The contrast is copied from the " Morning Chronicle" of Oct. 28, 1825, and is a specimen of that sort of instruction which predominates where the crafts of King and Priest have unlimited, unopposed sway.

A curious pamphlet has come to our hands entitled, Catechisme Politique du Royaume Lombardo-Venetien, pour servir à l'instruction de la jeunesse Italienne sujette de l'Autriche. It purports to be a translation from an Italian publication called Doveri dei Ludditi verso il loro Monarco per instruczione ed esercizio di lettura, nella seconda classe delle scuole elementari, Milano, 1824. This Catechism instructs the people under the Emperor of Austria in their duties as good subjects. Scripture authority is profusely quoted, and eternal punishments are dealt out lavishly for all offences against discipline.

The first section treats of Superiors. After they have been defined, and named, as Emperors, Kings, Arch-Dukes, &c. a frightful picture is drawn of the misfortunes, which would come to pass, were it not for these high and mighty personages, and those to whom any portion of their power is delegated. The second section treats of the authority of Superiors as follows:

Q. From whom do superiors receive their power?-A. From God.
Q. How do we know that?-A. By the Sacred Writings.

Q. What passages of the Sacred Writings serve to confirm this assertion?-A. The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, and the Proverbs of Solomon.

Q. What says St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans?-A. All power comes from God; consequently the existing powers have been established by God (Ep. Rom. c. 13. v. 1.]

Q. What says the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of Solomon?-A. It is by me that Kings reign, and that law-makers establish the laws. It is by me that princes reign, and that the Powers administer justice.

Q. What has Jesus Christ taught in this respect?-A. That superiors receive their authority from God.

Q. When did Jesus Christ teach that ?-A. When the Jews had accused him before Pilate, the Roman Prefect.

Q. What said JESUS to PILATE?-A. Thou couldst have no power against me, except it were given thee from above (Sr. JoHN 19, v. 11).

Q. What did JESUS mean to say by that word from above?--A. That the power to judge had been conferred on PILATE by Heaven, that is to say by God.

Q. Why do Emperors, Kings, and other superiors, receive their powers from GOD?-A. Because they are the vicars of GoD on earth.

Q. Does not GoD govern the world in person?--A. GOD certainly governs the world in person; but as he is invisible, he has substituted in his place Kings and Princes which are not invisible, and it is thus he governs by their means.

Q. Do those Sovereigns who are not of our faith, and who profess another religious belief, receive also their authority from God?--A. Undoubtedly they hold it of GoD as well as those who profess our faith; ST. PAUL has said that all power comes from GoD, and that all existing power has been established by God; which is confirmed also by the Apostle ST. PETER.

Q. Is it a benefit which God has conferred on us in giving us Sovereigns and superiors, Christian and good?-A. Undoubtedly, and such are those under whom we have the happiness to live. Also, it is a duty for us to pray incessantly for our well-beloved SOVEREIGN.

Q. In what manner do Sovereigns exercise their authority ?-A. They watch over the tranquillity of the State, make the laws, oblige subjects to observe them, punish the evil doers, and protect the good.

Q. What do subjects owe their SOVEREIGN?-A. Love, fidelity, obedience. The third Section on the duties of subjects in general, contains som better instructions for the peasantry than could have been exected from the tenor of the Catechism.

Q. What are particularly the duties of peasants?-A. They should, above all things, be diligent in their work, pray and serve GOD faithfully, live in peace among themselves, and also with those of another religion, and shun drunken

ness.

Bad peasants on the other hand are assured of present misery, short life, and eternal damnation.

We now.come to some hints for the comfort of slaves, who are recommended not to vex themselves about their state.

Q. What counsel does the Apostle St. Peter give to servants and slaves?-A. He exhorts the slaves to be satisfied with their condition, and this exhortation he addresses equally to servants. Let every man abide,' says he, in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called a slave (esclave,) care not for it,' &c. (Cor. 7. v. 20, 21.)

The question is then proposed, how should the bourgeois and peasantry occupy themselves, and it is laid down that they should educate their children to make good Christians, and useful members of the state, that is to say, honest subjects. An objection started on this

Q. He who has no religion cannot, therefore, be a worthy subject ?—A. He who has no religion does not fear God, and he who does not fear God, cannot be an honest subject.

