reformation. Every thing is discoloured through our public prints. All my experience establishes in me the conviction as to the two necessary primary points of reform in the people of this country-they must be jointly weaned from the gin-shop and the gospel-shop, from every kind of spiritual intoxication, whether by liquors or by words. I do seriously maintain, and will go on to maintain, that, without this necessary change in their characters, they are not fit and proper persons to give their voice to a representation in the legislation of the country. The distressed people of the West Riding of Yorkshire and of some parts of Lancashire, are beginning to talk and resolve about abstaining from butter and

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street. No. 4.-Vol. 4.

H

milk, and to fix maximum prices for food. They are arrant fools, fools to the back-bone, to be thus bamboozled, to be thus triffed with, to be thus wasting their time and exertions about a paltry, shuffling kind of politics that cannot possibly lead to an amendment of their condition. Let them abstain from gin and the ginshop, from ale and the ale-house, from gospel and the gospelshop, from sin and silly salvation. I see Cobbett and Hunt are beginning to try to play over again the tricks and game of 1816, 17, 18 and 19. I promised immediately after that period, that I would do my utmost to frustrate such a game, that I would never again stand quietly by and see the mass of the people so cheated, and I now begin to perform that promise. I know the secret history of that period. I know the inmost thoughts of such men as Cobbett and Hunt, of Foster the "Patriot" man, and Mann, the bookseller of Leeds, of Archy Prentice, and his "radical" compeers of Manchester; and I know that they are utterly despicable as politicians, and as to any thing thought of or propounded by them, conducive to the general improvement and lasting welfare of the people of this country. Their day is gone by: they shall not again play over the game of the radical era. I will join them in any thing they have to propose really useful, even as a promise in the way of reform; but the cry of parliamentary reform in the House of Commons, as a preliminary proceeding, is so shallow a calculation, in respect to the state of things in this country, as necessarily to lead to the questioning of the sanity or the honesty of the man who propounds it. I object not to parliamentary reform, as an ultimate, nor would I object to the proposition as a preliminary, if it were practicable or prudent to be advocated as a preliminary; but I object to that stupid and absorbing cry among the people, which will lead to no good, and detract from all other application or means of good. I object to the advocacy of any point of reform, that is not immediately available, before the point that is immediately available. The cry for parliamentary reform, as a beginning, is a century old it has for that period embodied both the talent and the honesty of the country; but it has not so much promise of accomplishment at this moment, as at any moment of its existence before the year 1820. This then must be a wrong beginning.

On the other side, or on my side of reform, may be seen real progress, real improvement. Within the last ten years, the liberty of the press has been completely established, by the mere willing it on the part of a few individuals, and by the backing of the will by the acts necessary to produce its accomplishment. For ten years past, I have been perfectly a free man, as a writer, printer and publisher, and that freedom has now the acquiescence, if not the sanction, of the government. If I feel any kind of shackle, it is from the ignorance and stupidity and bad character

of the people. The people themselves are my only tyrants. They will not receive, they are not in a condition to receive, the great truths which I have to offer them as congregated or socialized animals. I fear not the government; but I fear the ignorance and bad passions of the people; and my firm opinion is, that the ministers of this country, or the Duke of Wellington in particular, is much more disposed to grant all the reforms that can be useful, than the majority of the people is to receive them. We have had proofs of this in the two last sessions of parliament, in the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and in the Catholic Relief Bill. I have not only accomplished freedom, as far as the press is in question; I have not only freed myself and all others from the ex officio informations of the Attorney General, and the indictments of the Vice Society, for what have been called seditious and blasphemous libels; but I have achieved a complete toleration for Infidelity. I see and feel that I am, with my brother missionary, every where welcomed by one part of the people of a town to preach against the Christian religion or religion generally, in the boldest strains, and unopposed, as far as open conflict is considered, by the religious preachers and people themselves. Our missionary progress is really triumphant, and will be the brightest story to be recorded in England's history. There is not only a toleration for Infidelity, but Infidelity is every where triumphant in its conflict with the religion of the country. Miss Frances Wright and her immediate friends, Mr. Dale Owen and Mr. Jennings, are doing in America nearly the same thing that we are doing here, so that the end promises to be speedy and great, while the progressive improvement in the character and condition of the people acted apon, is immediate and instant. Judge ye, then, people of England, which is the best way, to begin to work the generally admitted to be necessary reform in the condition and character of the people of this country?

The abstaining from butter and milk is but an emanation of the old bad system of making war upon farmers, butchers, and bakers, when there was dearness or scarcity of provisions. It is a silly, bad passion, as a political project. To abstain from that which a man cannot afford is an idea of prudence; but to war with the producers of milk and butter, because trade is bad and taxes too heavy, is worse than if another man were to say, I will not wear your dirty cotton for a shirt, nor your Yorkshire cloths for a coat, until we get parliamentary reform. The cotton and woollen cloths may be more conveniently and more reasonably dispensed with than milk and butter.

At a project of this kind, in Leeds, Mr. Mann, the bookseller, called upon the people to raise a cry against the placemen and pensioners, and complained of the parliament for not doing some thing to relieve the distresses of the people in its past session.