So

50, or 500, or 5000, with this the law has nothing at all to do, long as the interest is paid, or the principal returned, the promise held out by the law is realised, and justice is satisfied.

I do not affirin as you suppose, (p. 339) that all expectations are to be fulfilled. i merely contend that all expectations created by the existing law, and upon the faith of which property has been advanced, should be fulfilled: or in default of this, that the property so advanced should be returned.

You ask me at what price I would have the Debt paid off. In reply to this, I shall observe that the Fundholder, possessing property in this country, is justly called upon to contribute to the taxes along with other possessors of property. He is therefore partly taxed for the payment of his own interest, and this partial payment constitutes a deduction from the annual interest which he receives. I think that the principal should be restored to him at the par of 100, deducting from it a part equivalent to that annual deduction from his interest constituted by his own payments towards it, What the amount of this deduction should be, I an not now prepared to say; but when we once know the princip'e on which it should be estimated, nothing more than patience would be demanded to follow out the details.

You assert (p. 332) that the Fundholders form but a very small proportion of the people. Of the whole population they doubtless are a slender minority; but of the possessors of capital I think they form nearly, if not quite, a moiety. It is only the possessors of capital that I would wish to see taxed, either to pay the interest of the Debt now, or the principal when it is ultimately discharged. I think the wages of labour (which I suppose is what you mean by the produce of industry) should at all times remain exempt from any taxation whatever. Computing therefore merely by numbers, without regarding the injury and disappointment inflicted, you would find the number of sufferers by the non-payment of the Debt, quite equivalent to the number of gainers.

I

Your application of the terms indolent and inactive to the Fundholders is hardly warranted. Can a man who lays by a small sum every year from his earnings, to form a rovision for his old age, and for his wife and children after him, be termed indolent or inactive? Old men, widows and orphans may be termed inactive, but that can hardly be made a crime to them. And of these two classes do the bulk of the Fundholders consist. Besides, whether a man is indolent or active himself, if he lends his capital to others, it is equally productive as if he employed it himself. I now conclude, hoping that I have not wearied out your attention.

ANDREW MIDDLETON.

NOTE BY THE EDITOR. I shall not venture to make a replication to this article in this number. I will see it in print Arst and then review the whole correspondence,

TO MR. R. CARLILE, DORCHESTER GAOL,

DEAR SIR, Bolton, Aug. 4, 1822. I HAVE at length taken up a pen to attempt to cancel the pledge I gave you in an article bearing date 25th of June last, and which article you did me the favour of inserting in the Republican of July the 12th. This pledge would have been redeemed ere now, but being a constant reader of your publications 1 have a strong suspicion you do not stand in need of any emanations from a brain of my stamp; and under this impression, shall not in future trespass upon your valuable time, unless I chance to have something to communicate superior to any thing I can, under present circumstances, afford you. The departure of a subscription hence to assist in meeting the infamous robberies levied under the mask of law, but in defiance of justice and common sense, upon you, reminded me of my promised essay or piece of argument, but as the time I can afford is very limited, I must e'en send you a mixture of the two. In acknowledging a subscription, how like you the following squib? viz.

A set of true and hearty chaps,

Send as many hearty slaps

At the engine 'yclep'd Church and State;
Not forgetting every sect,

Each scheming in affect

To fleece equally the pocket and pate.

Though I choose, Sir, to be a little merry upon the subject, I anf not, I trust, the less to be depended upon. If in your prison I can raise a smile upon your cheek, my object is fully attained. It has often occurred to me that if the gross treatment of yourself and family were agitated a little oftener, and that directly, amongst small parties of friends, there would be no necessity for your waiting in Dorchester Bastile one moment beyond the term of your iniquitous imprisonment. The worst of it is, in these cases, that every one expects or leaves that to be done by another, which perhaps might be equally well done by himself, and wishes what he neglects just upon the same principle. But as we are all more or less faulty in this way, it is not charitable or liberal to cast reflections. The most we can with propriety do in these cases is to hope for the best, and this, in your particular case, 1 am the more disposed to do, seeing that it is distinct from the mass of cases requiring pecuniary aid, in at least two very essential particulars, viz. the cause you advocate being in its own nature, excellent and simple. No rogue or hypocrite can easily step in to injure it; and in the next place you rely entirely on the honest portion of the people, and these, I am willing to hope, are, even in this land of cent and corruption fsg

the majority; but be this as it may, it is evidently one of Nature's decrees that right shall in the aggregate and long run bear down wrong; that justice, candour, and humanity, shall overcome injustice, hypocrisy, and cruelty. If this were not so, I will not attempt to describe the wretched situation we should shortly be in; and if again, admitting this fair and equitable principle to exist, every thing is not as, in our opinion, things should be, we may rely upon it that man alone is the chief cause of the confusion and injustice, that he alone is justly chargeable and responsible for the inequality. It is he, who having violated and run counter to nature or humanity, heaps coals of fire upon his own head and animated nature in general, and then-attend to it ye pursuers of blasphemy, and at the same time, finished wholesale dealers in blasphemy-hear it, and hide your hypocritical faces-charge the fruit of his own unjust actions on any thing but the real author-if particularly pious, on a fiction, a being of his own imagination, capable, according to his own story, of the grossest injustice, and at the same time insists that this fiction, which the idiot terms God, is perfection, hun anity and justice unalloyed!!! Man in general has so many peccadillos and crimes to answer for as to render it extremely probable that we owe the invention of a good and evil spirit to this source. The measure meted out to these fictions is however somewhat unjust, the good spirit having credit given to him for evil as well as good; whereas the evil one, or in a word, his Diabolical Highness comes in for sheer evil only.

