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brethren to pieces in the service of a monstrously cruel demon, without being stungwith resentment? The remembrance of so,shocking a catalogue of every species of vice, as is expressed in the single word religion, should, methinks, be sufficient cause for much more asperity of language than I have seen used by SHEBAGO. When we see the effect of this abomination,-this scourge of mankind engendering the most morbid corruption of government, the dislocation of friendship and the robbery of the poor,-when we see the haughty and supercilious panders of the vilest crimes, and the audacious practitioners of villany wallowing in wealth, and insulting their plundered quarry,-it is enough to drive a man mad. The language of desperation! why, it is a wonder that it is not the incoherent raving of phrenzy.

What does your self-constituted assistant mean, when he says, "I will not repeat by quotation the offence of those horrible descriptions of wretchedness and meanness, which your good heart and discerning mind, will not suffer again to rob us of so much of your pages?" It would be hard to say exactly what he means; but it is easy to discover that his delicacy is offended at the mention of so much misery as your worthy correspondent says he endures. Nor is he contented with declaring his disgust; but by asserting that there is no such misery in the world, virtually calls the man a liar who has stated the contrary from experience. That a man of such a mind as the writer of these essays must be, should be the patient of half the sufferings he describes is truly lamentable. I wish my surmises may be unfounded, but I have been apprehensive, that your publication of a letter of his, under his real signature, has occasioned some of those sufferings.* Yet what does it say for the tyrant who could inflict so many calami ties, even on a "slave," when nobly gifted in intellect? Alas! but little, and nearly as little for the man who could not only refuse to feel for the victim, but who could spurn him for his misery, and basely insinuate that he is a wicked wretch, heartily deserving of it all.

The "political" and "moral problems" of this man of letters are really contemptible stuff. Indeed, the thought, the language, and the whole character of his composition induce me to hazard the opinion, that, if R. T. C. E. S. is to banish SHEBAGO from among your correspondents, or to occupy his place, the Republican will not be much honoured by the change.

JAMES HENRY SIMSON.

Not so.-R. C.

MORAL BLASPHEMY TRIUMPHANT!

THIS day, Thursday the 23rd of February, I have received from the Auctioneer, Mr. J. J. Hopwood, the son of the Sheriff's officer who made the seizure, all the undisposed part of the stock seized in 1819. It consists of a large quantity of Sherwin's Political Register, The Republican Volume 1, the sheets of the first day's proceedings of my Mock Trial, Deist, Volumes 1 and 2, Diderot's Thoughts on Religion, Accusation and Condemnation of Galileo, Paine's Political Works, Parodies of various kinds, and a vast quantity of the ephemeral publications of that day, the bulk of which has been rendered unfit for waste paper, or unsaleable at waste paper price. But it is fair to say, that nothing appears to have been wantonly injured, and that what injury has accrued, has arisen from a wear and tear that was unavoidable under the circumstances in which the stock has been placed. The Nos. of the Deist form the most valuable part of the return and the part least injured, and I may estimate the total value of the return at about £100 more than it has cost me to get it; thus, by that seizure of 1819, I have suffered 3 years of additional imprisonment, and have sustained a loss in property of many thousand pounds value; for, though the stock seized was not worth more than between one and two thousand pounds, it was a little capital that had been doubling itself in a singularly rapid manner, and the business at No. 55, Fleet Street, in 1819, promised a realization of a speedy and a large fortune. But this will yet be recovered. For the present, I content myself with saying to friends and country agents, that I can supply them with any parts of "The Deist," or with perfect volumes. Any person wishing to have a cheap set of Sherwin's Political Register, may have it a very low price, or at almost any price. I recognized the stock as an old acquaintance from which I had been long separated, and congratulate my friends as well as myself on the circumstances of our meeting. R. C.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A NEWSPAPER.

I HAVE before said, and it will bear repetition, that our English Newspapers form the lowest part of the literary commerce of this country. On its appearance, I noticed The Representative, but since that notice, and since the paper was toasted by the Republicans at the City of London Tavern, on the 30th ult., I have not seen a good article in it from the editor. Report says, that it has repeatedly changed its editors. I hope that my notice did not cost the first his situation. The paper of Thursday, February 23, has three small paragraphs as distinct articles, upon the

subject of the strata of the earth and its animals; and it will be seen, that the second and third completely disprove the first. They are as follows:

1st. "The Deluge.--De Luc, Dolomieu, and Cuvier are of opinion, that reciprocal exchanges of land and water took place at the deluge; that catastrophe having buried all countries that were previously inhabited by man and other animals, while at the same time it laid dry the bed of the vast ocean, which now forms the countries at present inhabited."

2nd." Series of living forms.-First, a few plants of very doubtful character in the oldest graywacke slate; then zoophytes and crustaceous mollusca with trilobites; afterwards, an abundant creation of cotyledonous and monocotyledonous plants; following these, a great increase of marine testaceous and crustaceous mollusca and zoophytes; then fishes, birds, and oviparous quadrupeds, comprehending the saurian or lizard family; afterwards, dicotyledonous plants; then marine mammalia, and the present race of animals. The fossil remains of these lie buried in beds that overlie each other, nearly in the order above detailed, and between beds or strata are generally found others which do not contain any fossil remains, and which mark the flux of considerable intervals of time in the process of their extinction."

