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evident that B is a mere passive instrument
in the hands of A, and is in no way charge-

solving to punish C, finds B predisposed to
murder him, but without commanding or
even interfering further, than by refusing
to prevent what will answer his purposes
of justice, suffers B to put his design into
execution, it is clear, that though B may
be called the instrument of A's, vengeance,
he is still chargeable with the guilt of the
deed, suggested by his own malice.So
that, if a jailer were to murder a condemned
felon, he might be called, might he, the
instrument of the government, and yet be
hanged himself for the offence? And the
government might, might it, if informed of
the intended murder, very innocently per-
mit this execution of the design and end of
the law, and then cause the jailer to be
tucked decently up for the deed, though the
government had the power of prevention,
and must be considered as accessories before
the fact? -Was there ever any thing so
monstrous as this? -But, into what ab-
surdities do not men fall when once they
begin to make the Deity a direct and imme-
diate actor in the affairs of men! -To
apply this illustration to the case of Napo-
leon, my correspondent first supposes, that
Napoleon, as well as the scourged nations,
were both under the absolute and immedi-
ate power of God. He next supposes, that
the scourged nations richly deserved all the
scourging that they got. This is supposing
a great deal, and is quite sufficient to stop
the mouths of all those hypocrites, who af-
fect to pity them, while, in fact, they are
only indulging their malice against Buona-
parté, and endeavouring to perpetuate, for
their own emolument, war against him.
But, the salvo is, that, though these nations
so richly deserved the scourge, like the slave
C, the slave B, who represents very aptly
Buonaparté, was predisposed to scourge
them, whether ey deserved scourging or
not.--- Now, before we go any further,
how does my correspondent happen to
know, that Napoleon was predisposed to
the acts complanied of? from what source
does he draw his knowledge upon this sub-
ject? has be received his information from
Napoleon, or from God himself? If he
will have it that God immediately inter-
feres in the affairs of men, how does he
know, and what reason has he to think,
that Napoleon was not urged on and sup-
ported by God in doing all that he has
done? -Besides, what does he mean by
permilling? He ought to bear in mind,

pondent, however, appears to think, that
there was no inconsistency in them. He
says, that there is a great difference be-able for what he has done. But, if A, re-
tween positively authorizing an act, and
only per milling it; between causing an
evil, and subsequently converting it to
to
good. And then he asks me, whether Ne-
buchodonosor was not employed by God to
chastise his chosen people, and whether he
was, for that reason, guiltless of the ex-
cesses he committed against that ill-fated,
but ungrateful nation.— Now, in the first
place, it sounds a little oddly, to call a na-
tion ill-fated, who were God's chosen peo-
ple, and who, as we are afterwards told by
this same correspondent, were under the
immediate government of God, who was
their lawgiver, and who gave them his
particular commands, as the Scripture tells
us, even as to the mode in which they
ought to go to the privy. It sounds odd, I
say, to call such a nation an ill-fated na-
tion. As to what Nebuchodonosor did,
I do not pretend to be a judge of that; but,
if he was 66
employed" by God to chastise
the Jews, he must have been guiltless in
the case, because God was almighty, and
compelled him as well as employed him.
But, then, my correspondent has his salvo
here; for, he talks about "excesses." If,
indeed, the grass-eating king went beyond
his tether, that is another inatter. It is
not, indeed, easy to conceive how his al-
mighty, and all-seeing, and ever-present
employer should suffer him to do more
against his chosen people than he wished
him to do. I tether my cows, for instance,
and it now and then happens, that, tempted
by the ungrazed pasture, they pull the pin
out of the ground and rove, for a time, at
large. But, I am not all-powerful, all
seeing, and ever-present. If I were, the
length of the tether would describe the ra-
dius of their ramblings. Be this as it
may, however, my correspondent, in lug-
ging in the excesses of the grass-eating king,
deviates from the point. For, be it borne
in mind, that the notion of our adversaries
was, that Napoleon was an instrument in
the hands of God. They talked of no ex-
cesses; and, indeed, they did well to avoid
this shocking absurdity, of a man partly an
instrument and parily a free agent.-
But, more of this when we have seen a case
stated by my correspondent in illustration
of his doctrine.Suppose, says he, A
possesses an unlimited power over his two
slaves B and C. If C, for some offence,
Jas justly forfeited his life, and A com-
Dands B to punish him with death, it is