The inconsistencies of human beings in consequence of adopting these dreams are endless, but in truth, man never deserts Nature with perfect impunity: there venge she takes upon the poor worm is ample as well as just. Her laws, unlike to Collective Wisdom's, are easily understood; the idiot, if left to her fair guardianship, seldom mistakes his way. It is villainy and folly, “dress'd in a little brief authority," in the form of man, that plays the fool with Nature and her works. Her true disciples are to be seen simple and unadorned, as is herself. Moving unostentatiously on their course, lost in admiration at her wonderful power and beauty, they see her through a medium which will not deceive, and never fails to please and instruct them. Can as much be said, with truth, of that vice and ruin of the mind commonly understood and included in the term religion? Experience answers, No! Under its pernicious influence self-interest predominates alike with the Christian and the Jew. Religion may make men follow ceremonies: when did it prompt them into a consistent course of virtuous action for virtue's sake, or practise fewer inventions to get rich when riches could not be acquired without poverty to others. Do we not see virtue and innocence plunged into misery indescribable, whilst wickedness flourisheth under the empire of this God Jehovah whose justice is so much extolled, but whose vengeance is equally deprecated! This misery is merely for a time, say the hypocrites. Very well, but your God is unjust for a time, and if perfectly good and just, as you say, why

let his handy-work suffer at all? But if he knoweth all things, what necessity is there for him to try any? If he made man fall, why did he present him with a gift of which he must have foreseen the abuse? Everlasting torments are reserved for the errors of a being made but too liable to commit them. Would that father be deemed reasonable, just, or kind, who putting a dangerous knife into the hands of a playful child, should punish it for the remainder of its life for cutting itself? The absurdities of idolators are innu merable, admitting for the sake of argument the existence of a spiritual essence, and that we owe all material things to its energies; I am at a loss to see the efficacy or wisdom of prayer to such a power which is admitted by the wisest idolators to act by general and not by partial or particular laws. Is not this a tacit acknowledgment that this mighty Jehovah is incapable of producing a certain quantum of good without a corresponding portion of evil? With the worshipper's permission, man, also is pretty expert in this way, which I would illustrate by adducing the case of a general who sacrifices a portion of his army to save the rest, and succeed more effectually in his final operations; or, to throwing part of a cargo overboard at sea, with a part of the crew to boot, if rebellious, in order to save the remainder with the vessel. There is no end to the follies generated and supported by the belief of Jehovah's idolators. If man would but adhere true to Nature, and attend to her silent suggestions, he would immediately perceive that one half of the evils by which he is surrounded may very fairly be attributed to his own vicious passions, and that the other half may be as justly ascribed to his own ignorance, which gives scope to the knavery and sharper intellect of his fellow men. Knowledge is power, and the Press being the only engine to convey it effectually, must be free; the effects of a free Press may be aptly compared to a conflict of the elements when agitated by thunder; the conflict of opinions, like the chemical changes in the atmosphere, might be violent for a time, but the issue or result would unquestionably be beauty and harmony. As a man may be killed or a tree shattered by the electric fluid, so a few hard blows might be dealt in the conflict of opinions, but as error, like vice, shrinks from the light of reason and truth, there is just as little doubt but that the evils which are feared from a free discussion are purely interested or imaginary, conjured up to frighten fools, or at the best a mere shadow. No real freedom can exist in a country where free discussion is controlled; to assert that we are free in this, whilst laws are notoriously in existence against this natural privilege, with an Attorney-General, a Vice and other villainous Societies, to keep a sharp look out, is perfect satire. Where is the man of honour and reflection, who does not feel contempt for this boasted freedom, this name without the substance? Where is the man of pure and correct feelings, whose heart is not ready to burst with indignation on finding, after reading Professor Lawrence's excellent Lectures, a recantation from the liberal and enlightened

author? A recantation of what, forsooth! But I, for one, am in a course of reading these Lectures, and judging from that portion 1 have already perused, a thousand recantations will be in vain.*

These efforts to keep alive dying creeds and immaterial systems on the one hand, whilst education is extending on the other, I will, in conclusion of this too long article, compare to the Irish Prelate, who having the other day obtained a thumping bishopric, was discovered almost the following one, to be an arch-traitor to his sister species. Such was the Prelate's mode of securing his new dignitory, and I think fully equal to that of serving false doctrine by extending knowledge.

With my best wishes for your happiness and that of your infanously used family,

I remain, dear Sir, Your's truly,

TO MRS. WRIGHT, LONDON.

VERITAS.

DEAR MADAM, Nottingham, August 14, 1822. I FEEL sincere pleasure in saying that I am instructed by the committee appointed to direct the application of the Nottingham Fund for relieving persecuted Reformers, to intreat your acceptance of £2 herewith transmitted, as a small token of their estimation of the patriotic fortitude you have exhibited in your contest with a despotic system of cruelty and oppression, and of the honest pride we feel in calling ourselves the townsmen of a woman so distinguished by her zeal and perseverance in advocating the cause of our country and of humankind.

Go on, my dear Madam, in your glorious career. The triumph of our oppressors is but momentary, and will ultimately contribute to the establishment of those principles which have excited their maliguity. But you may assure yourself of the sympathy of every virtuous character as well as the approving testimony of a good conscience, of which no earthly power can deprive you.

On behalf of the Committee,

I am, dear Madam, most respectfully yours,

ALFRED COX.

The work has gone abroad, and though apparently intended for the select

few, a cobbler like myself will not read it in vain."