3rd." Revolutions in the Animal Kingdom.-Recent geological discoveries lead to the conclusion, that the revolutions which have taken place in the animal kingdom, have been produced by the changes which accompanied the successive depositions of the strata. According to this view of the matter, the animals and vegetables with which the earth is at present covered, could not have lived at the period when the transition rocks were forming. A variety of changes have taken place in succession, giving to the earth its present character, and fitting it for the residence of its present inhabitants, which the progress of the same system may again render unfit."

In answer to De Luc, Dolomieu, and Cuvier, it may be observed, that nothing in geology can be more clear, than that each distinct stratum of the earth was once its surface, and that one deluge will not account for the great number of strata that are found. The succession of vegetables and animals explain the same conclusion, and all unite, with every other step in scientific researches, to overthrow that nonsense called religion. R. C.

NOTICE.

A letter from Mr. Jasper Wilson, of Norwich, on the political life of Mr. Sergeant Firth; and another from Mr. James Affleck, of Edinburgh, containing a notice of the dining assemblage there on Paine's birth-day, have been omitted this week, through an oversight of the Compositor. They shall both appear next week. -R. C.

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 135, Fleet Street.-All Correspordences for "The Republican," to be left at the place of publication.

No. 9, VOL. 13.] LONDON, Friday, March 3, 1826. [PRICE 6d.

FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE OF MR. BEARD.

SIR,

To Mr. Richard Curlile.

AFTER having waited two months, and received various answers to my strictures on your paper calling in question the real existence of Jesus Christ; I may, I think, justly claim the privilege of putting in a rejoinder. This then, with your leave, I now proceed to do, To W. W. R. I have little to say, as he has granted me nearly all. I wish to prove. A few remarks on some of his observations will appear in the course of my answer to Mr. Taylor and yourself. As the matter from Mr. Taylor's oration was first adduced by yon, that claims the first notice. This letter, then, is addressed to him in refutation of his "Unitarianism Refuted." The next Number of "The Republican," with your permission, will contain a balance of accounts betwixt you and me; and I rather fear me you will be found to have shouted Io triumphe a little prematurely.

TO THE REV. ROBERT TAYLOR, A. B. & M. R. C. S. Secretary and Chaplain of the Christian Evidence Society.

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SIR, BEFORE I proceed to controvert the chief positions which you have taken in your oration entitled "Unitarianism refuted," I deem it desirable to afford my readers the means of ascertaining the manner in which you conduct this controversy respecting the truth of Christianity. In your "manifesto" you inform the public that the evidences of the Christian religion are calmly and impartially" examined at the meetings of the Society of which you are Secretary; and this "oration" it would not perhaps be erroneous to suppose may be regarded as a specimen of the temper in which your investigations proceed. A few extracts, then, from the "oration" will enable the public to appreciate the justness of the claim which you prefer to calmness and impartiality in the conduct of your discussions. "The sincere milk of God's word can only be sucked through the toothless gums of imbecility."

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 135, Flect Strect, London.

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"Christ and his apostles are set up like Gog and Magog in Guildhall, to frighten fools and idiots; no sensible persons knowing whence they came, caring what they mean, or paying the least respect to the grim majesty of their painted Godhead.""So would the vile hypocrisy of this canting age drive common sense and common honesty out of life to set up in their place a ragamuffin Son of God, a scarecrow Jesus."- To make the accomplished saint what every saint that ever breathed hath been, or is, in understanding a fool, or in heart a villain.”—“ You will find no creature bearing human face and front so savage, so deceitful, so wicked as a Christian."-" We accuse them (Christians) of villainy and crime. They are bad and wicked men, and it is their religion that makes them such."-" The caballing villainy of our Bible Society gangs, Missionary' banditti"-but enough, I am weary of transcribing such specimens of calmness and impartiality, and I have yet reached only the twelfth page of the oration. Mr. Belsham had said that the force of the evidence adduced by him must to a serious, candid, and unprejudiced enquirer be little less than irresistible. At this Mr. Taylor exclaims, "Now there is a direct moral injustice in any author thus assuming, that unless his readers come to the conclusions which he would prescribe to them, they cannot be serious, candid, and unprejudiced." Assume the propriety of Mr. Taylor's exclamation, and then say, my readers, how great must be the moral injustice of characterizing those who will not acquiesce in his decisions as "fools in understanding, or in heart villains." A man may be a learned and a good man (says Mr. Belsham, in the true spirit of candour) without being a Christian."-" Alas!" exclaims our Secretary, the compliment cannot be returned, no Christian must ever think of being a philosopher." Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and Dr, Priestley, avaunt, Christians that you are. Philosophy has awakened "a sleeping devil, whose fearful presence" causes 66 religion" to "shiver through every vein" of you. And notwithstanding Mr. Belsham is accused of falsifying historical testimonies, absolutely falsifying his own statements, with exciting the single feeling of a respectful pity for his weakness and debility of understanding, yet a few words farther on is he called a really clever and amiable man. How all these contradictory qualities can at once reside in the mind and heart of one man, might puzzle a better metaphysician than the "Reverend" "Secretary" and "Chaplain." Accordingly, the authority of Tillotson is appealed to in a note to justify these contradictions. Whether or not the sentence now about to be quoted really justifies them is not so much my object to enquire, as to expose one of the best specimens of garbling that ever I met with. This then is the note: It will be hard to determine (says Archbishop Tillotson) how many degrees of innocence and good nature, or of coldness and indifference in religion, are necessary to overbalance

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