that he is speaking of a Being, who is all powerful, all seeing, and ever-present. What such a Being permits, he must will. And, therefore, to say that he permitted Buonaparte to scourge the guilty nations of Europe, is, in fact, the very same thing as to say, that he compelled him to scourge them, and that he was neither more nor less than an instrument in the hands of God. So that, this illustration of my correspondent, and all these qualifications of his, leave the matter just where it was before, except, indeed, that he acknowledges that which the anti-jacobius never have acknowledged; namely, that the scourged nations richly merited their scourging.

by the command of Moses, the servant of the Lord, all slaughtered, men, women, and children.Here, my correspondent chooses to stop in his quotation, and he falsifies, too, for I never said that they were all slaughtered, the fact being, and as I fully stated it, that all the girls, who had not known man, were kept, by the command of Moses, and divided amongst the soldiers, or men of war. And this was a very material point; because these girls formed a very considerable part of the plunder; and I introduced thein with great care, in order to show to what extent plunder in war was authorized by the holy scriptures; aye, by that book, that very book, in the reading of which, or the hearing of which we are told to look for eternal life, and in promoting the circulation of which, such immense sums are now employed, and so many persons of great authority and of great wealth are engaged. My correspondent does not deny, however, that plunder is the soldier's legitimate harvest, and, therefore, he can see no just cause, probably, for that outcry against Napoleon which has been set up on account of his having enriched himself, or, rather, euriched France, with the spoils of Italy; nor would he, perhaps, be very much inclined to censure the Cossacks, who seem to be the favourites in Eugland, for any plunder that they might make in France, after the Israelitish fashion. But, says he, though I do not deny that plunder is the soldier's legitimate harvest, I deny that you can justify French plunder from any example of plunder raised by the Jewish soldiers; and this is the curious ground upon which he founds his denial.

I return, therefore, to my former argument;
to wit, either Napoleon has been an instru-
ment in the hands of Divine Providence, or
he has not. If not, why do you call him the
scourge of God? If he has been an instru-
ment in the hands of God, why do you blame
him for executing his divine commission?
My correspondent asks me, "were the Jews,
"think ye, less criminal in having sacrificed
"the Son of God, because he had been de-
"livered up by the determinale counsel and
"fore-knowledge of God?" That is a ques-
tion which I do not choose to answer. I
am not going to say that a set of scoundrels
who put Jesus Christ to death for promul-
gating opinions hostile to the interests of
knavish priests, were not guilty of a most
foul and abominable crime. I am not
going to say any thing in justification of
these persecutors of opinions; these legal
murderers. But I will not meddle with
the question at all, because I will not, in
spite of the temptation, enter into a religi-
ous controversy, and because my corres-
pondent cannot make the case which he has
cited a case in point, until he finds it re-
corded in the scriptures that the scourged
nations of Europe were delivered up by the
determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of"
God. Another topic on which my cor-
respondent has chosen to observe, is that of
plunder in war.—
In writing upon the
case of Moreau, I had occasion to notice
the immense sums which he had amassed"
together during his campaigns; and I had
occasion to observe, that plunder 'was the
soldier's legitimate harvest, in proof of
which I cited from the holy scriptures
an instance, wherein God himself, through
his instrument, Moses, had warranted such
plunder, particularly in the case of the
unfortunate Midianites, who were first
stripped, by God's chosen people, of all
their goods and chattels, and were then,