Section 4, is on the duty of subjects to honour their Sovereign.

Q. What are the obligations of subjects towards their Sovereign?-A. They are bound to honour him.

Q. Wherefore ought they to honour him?-A. Because God has ordained it.

Q. In what manner ought they to honour the Sovereign?—A. In the same man

ner as a father.

Q. Why should they honour a sovereign as a father?-A. Because the Sovereign is the father of his subjects.

Q. How is it the custom to name Sovereigns?-A. It is the custom to name them fathers of the country.

Q. Why is it the custom to name them fathers of the country?-A. Because they have the same care for the good of their subjects, that a good father has for the good of his children.

Q. Suffices it to give to Sovereigns the exterior signs ot respect, bowing before them, and performing such acts of reverence ?-A. No, that does not suffice; God wills that people should honour Sovereigns with all their hearts, venerating and loving them, and wishing them a long life and a happy Government, praying to the Lord for them, and submitting obediently to their commandments.

The duty of praying for Sovereigns is then expounded, and it is especially laid down, that Kings of another religion are entitled to the prayers of subjects; indeed the tendency of the whole Catechism is to allow nothing to disturb the fealty of subjects to kings. It is asked-Why should we pray for Sovereigns? The answer is, "That, by our intercession, they may be enabled to pass a tranquil life in piety and chastity." The last is, we apprehend, past praying for.

We now come to another method of honouring Kings; though last mentioned it is the most common one, and decidedly the most irresistible obligation.

Q. In what other manner can we honour Sovereigns ?-A. By fearing them.
Q. Why chould we fear Sovereigns?-A. Because God has placed the sword in

their hands.

Q. In what manner should good subjects fear Sovereigns ?-A. In the same manner that good children fear their fathers, that is to say, by taking care not to offend them.

Section 5, is on the duty of fidelity—it begins well :

Q. How ought subjects to conduct themselves towards their Sovereigns.-A. As faithful slaves towards their master.

Q. Why ought subjects to comport themselves like slaves?- A. Because the Sovereign is their master, and has full power as well over their property as their lives.

Q. In what way ought we to be faithful to the Sovereign?-A. By studying never to depart from the obedience which we are bound to lend to him, and by preserving and augmenting as much as is in our power the honour, the dignity, the life, and the prosperity of his sacred person.

Q. What have unfaithful subjects to fear?-A. Although their faithfulness may be unknown to men, they have to fear the chastisements temporal and eternal of God.

After some just allusions to the imperfect series of school-books issued by Sir Richard Phillips, the Editor of the "Morning Chronicle" thus finishes, in a paragraph that is worthy of a monument for its exhibition in letters of gold; aye, worthy of a diamond monument "How early is the great business of deception commenced! The mouths of our very babes and sucklings are systematically filled with falsehoods, and even in their spellingbooks they are nursed in delusion. It would seem that it was never too early to learn lies. A system of education ab ovo, which should exclude only notorious falsehood, would be a perfect curiosity-a thing that has never yet been seen." --But it shall be seen. It is a curiosity; but it is beginning to A few months will bring forth a new series of school-books free from lies, and an open school in which such books only shall be used. The God-books; the religious books of the day are a uniform series of lies. Children are first tutored in falsehood : and though the word truth is offered to them in precepts, as a word perverted from its true meaning, they have scarcely any thing but falsehood presented to them in all the exercises, in the practical part, of their tuition. This system must cease to be. It shall be shamed or driven out of existence by the force of a

be.

better.

Who first made sovereigns? Is the proper counter-question to this Austrian-Italic Catechism? Thomas Paine put this question, and who can answer it in their behalf? Who made Priests, that they should thus catechise us? Is another of his great political questions. And to spoil the royal and priestly reference, though Paine did not ask the question, I ask it, who made the God and the Bible which European Kings and Priests make the foundation of their authority? Let Kings and Priests, their slaves and dupes, answer me that question; and if they are silent, let them see the magic of their spells gone.

