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Further Subscriptions for the Reverend R. Taylor.

Amount advertised, with the Stockport Subscription £77 Ss. 8d.

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That is, in English law, a sine die, or a dies non.---)
-ED.

Subscriptions received by MR. JOHN BROOKS, Stationer, 421, Oxford * Street; by MR. JAMES HUTCHINSON, 67, Wood Street, Cheapside, and by MR. RICHARD CARLILE, Publisher and Bookseller, 62, Flest Street.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

"

The Letters, respecting the deaths of the French philosophers, about which Mrs. Doctor Doncaster is frightened, at Oakham, have been received, and will probably be used as soon as translated.

We shall certainly act upon the suggestion, that, in our new Sunday-school, any teachers may step in and assist, so that they will but show their qualifications to teach, by submitting to be catechised, by the scholars. We shall excludé no man or woman of any religion. They shall be allowed to preach their hour, so as they will go through a catechism for another hour.

We do not like the apparent evasion of allowing the co-operatives of the Union Exchange, in Tottenham-court-road, to take up the cudgels for the gentlemen in Red Lion Square. We certainly did expect a shoal of papers, ere this, from the gentlemen in Red Lion Square, in defence of their theoretical, but never to be practised system; but to our great surprise, though the challenge sprung from them, we have not yet seen a line in answer. We look for their Magazine, to see whether that too be silent on the subject.

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street, where all Communications, post paid, or free of expenee, are requested to be left.

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The Lion.

No. 14. VOL. 1.] LONDON, Friday, April 4, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACT OF THE PROCEEDINGS
OF PARLIAMENT.

WE are rather in arrears, on this subject, and, our apology is, that we deem it the least important subject, on which we treat. The legislature of this country is so badly constituted, that we cannot respect it. We submit only because we cannot reform it. So long as the House of Commons pretends to be constituted upon the principle of representation, and so long as that representation is a mockery, as far as the bulk, the great majority, of the labouring part of the people be in question, we cannot be satisfied with it. It is not what it pretends to be. Its constitution, in reality, or the constitution of the majority, is founded on the same principle with that of many of our corporations, where one person gets into power and then helps in another; or where the officers elect each other, and the burgesses count as nothing. There is no representation of that body of the people, whose representation would constitute a honest, faithful, moral and competent legislature for them. The majority of the House of Commons represents the aristocracy, a class wholly distinct from the productive and useful part of the people. Almost throughout the members of the House of Commons may be seen the double man,-the outward and the inner man. The outward man assumes the character of the representative of a body of the people, the proper, labouring and productive people; but the inner man, which is the real guide, is as constantly influenced by its real constituents, the aristocracy. The outward man professes to legislate for the benefit of the people; the inward man is continually issuing the caution,

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62. Fleet Street.
No. 14, Vol. I.

2 I

to take care of the aristocracy, the King, the Royal Family, the Lords and the Church, an incumbrance upon the labouring people, which they can never prosperously support. So that, in the present constitution of the legislature, or rather in the House of Commons, there is no room in which honesty may conveniently work. If a member did really feel, that he were independent of the aristocracy, and that he did represent a really useful body of the people, he would require no ordinary degree, both of physical and moral courage, to work free from the trammels which the house and its customs throw around him.

The House of Lords is differently constituted. In it, there is no room for hypocrisy. There is no inner man there. It is what it pretends to be, a legislating class, distinct from the useful part of the people, whose first and very natural principle is to take care of itself. It represents no interests but those of its own members. It supports no other. As far as the means of qualifying the people for the higher amount of taxation be in question, the House of Lords legislates for the people as a whole; as far as the welfare of the people works in union with the welfare of the Lords, there is a lordly support. But no farther. The House of Lords, in relation to the people, is, in reality, a legislative despotism. The claws of the despot have been partly pared within the last half century; but there remains a constant dread, that any bill which can be got through the House of Commons, that promises to be separately useful to the labouring people, will be lost in the House of Lords.

The King is but a cipher in the legislative department. His ministers, who are dispersed in the two houses, decide the point of acquiescence for him, and we are never again likely to see the King refusing his consent to any bill that may pass both Commons and Lords. There is no simplicity, no generally good intent, no popular honesty in our legislature.