-He says, that "the form of the Jew"ish government, was that of a real "Theocracy, that is, a government under "the inmediate superintendence of Ged "himself, who was the ruler of the Jews, not under the simple title of governor of the universe, but was, strictly speaking, the temporal sovereign, who gave them "a code of laws, which was the sole di"rection of their political conduct, and

every authority, whether ordinary, or "extraordinary, received its delegation "immediately from him." Therefore, says he, there can be no similarity in the cases on which to ground a parity of reasoning.If this be the case, away goes at once all the Old Testament, at any rate; and all these copies of the Bible that are circulated, about, and all the searchings into them, which poor boys and girls are desired to be incessantly making, must tend

to the producing of great and general mischief. The people constantly hear sermons, founded on texts of this book. They are constantly exhorted to look on it as their guide; to resort to it, in short, as the means of procuring to themselves ever lasting salvation; they are told that it is the word of God; they are told, that if they diligently read it, they can scarcely fail to do well in every act of life. What incredible pains have been taken to inculcate these notions; to fasten them in the minds of the people; to make them the notions prevalent over all others. How many hundreds of meetings of the nobility, of the gentlemen, of the clergy, of all ranks and descriptions of people, who have a shilling in their pockets, have there been and are there yet daily held for the sole purpose of ingrafting these notions upon the very first buddings of the mind, not excepting the children in the navy and the army, with respect to the latter of whom, the Duke of York, as Commander in Chief, has piously lent the aid of his great authority in the furtherance of the holy work. Nay, it is come to that at last, that in London, which takes the lead in every thing, good as well as bad, and whose example in this respect, we may expect to see followed, subscriptions are opened, for the purpose of causing Bibles to be printed and circulated, where people may subscribe any sum, even so low as one penny. And, yet, in the midst of all this, directly in the teeth of all this, after all the soldiers have had Bibles put into their hands, and have, doubtless, in obedience to the wishes of their commanders, carried them in their knapsacks on foraging as well as other expeditions, up starts my correspondent, and with front of ten-fold brass, tells me, and tells the public through me, that we are not, as to cases of plunder, to take the Bible for our guide, because, forsooth, the government of the Jews was a government by God himself! If this be the case, if we are not to look upon the Bible as a sure guide in this respect, why are we to look upon it as a sure guide in any respect; why are we to consider it as any guide at all?- -My correspondent very slily observes, that he believes me to assent to the inspiration of the scriptures; and that he hopes that I am acquainted with the history of the Jewish people. To be sure I assent to the inspiration of the scriptures; and to the inspiration of the whole of them too, and not to that of bits and pieces of them. I take them all together, and I take them, too, in

-

the fair meaning of the words that are made use of. And, now, that I have made this avowal, let me ask my correspondent, why I am to look upon the ten commandments as any rule of conduct for me, unless the soldier is to be guided by the example of plunder in the case of the Midianites? I may, indeed, find that the Commandments are more consonant to the present practice of the world; but, as far as they have any authority from the book I find them in, they are exactly upon a level with the rest of that book, and, of course, when the book tells me, that God commanded his chosen people to do this or that, I look upon it that I ought to pay strict attention to the example.If this be not the case, how dangerous must it be so widely to promulgate the Bible, and, indeed, how wicked must it be, to put it into the hands of ignorant people and of children, and that, too, observe, without any commen tary; without any explanation; without any thing to guide them in selection. It is well known, that one of the heaviest charges, brought against the Romish church, was that of keeping the Bible out of the hands of the people, and of performing divine service in a language which the people could not understand. That church was accused of a desire to keep the mass of the people in ignorance; but, if the doctrine of my correspondent be sound, that church acted not only wisely, but charitably; for, how are the common people; how are the sailors and soldiers; how are the little girls and boys to distinguish be tween those parts of the Bible which they are to look upon as rules of conduct, and which parts they are to look upon in a different light? If it be true, that these exceptions and distinctions of my correspondent, ought to be made, selections from the Bible ought to be published, and not the whole of the book. Some Synod, some Chapter, some Council, ought to be held, in order to determine what parts of the Bible should be selected for general circulation. To put the whole into the hands of the people, and then to tell them that only a part is to be attended to by them, is certainly the most ridiculous, or at least, one of the most ridiculous, proceedings that ever was heard of.I have now, I think, answered the letter of my correspondent, whose talents I am by no means inclined to underrate, but which talents I should like to see exerted in a very different way. will engage for him, that he has never given subjects of this sort that consideration

