You might wish to know, how crimes are prompted, matured, and detected by the police, but even the single outline of such complicated mechanism would form a chapter much longer than this whole speech, and besides such chapter must not be separated from my general history or exposure of despotism; which work I value most after my confessions, and shall publish it as soon as I may do it safely.

In my opinion, the present number and nature of crimes is the most certain symptom that we are fast approaching the last crisis that will end by the conversion of despotism; and as I have said in my SIXTH assumption, we are entering in a new phase or moral period when our legislators will be necessitated to suppress the cause of crimes altogether, and to confer gradually a posi tively equal share of sublime happiness upon this and other inhabitants of the earth. The regular progression and indefinite improvement of the human mind warrants my assumption beyond cavil, and it would be absurd to suppose that despots will not be compelled to follow that improvement, and to do precisely what I would do if I was the chief magistrate of this nation.

It is true that such assumption must remain an assumption till it be proved by the forthcoming events, but there is in favour of such assumption a very high probability; and I shall answer to those who jocosely ask me to deliver my prophecies more clearly if I am a prophet? Yes, I have reached a degree of moral knowledge where any human being must be a prophet, if by such word we mean one who can foresee rightly the future events to a conspicuous extent; and as soon as I shall have time, I promise to deliver such a general PROPHECY, as to be a good deal more entitled to credit than those of the THREE IMPOSTORS, or any other dead or living impostors, without excepting the jackass of Balaam.

I shall therefore conclude this already too long speech, by asking the sceptic or the ignorant, who pretend that there can be no God, or that he cannot be benevolent since he created evil and suffering instead of creating the human species perfectly happy all at once without evils, how could ever a human being have been created suddenly happy, since happiness cannot be but the result of knowledge, and knowledge must necessarily be progressive? How could ever a human being have been possessed all at once of, or reach gradually, a supreme degree of happiness, or have enjoyed any happiness at all without evils and sufferings, since happiness cannot be any thing else but a relation or comparison made by an individual between his past and present circumstances, or between his said circumstances and those of other individuals of the present or past generations? Is not therefore the admirable wisdom and benevolence of the deity, rendered most striking by the obvious universal law of

moral nature, by which, each individual of a generation as well as each generation, have been called to enjoy a share of happiness proportioned to their moral powers, and consequently a relatively equal share, while they have been, and are, carried by a perpetual harmonious improvement towards the most perfectly positive, and universal EQUALITY?

Before the strength of such arguments, the objections of the materialists are of no weight, and the screams of the bigots and the idle hypocrites against my levelling system, as they call it, is truly contemptible; for whatever theist rejects such arguments is as monstrously inconsistent as would have been a supreme being calling forcibly into existence numberless creatures to deluge them with so many evils, as are supposed to have existed and to exist still in the world; and to treat them with so much revolting inequality, as the vulgar believe to exist between individuals and generations.

Lastly, allow me to observe that such belief, though almost universal and erroneous, is another tangible proof of the supreme wisdom and benevolence of the Deity, for every one's fancies to be highly favoured by fortune or chance, when they consider the misery of the lower orders. Their feeling of superiority compels them to relieve the poorer, and thus the happiness of both is increased, while all exert themselves constantly in order to reach a superior degree of knowledge and to increase again their happiness; till they reach upon a very elevated platform, called OPTIMISM, from whence they discover all the motions and mechanism of existing societies on one side, and on the other side, they perceive the elements preparing to compose new classes of interest.

It is then, and then only, that the proudest and most irascible beings become as universally benevolent and impassible as the Deity, of which they begin to discover the true essence or design, as soon as they feel conscious that they know nothing about it.

I must apologize for the length and repetitions of these improvisations, owing to the complication of the subject, and the division I have adopted in the beginning.

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CRITIQUE ON THE SPEECH OF MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER, ESQ. Delivered in the House of Commons, on the 17th March 1829.

Mr. SADLER has made a speech which has excited much of public attention, and is selling in various forms. Mr. Cobbett ha s advertised his intention of demolishing by a critique, the speech in toto. I, purpose to pursue the less pretending path of pointing out the religious errors of that speech, as I find them in the edition published by my neighbours, Seeley and Sons; and I do this at a time when I have not seen an exception taken to the merits of the speech. As a party speech, as a maiden speech in the House of Commons, I think it a clever one; and however erroneous some of its premises, I respect the talent, the candour, and the certain good motive of the speaker.

The subject on which the speech is made, is the Roman Catholic Relief Bill.

In the first and second sentences, the speaker states the present circumstances of the subject to be of such an unequalled importance, that a consideration of them would incapacitate him for speaking on them, as he intends and shall attempt.

This was certainly neither a compliment to the house nor to his own judgment, to say, that what he was about to offer would arise from an insufficiency of consideration on the subject! But we shall find it a truth.