Since we last noticed the parliament, the East Retford Disfranchisement Bill has been before the House of Commons. This was a trying point, both for the outward and the inward man of the members. And oh how ludicrous, how shameful, how shameless, has been the scene! In investigating the bribery practised at East Retford, the members of the House of Commons set about it, as if they had never before heard of such a principle as bribery and corruption; as if East Retford, with the precedent of Grampound, had been the only cases of the kind that had occurred. Two men, of the names of Fox and Leadbeater, have been committed by the House, to Newgate, for prevarication, and for withholding what they knew upon the subject of the East Retford bribery! While nine-tenths of the members of the House hold their seats upon the same principle of prevarication, and of withholding what they know upon the subject, these two men, Fox and Leadbeater, as well aware, per

haps, as the members themselves, of the real constitution of the House, very naturally must have thought, that what was right in the members could not be wrong in them as borough-electors. Had we been placed in the situation of Fox and Leadbeater, that would have been our defence, let the consequence have led us to Newgate or to the Tower. In the present constitution of the House of Commons, a constitution that is now a century old, the first principle of the election of its members is that of bribery and corruption; and it is most monstrously absurd, while the inner man of almost every member encourages the principle, that the outer man should condemn it. It is most monstrously absurd, it is dishonest and wicked, it is very rank hypocrisy, that the House of Commons, in its present state and character, should complain of particular bribery and corruption, and hold the principle sacred in the general constitution of that House. We have no language powerful enough, wherewith to express our detestation of such hypocrisy. This political hypocrisy, if possible, is a degree worse than the hypocrisy of a religion that is regulated, as to its doctrines, forms, and ceremonies, by law.

The Bill for repealing the Test and Corporation Acts has passed the ordeal of the House of Commons, accompanied with a reserve, that the test shall be reduced from an oath, or a sacrament, to a declaration, that whoever holds office, shall not use the influence of that office, to lessen the influence of the religion established by law. The matter is altogether an evasion, and unworthy of legislation. Every religion in the country is established by law. The religion of the Quakers is established by law, in the legislated permission, that they shall give their evidence in criminal and civil cases, after their own form and pleasure of doing it. The religion of the Unitarians or Deists is established by law, inasmuch as there is an express law, to encourage them, to impugn the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. And with our allegorical key, we can shape our Christianity to the law, or the law to our Christianity, just as it may be conveniently required; and that too, without hypocrisy and false pretence. We, who have discarded all religion, are not to be affected by religious laws. We analyse your absurdities, and shape them, with as good a meaning as the best of you can give to them, to suit all our civil purposes. In short, we laugh at your religious follies. We can conscientiously take office, and say that we will not use the influence of that office to the detriment of the religion as by law established. We need not the influence of office, wherewith to attack your religious errors; the press is the only instrument that we can use with any effect for that purpose, and that we can use without the association of office. Be wise, give up every restraint that accompanies your religion; but stick, as you will, to your tithes and other religiously pecuniary advantages, as long as you can. The whole sub

ject is now well understood. There is now no question associated with religion but that of pounds, shillings, and pence. Immortal souls are now not worth a farthing a head for salvation or damnation. Upon your arithmetical showing,-upon your own doctrines, the very devil must have been so long glutted with stock,— with a supply so far exceeding his most avaricious demands, that, to him, any further accumulation of the stock or capital of immortal souls is valueless. Religion, like every other human commodity, must be brought to the test of political economy. The accumulating principle of existences is apt to outrun the means of support; but the more accumulating principle of neverdying succession alike baffles our arithmetic and destroys our faith. There cannot be a religious political economist.

We are glad to see even the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. The sign is to us good. It is the test of the increasing weakness of the religious corporation. We did not find fault with the substituted declaration; it is an affair to be smiled at, rather than to be feared: it adds to the weakness, not to the strength, of the church.

We were in the House of Commons on Tuesday night last, as political spies, to spy out the nakedness of the legislating land. More than one half of the evening was occupied in a detail, by petition, of the distresses of the country. Lord Lowther introduced a leaden petition from some distressed lead-miners, in a very leaden manner. Mr. Hobhouse was most pathetically excited, almost to broken-heartedness, about the distresses of our very respectable body of hackney-coachmen. The next time the Jarvies present a petition, we advise them, with Mr. Hobhouse at their head, to drive their starved and worn-out nags and shattered coaches, in procession, to Westminster Hall, that the members may judge if their state and condition would not be better, if there were more competition, and no law but competition to regulate them. One member presented a petition from the silk-weavers of Macclesfield, setting forth their distress, and praying the House not to separate, before it had fixed the minimum price of their wages. Let them not trouble the House again on such a subject. The day is gone by, when the Legislature of this country can prudently interfere with wages, in any other way than to lessen the amount of taxation, and to remove the shackles of commerce, so as to encourage the greatest possible amount of dealing and consumption.

A somewhat similar petition was presented by Mr. Grattan, from the silk-weavers of Dublin, rather praying encouragement to their trade, than to fix a price for wages.

Our impressions were, on observing the presentation of all these petitions about distress, an inquisition as to their origin and foundation. Whence, thought we, but from the constitution of this House, jointly with that of the House of Lords, can originate

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