I

of which his mind is capable. He has
taken things upon trust; he has adopted
notions, in early life, which he has never
had the leisure or the resolution critically
to canvass. Prejudice has had too much
power in his mind to suffer him to give to
truth a fair chance of success. If this were
not the case, it is impossible, that he
should not perceive, that if Napoleon has
been an instrument in the hands of God,
and that, too, to punish a guilty people,
Napoleon himself must be innocent of all
the sufferings of those people.The mis-
fortune is, that men cannot find means suf-
ficient to answer their wishes in reviling
each other, without resorting to superna-
tural support. They must bring God or
the devil everlastingly into their quarrels.
The complainant has always God on his
side, and his adversary the devil on his
side. This, it is, which involves them in
intricacies and inconsistencies without end.
If they would be content to judge of men's
actions upon principles immovable in na-
ture, and upon those rules of morality
which are universally recognised, they
would expose themselves to no danger of
being ridiculed, or of being defeated in ar-
gument, unless their premises or their
conclusions were false. If the petulant
scribes, to whom my correspondent refers,
had been content with censuring Buona-
parté merely as an invader and a conqueror,
they would have had much stronger ground
against him, than they could possibly have
after they dragged the Almighty into the
quarrel. When once they did that, they
drew round the person they attacked, a wall
of brass, and, accordingly, they have retired
defeated from the fortress.- -One more
observation I will add, and that is, that it
always appears very surprising to me, that
those, who have been, and who must, if
they be not sheer hypocrites, be such de-
cided enemies to the Church of Rome, and
such friends to religious liberty, should be
so bitterly bent against Napoleon, who has
done more for religious freedom than was
ever done before in the world. He has,
in a great part of Europe, in the fairest and
most populous part of it, given men liberty
to be of what religion they please. He has
put down persecution; he has, in short, as
to religion, emancipated half Europe, if
we estimate Europe by the worth of the
climate and the products of the earth.
And yet, the most zealous protestants, who
so loudly complained of the Catholics,
would murder him if they could.

Sir,

The extensive circulation which your Register possesses, and the weight and importance which your opinions, as an author, are known to bear, make me anxious to see corrected a most fallacious argument which you have more than once adduced within the last six months, but which has been particularly obtrusive in your latter Numbers. I confess, Sir, that for many years I have read your publications with plea sure; and however I may have been inclined to differ with you on certain points, I have uniformly admired you, on political subjects at least, for originality of thought, strength of expression, clearness, accuracy, depth, and solidity of argument, that I do not often find in the productions of the day. But pardon me if I presume to tell you, that on subjects unconnected with politics you do not always write with equal success; and that in the opinion of many of your sensible readers, you rather mistook your own powers when you turned aside to discuss controversy with your late sceptical correspondents. But it is neither my business nor inclination to quarrel with you about your choice of subjects; I adverted to a fallacy in your mode of arguing, and to that let me confine myself. Commenting upon certain news-paper writers, who had probably, in the exuberance of a rhetorical piety, first designated Buonaparte the scourge of Providence, and then imputed to him the guilt of every act committed in such official capacity. You cannot, it seems, reconcile the apparent contradiction: for, either you argue he is commissioned by Providence, or he is not. If he is not, why call him the scourge of God?-(truly)-if he is, why oppose him, why even blame him for executing his divine commission?-Really, Mr. Cobbett, do you see no difference between positively authorizing an action, and only negatively permitting it: between causing an evil, and subsequently converting that evil into an instrument of good? Was not Nebuchodonosor employed by God to chastise his chosen people? but, was he for that reason guiltless of the excesses committed against that ill-fated, but ungrateful nation? Or were the Jews, think ye, less criminal in having crucified the Son of God, because he had been delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God?-(Acts xi. 23.)Let me illustrate this position by an example. Suppose A possesses, no matter by what means, an unlimited power over his two slaves B and C. If ċ, for some of