Let the reader but contrast the doctrine of Thomas Paine with the doctrine of the foregoing catechism, and he will see the importance of celebrating the birth-day of the man, whose writings are destined, and the first that were qualified, to change the character of mankind throughout the surface of the earth. What was William Pitt? What was Charles James Fox? The tools of

an aristocracy that quarrelled as to which should have most of the prey exacted from the produce of the people. That, and nothing superior to that. What useful writings; what useful speeches; what useful examples have they left behind them? None. Thomas Paine was the man of the people, and not of any of the people's plunderers. He sought not office for his own aggrandizement; but he taught the people as to who and what were proper officers and offices.

Neither Pitt nor Fox was the author of a political system, or of any thing new in politics. Neither of them fairly attempted to remove existing abuses. Thomas Paine not only warred with all existing political abuses; but he did it in the substitution of a better system: of a system that excluded all hereditary rule or legislation, and made the mass of the people the basis of their own legislation and political power. Not a power to be obtained by their physical force directed by the individual will of one, or of a few; but in a union of their own physical and intellectual force, and in a regulation of the one by the other. America proclaims the wisdom of the system: and nothing but so well founded a political arrangement could have kept the religious cut-throats of the south from cutting each others throats, in the absence of an absolute despotism.

Paine had also this merit: his life was always at stake in the promulgation of his political system. Pitt and Fox sacrificed nothing; but were notoriously extravagant with the purses of others. They shortened their lives, and died comparatively young men through the means of the abuses which their political power afforded them. Paine lived out the common age of man, and died without having trenched on any man's purse; asked not the nation to bury him, or to pay his debts. The names of Pitt and Fox are now seldom uttered; they left us nothing in precept or example which we can wisely follow; whilst the name of Thomas Paine is rising resplendently above the calumnies of Pittites and Foxites, and his writings are avowed without contradiction to be the source of political wisdom.

The political principles of Paine have now the support of fifty years experience in the United States of North America, and who can find a word to say against them? If we except the effects of that vice, religion, we find nothing there disputable as to politics. The laws are there, in every respect, congenial with the knowledge of the people; while the laws of England are decidedly hostile to the knowledge of its people; nor can we carry the half of it into our legislature. It is the system of our legislature to exclude, not to court, knowledge. The principles of Paine, and those of America, court without excluding whatever is useful to the people as a whole. The first rule in English legislation is, that the interests and prerogatives of the King and his family must not as much as you be diminished, but may be increased

please. As a second rule, the aristocracy, the real legislators of the country, make a similar claim for themselves. As a third rule, the priests, the tools of this Royal Family and Aristocracy, make the same claim for themselves and exercise their political influence on the people in that condition. And the fourth and last rule is, that, after being thus spoiled to support these monstrosities in society, the labouring people who produce the whole property of the country may do the best they can for themselves, so that they murmur not at the cost of Royal Family, Aristocracy, and Priests. This, then, is the contrast between the principles of Paine and those existing in Europe, those of Pitt and Fox and Burke, and all the talking political glow-worms of the last fifty years, that the former makes the people a first consideration, and the latter a last: the one works to the benefits of the many, and the other makes the many to be slaves for the benefits of the few.

Various efforts have been made, to make a celebration of the birth-day of this truly great man worthy of the subject; but there has been always a central and acting influence wanting to accomplish it. Hundreds of tradesmen, who are among his warmest admirers, are deterred from a public expression of it, lest they lose a portion of their customers, or so much of their usual trade as shall leave the remainder insufficient for the support of their families. This is the tyranny of all established institutions, and this is the manner in which they act upon all proposed changes. But the worst part of this matter is now passed in this country. Tradesmen need not fear further persecution of this kind; for the principles of Thomas Paine are beginning to command respect even from princes and an aristocracy.

RICHARD CARLILE.

RICHARD HASSELL acknowledges the receipt of ten shillings from a few friends at Dorchester.

The twelve volumes of "The Republican" may now be had in bds. at the reduced price of 51.

The 12th volume is peculiarly interesting, from its exposure of freemasonry, and forms a distinct work from the others, price separate 13s. 6d.

Tickets of admission to the public dinner, at the City of London Tavern, on the 30th inst., in celebration of Thomas Paine's birth-day, are now on sale, at the bar of the Tavern, and at 135, Fleet-street. The price is half-a-guinea, and they will not be sold elsewhere.