Having confessed himself a new and determined member of an expiring party, the speaker says:-" The spirit of popery, when dominant, dragged the objects of its resentment to the stakeits spirit still survives." Yes, it survives; but it is not the exclusive property of the Roman Catholic. It survives in the Protestant. It is the spirit of religion and not of one of its sects. It has

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excess.

been Pagan, it has been Jewish; it has been Christian to an It has not only been Arian, it has been Athanasian. It has not only been heretical, it has been orthodox. It has not only been eastern; it has been western. It has not only been Roman, it has been English, Scotch, Welch, Irish, and American. It has not only been modern, it has been apostolic. It is not more a corruption than the very purity of gospel itself. It is not of the sect, but of the religion from which the sects arise. It is not from the worship of any false gods, it is the very principle of the worship of the most true God. It is the very nature of religion. It is religion to persecute: and the absence of persecution is moral and not religious. Was it Roman Catholicism that last prosecuted the Rev. Robert Taylor, against whom no other crime was charged, than that his wit and talent applied against the Christian religion were pungent? Was it Roman Catholicism that twice robbed me of my temporal possessions, and confined me six years in Dorchester goal, for doing that which I now do unmolestedly, and, as then did, now meritoriously do-sell "Paine's Age of Reason," and "Palmer's Principles of Nature?" Was it Roman Catholicism that sent my wife, sister, and twenty assistants to a gaol for acts, now, not ten years later, a part of the custom or common law of the land? Was it Roman Catholicism that put an honest an old man, Daniel Isaac Eaton, in the pillory; for no other offence than publishing the errors on which the Christian religion is founded? Was it Roman Catholicism that burnt the effigy of Thomas Paine out of spite, in the absence of the body? Was it Roman Catholicism, that sent that venerable old deist, Peter Annett, twice to the pillory, and to hard labour for one year in the Bridewell of the City of London, for writing and publishing such tracts, as the Unitarians are now by statute law allowed to write and publish? Was it Roman Catholicism that left Thomas Woolston to perish in a gaol; because he could not, and said he would not, swallow the miracles of the Gospels other than as allegories? Was it Roman Catholicism, that committed the horrors of English Episcopacy on the covenanters of Scotland, in which more lives were taken than history records as having been taken by Roman Catholics from Protestants? Let Mr. Sadler read history impartially, and he will find that Protestantism throws the persecution of Roman Catholicism, in horror and atrocity, at a great distance. There is no parallel in the two amounts of persecution that favours Protestantism. Religious men read history with one eye closed; they read nothing disadvantageous to, or unjustifiable in, their own sect or party.

All dominant religion carries with it the spirit of persecution, and whether it imprisons, hangs, drowns, or burns, is not the comparative degree; but still the same degree of persecution. Imprisonment is the higher punishment to the higher degree of

intelligence. Protestantism has left itself nothing indebted to Roman Catholicism on the score of persecution: nor did it remain long in debt; long, long, has it been the offending party in this country.

The remainder of the sentence last quoted, is a statement of the treatment of Protestants toward infidels, rather than the advocates of popery toward Protestants; it is thus :-" its advocates, at this moment, would willingly inflict on its conscientious opponents a martyrdom still more grievous to generous minds, in aiming at the moral and intellectual character and attainments of those whom they mark out as their victims." How very sympathetic is the disposition to persecute, when it feels the loss of its sting! It is that which makes all the difference, Mr. Sadler: you have lost the power, you are not now in the condition to sting or persecute. As a proof of what I say, I will only ask you to look back through ten years, and ask yourself, what, from time to time, you have thought of my persecution? I have now the whip-hand of you. I will make you smart under its lash, and give you back a true estimate of your moral and intellectual attainments. You shall suffer the martyrdom of ignorance and contempt, not of the prison, the pillory, the gallows, or the stake. You shall live and be free to be teazed to death by the success of those intellectual principles which you have assisted to persecute, and which you have condemned. We shall not retaliate such persecution on you, as the Protestants did on the Roman Catholics. We will laugh you to a martyrdom.

In answer to what Mr. Sadler has said about the Protestant, or existing constitution, I can only desire, that the sense of the people be taken upon it, and that a representative legislature be formed in the House of Commons on the principle of universal suffrage and vote by ballot. Give us that, and we will not ask a shortening of the present parliaments. That is the way to try the merits of your existing constitution by the opinions of the people. Unless you come to the advocacy of this measure, the sincerity of your speech about the constitution, and the regard which the people of England have for it, will stand impeached. However, it is pleasant to see, that the glorious-constitutionpeople have been brought to the distinction of their constitution, as modern and Protestant, in contradistinction to that which was ancient and Catholic. And what that is good do they find added to the old one; what that is Protestant; what but that free press, free discussion, that knowledge and science which infidelity toward both Catholicism and Protestantism has introduced: that improvement which has made evidence dominate over faith? I agree with Mr. Sadler, that Catholic Emancipation, by itself, will not add a potatoe to the Irishman's table; and that all the ills of Ireland have arisen from conquest, and consequent tyranny, oppression, and misgovernment; but I cannot agree with him in