many privileges? The general's horse lives magnificently when compared to his subalterns; yet, poor wretches, because they have a coarse coat, the colour of scarlet, and worsted epaulettes, of the shape and colour of silver ones, they think this a sufficient equivalent for both the loss of life and liberty, and will bear kicking and caning with the docility of asses; and will even assassinate the man (or inform of him, which is the same) who in their presence invalidates their cruel oppressors. Hence all that truly ennobles human nature is extinguished in Europe, Asia, and Africa, where degenerate servile man is odious in his own eyes, and contemptible in the eyes of his tyrant. Alas! this earth, originally a paradise, is metamorphosed, by cruel man, to a hell, the repository of despotism and death. How are the titles "lord" and "most sacred majesty," "the most high and mighty prince James," prostituted when applied to such vil lains, who deserve the gallows a thousand times more than the midnight robber! Yet such fellows despise the virtuous poor, and consider them as "the swinish multitude,” and seem to think the world was made for them only. And yet, alas! these same stupid slavish people gape with admiration at the pompous parade, and apologize for the oppressive conduct of their tyrants! One would think that such wretches, who kiss the foot that kicks them, deserve to be slaves; but I say they ought to be pitied rather than reproached, because they are kept in gross ignorance from youth to age, and are amused and deluded by the tinsel of royalty from their infancy. Were the people in any kingdom in Europe to be illuminated as the good people of the United States happily are, the cap of liberty would soon surmount the bloody flag of despotism. They would then be convinced that the caval cades of aristocracy not only bereave them of their natural rights, but insult their understandings likewise, or, if you please, add insult to injury, by exhibiting their own insignificance at the expense of their own industry. Alas! a false opinion and a deleterious relish for the blaze of equipage, the tinsel of royalty, and military glory, have been the harbinger of death and destruction to millions of the miserable and de luded sons of men.

The vanity and pride of aristocracy, I would silently and sorrowfully pity and despise, did it not produce war, cruelty

and murder, and the chief miseries of the poor. How many, this very moment, are bewailing in the shades of obscurity, the unrelenting ravages of despotism! Hungry orphans, weeping widows, violated virgins, and even the hoary head of unresisting age, are now calling upon death to deliver them from a world of wo, produced, not by nature, but by man! They must worship those they despise, serve those they hate, kill those who never injured them, wretches as miserable as themselves, and at last, prematurely die in the field of battle, forgotten by all, and regretted by none; while aristocratical pride points the finger of scorn at misery produced by itself, and which it could, but would not alleviate.

God, in the plenitude of his goodness, has scattered plenty, (especially in Europe and Asia,) over our globe. The lands which were flowing with milk and honey, are now drenched with the tears of hunger and distress! The fields that waved with golden grain, are now sprinkled with human blood! The plains that were gay with flowers, and bright with verdure, are now the repositories of the bleached and neglected bones of wretched men! You who doubt the correctness of the melancholy picture I exhibit to your view, only cast the eyes of your mind for a moment on Africa, on the West Indies, on South America, on Russia, on Prussia, on Denmark, on Norway, on Spain, finally on England, Ireland, and Scotland, as well as the foreign settlements of the Dutch, the Swedes, the French, and the English, all which places I have personally visited, and you will be constrained to acknowledge, that man has unparadised this earth, and reduced it literally to a slaughter-house.

Christ and the simplicity of his mission, both his public and private conduct and discourses, from first to last, as well as his humble appearance in the world, all prove to a mathematical certainty, with what sovereign contempt God views the power, the pageantry, and pride of monarchy and aristocracy. The chief objects of his solicitude, were the poor and miserable; and the primary objects of his animadversions, were the Jewish priesthood, as well as the Jewish aristocracy. I will just quote a few verses from the fourth chapter of Luke, to illustrate my assertions.

"And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias: and when he had opened the book, he found

the place where it was written, The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister and sat down and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scrip. ture fulfilled in your ears, And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill (whereon their city was built) that they might cast him down headlong. But he passing through the midst of them, went his way.'