fence, has justly forfeited his life, and Atures, and acquainted, as I hope you are, commands B to punish him with death, it with the history of the Jewish people, can you is evident that B is a mere passive instru- find any analogy in the two cases, on which to ment in the hauds of A, and is no way ground a parity of reasoning? The governchargeable for what he has done. But if A, ment of that people, every one knows, difresolving to punish C, finds B predisposed fered essentially from every government to murder him; but without commanding, that had existed before, or has existed since. or even interfering further, than by refusing It was not, in the times we speak of, a to prevent what will answer his purposes of monarchy, nor an aristocracy, nor a demojustice, suffers B to put his design into cracy, but a real theocracy; that is, a goexecution, it is again clear, that although B vernnent under the immediate superinmay be called the instrument of A's ven- tendence of God himself. He was their geance, he is still chargeable with the guilt ruler, not on the simple title of governor of of the deed which his own malice had sug- the universe, in which sense he may be gested. In the first instance, A would au- called the ruler of every nation; but, thorize; in the second, only permit the deed: strictly speaking, he was their temporal -and thus your seeming paradox becomes sovereign. He gave them a code of laws, perfectly reconcilable; and it proves to be not which for nearly 1,500 years was the sole only figuratively but strictly true, that Buona- direction of their political conduct; and parté may be the scourge of God, and still every authority, whether ordinary or extraresponsible for the miseries he entails upon ordinary, received its delegation immedimankind and, further, that mankind are ately from him. If this were the form of perfectly justified in resisting his corrections the Jewish government, and its enemies whenever he comes to work the godly work were the enemies of the Author of nature, among them. Again, speaking of the how can the Israelites be chargeable, even fortune which Moreau had acquired during by implication, either with robbery or cruthe Revolution-"I am not, you observe, elty, when, in obedience to the express insinuating any blame in him (Moreau) for command of God, they first despoiled, and having amassed a great deal of property in then exterminated the Midianites, whose this way. Plunder is the soldier's legiti- crines had merited so severe a punishment. mate harvest; and we know what abundant And, provided the ends of divine justice harvests of this sort we read of in Holy were accomplished, what signified it, wheWrit, as having been expressly commanded ther God employed for this purpose the by God himself, a memorable instance of fires of heaven, or the waters of the deluge; which we have in the case of the Midianites, or, whether he availed himself of the inwho were first stript, by God's chosen peo- strumentality of man, which, while it effecple, of all their goods and chattels, to an tually punished one guilty nation, read an immense amount, and were then, by the awful lesson to a stiff-necked and rebellious command of Moses, the servant of the Lord, people against falling into crimes, towards all slaughtered, men, women, and chil- which they were so prone, and taught them dren." (Pol. Reg. Vol. XXV. p. 145.) the power and majesty of that God whom Now, observe, I am not going to question they themselves were not to insult with Moreau's right to the property thus acquir- impunity. And what room is there to ined, nor to discuss the truth or falsehood of stitute a comparison between a nation gothe abstract proposition, that plunder is a verned immediately by God, and at his soldier's legitimate harvest; but, as far as suggestion, which they could not possibly such right or such legitimacy is attempted mistake, acting so terrible but so extraordito be grounded upon the precedent referred nary a part, with the lawless self-authorized to, I own I am at a loss to account for the depredations of a banditti, who, so far from paltry sophism. I cannot, consistently with pleading a divine commission for what they the opinion I have already passed upon did, seemed to have declared against God your merits as a logician, suppose you so himself, and were openly at war with every ignorant of the first principles of the art of vestige of piety and religion? No, Sir, you reasoning, as to argue from a particular to could not have been serious when you imaan universal proposition; and I am unwill- gined the resemblance; but if you were, ing, from the general candour of your state- and if you will state the grounds of your ments, to impute it to wilful misrepresent- opinion, I shall receive your corrections ation Relative to the cause then I am with as much pleasure as I am sure your content suspend my judgment. But, candour will admit the remarks of, seriously, Mr. Cobbett, assenting as I believe youde to the inspiration of the Scrip

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