Mark how the spirit of aristocracy opposed with unrelenting violence the blessed Redeemer! and, doubtless, was he again to appear in some courts, and some superb churches, he would again meet with similar treatment. And in order to prove him a fanatic, or an impostor, they would again use the brief argument of, "Have any of the nobility or gentry (or the rulers and Pharisees) believed in him?" And this alone would be sufficient to stagger the faith of the admirers of aristocracy, who would lick the dust which royal villains and right honourable knaves walk upon in order to court their favour; yet these poor servile wretches are, in the eye of aristocracy, no better than beasts of burden; and yet they submit to be trampled under foot, by men as weak and more wicked than themselves; by men who are doomed, like themselves, shortly to become the food of worms, in the silent grave. I will transcribe one passage more of sacred writ, to prove more forcibly in what contempt aristocrats are viewed by heaven, and in what high estimation those whom they despise and trample upon, are held by the Sovereign of the skies; I mean the virtuous poor.

"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the

labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you." James, 5: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6.

The gospel was pure and powerful, and its ministers zealous and holy men, till it was introduced into the circles of royalty, by Constantine the Great; and then, and not till then, power and privileges incompatible with the practice and precepts of our adorable Saviour, were usurped by his followers: Then the gospel was reduced to a step-ladder for ambitious politicians, and became the implement of destruction, and the innocent cause of war,* superstition and bigotry; and I am sorry to say, it remains the same in many countries to the present moment. It is matter of amazement as well as lamentation, that mankind should suffer themselves thus to be hood-winked, dragooned, and imposed upon for so many centuries, and that so many lazy and intolerant parsons should be able, with an arm of flesh, thus to degrade human nature, and metamorphose a religion so pure and peaceable, to the demon of war and carnage; and that they could contrive so long to live upon the labours, and trample upon the rights of their fellow creatures. All this has been done, not by forces physical or moral, but by religious fraud. The cunning priests introduced ignorance for knowledge, superstition

* It is painful even to think upon the enormities committed under the cloak of religion; and could we form an estimate of the lives lost in the wars and persecutions of the Christian church alone we should find it nearly equal to the number of souls now existing in Europe. But it is perhaps in mercy to mankind that we are not able to calculate, with any accuracy, even this portion of human calamities. When Constantine ordered that the hierarchy should assume the name of Christ, we are not to consider him as forming a new weapon of destruction; he only changed a name which had grown into disrepute, and would serve the purpose no longer, for one that was gaining an extensive reputation; it being built on a faith that was likely to meet the assent of a considerable portion of mankind. The cold hearted cruelty of that monarch's character, and his embracing the new doctrine with a temper hardened in the slaughter of his relations, were omens unfavourable to the future complexion of the hierarchy; though he had thus coupled it with a name that had hitherto been remarkable for its meekness and humility. This transaction has therefore given colour to a scene of enormities, which may be regarded as nothing more than the genuine offspring of the alliance of Church and State.

for religion, and a belief of their own infallibility for the light of reason; and with these fatal auxiliaries, they did with the greatest facility infringe the rights of God. And this engine in all countries, and among almost all denominations, has enabled the reverend few to lord it over the consciences and pick the pockets of the cheated many; often adding insult to injury in the bargain. Let not therefore the inhabitants of Christendom point the finger of scorn at the Asiatics, for worshipping their Grand Lama, their Mahomet, and their Bramahs, and for suffering themselves to be so foolishly cheated out of their liberty, reason, and common sense.

I will here transcribe a passage from the writings of the Rev. David Simpson, a nobleman by nature.

"The people of every age and country have an inalienable right to choose their own ministers; and no king, no ruler, no bishop, no lord, no gentleman, no man, or body of men upon earth, has any just claim whatever, to dictate who shall administer to them in the concerns of their salvation; or to say-You shall think this, believe that, worship here or abstain from worshipping there.

"For much more than a thousand years, the Christian world was a stranger to religious liberty. Toleration was unknown till about a century ago. The clergy have always been unfriendly to religious liberty: when the act of toleration was obtained in king William's time, great numbers of them were much against it—but both the name and thing are inconsistent with the very nature of the gospel of Christ. For have not I as much right to control you in your religious concerns, as you have to control me? To talk of tolerating implies an authority! He is a tyrant, a very pope, who pretends to any such thing. These matters will be better understood by and by. The whole Christian world lay in darkness upon this subject, for many ages. Dr. Owen was

the first who wrote in favour of it, in the year 1648-Milton followed him about the year 1658, in his Treatise of the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. And the immortal Locke succeeded with his golden Treatise on Toleration, in 1689. But notwithstanding these, and many other works which have since been written on the same subject, much still remains to be done in this country. Though we have had the honour of being among the first of the nations which obtained a