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tions of the persons that governed them, and not from superior or inferior
organs or phrenological developments. Helvetius, on the changes in cha-
racter says, 66
Compare the English of the present day with those under
Henry Sth, Edward 6th, Mary, and Elizabeth; this people, now so hu-
mane, indulgent, learned, free, and industrious, such lovers of the arts
and philosophy, were then nothing more than a nation of slaves, inhuman
and superstitious; without arts, and without industry?" And in every
government, where talents are rewarded, those rewards, like the teeth of
the serpent planted by Cadmus, will produce men. Great men, what-
ever has been said, belong not to the reigns of Augustus, &c.; but to the
reigns that encourage and protect them.-Great talents and great virtues
are almost unknown in Spain and Portugal. Speaking of the Greeks and
Romans, he says, at twenty, Alexander, already a man of letters and a
great general, undertook the conquest of the East. At the same age,
Scipio and Hannibal formed the greatest projects, and executed the most
difficult enterprises. Before the age of maturity, Pompey, the conqueror
of Europe, Asia and Africa, had filled the earth with his glory.-Now,
how did these Greeks and Romans become at once men of letters, orators,
generals, and ministers of state?-Was the organization more perfect-
No, doubtless-in the sciences and the arts of navigation, physic-me-
chanics, the mathematics, &c. we know, that the moderns excel."

How are we to account for the conduct of the African negroes, in social and intellectual attainments, as well as moral principle, who are said to have eaten their own slaves, and with whom human flesh is quite a marketable commodity? Even fathers have been known to eat their children, and the children the father, brothers, and sisters. Mothers have been known to abandon their children to the voracity of the tigers of the wood. Surely, nature, the bestower of the cause of such dispositions, as these beings possess, has itself no enviable quality, either in power or moral principle. If we turn to the people of New Holland, who, in hundreds of years (previous to the settlement of the English) had not made any progress in intellectual attainments, and, as Mr. Lawrence says, without arts of any kind, no idea of agriculture, without clothes, living on food the most loathsome, such as lizards, serpents, spiders, large caterpillars, found in groups, bark of trees. These people, to all appearance, must have been as intelligent, hundreds or thousands of years past, and would give every evidence that their organization was such, that any attainment in arts, sciences, laws, and moral improvement, was with them, impossible. But who can adduce any reasons, that this people is, in any degree, really inferior in organization? Yet it is in no way difficult to prove, how the surrounding circumstances in such a plentiful country, would facilitate the means of satisfying their few wants; consequently there was no stimulant to particular exertions. Retarded by the brutifying habits, that were so uniformly kept up, could pain of mind ever exist in such a people? The dread of starvation, and the approaching superabundant population, the bane of this country, did not there exist. Such passions and principles as monopolies and aggrandisements, with power and right, protection and defence, would produce the workings of their minds to some improvements, and the use of what they possessed in genius and physical strength. The accounts of that country, at this day, are very bright. A country, fertile and delightful, now peopled by the refuse of English society, and who knows, but that, at no distant day, with the good conduct of the new colonists, aided by the application of those long dormant faculties of its natives, but it may be a country, that may be truly the envy and admiration of the world, and as worthy of it as England.

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Even the new interrogative system of education, invented and introduced by Sir Richard Phillips, gives evidence, that understanding and knowledge are to be increased and facilitated in the minds of the pupils; and that genius, or a capacity for understanding, does not depend on the superior or inferior organizations. For, on an examination of eight young persons, who had been educated for three years, after two methods, four as formerly in all popular schools, and four by the new method called the Interrogative System. The books used by each, in their studies were arranged before about 60 schoolmasters, and 200 heads of respectable families. There were 200 questions in popular branches of knowledge, put to the four educated in the old system, they collectively answered but 33 correctly: while, of the same questions, to the four pupils under the new system, 156 were answered correctly, and 35 with slight errors.— Thus, the new system over the old, is as six to one, independent of the greater facility, which it confers in the time employed. The questions in each case, were spontaneously given by the company in writing, and answered in writing. Yet the answers to the 33 questions employed 24 hours, and the 191 answers, but 3 hours, or less than a minute to each. These pupils, to try the merits of the two systems, we may conclude, were possessed of a common organization, and the intellect-producing power of the one system over the other, is very striking. Thus, we may conclude, that under good school discipline, in connection with family and social habits, protected by a government and laws, that rewards good and punishes bad actions, any people, under whatever grade of colour or moral depravity they may exist, may, by time, attention, and other influential circumstances, become, as if by inspiration, an intelligent and a moral people.

Thus, I have endeavoured to show, by illustration, that individuals, under no particular organization or constitution, can or ever did possess understanding, and moral habits in a superior degree; but that the people of some countries have possessed what we might term a superior organization, to the people of another country, and yet the former has been as deficient in intellectual attainments, when compared with the latter, as the difference in color of white and black; and that circumstances, habits, and governments, have been the causes of intelligence and depravity in nations, as well as in individuals; and lastly, that in school-education, there is a superior and an inferior system, which is nothing but the effects of circumstances, and which could not be the case, if organization, superior and inferior, were the cause of superior or inferior capabilities of understanding. Sheffield, 1827.

THOMAS TURTON.

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No. 17. VOL. 1.] LONDON, Friday, April 25, 1828. [PRICE 6d. REPEAL OF THE CORPORATION AND TEST ACTS.

THE Repealing Bill may be now said to have passed the House of Lords, not without some opposition from Lord Eldon, Lord Winchelsea, and a few other Lords, among whom, to the general surprise of the country, is found Lord Tenterden, the present Lord Chief Justice. These Lords have signed the following protest against the Bill for entry on the journals:

"Dissentient-Because we think this Bill proceeds upon the alleged expediency of repealing the Sacramental Test, for the purpose of substituting as a security for the support of the Established Church, which is an essential part of the Constitution of the State, nothing but a declaration as to Corporate offices, which may be made by persons not Protestants, and not even Christians; and because, also, it does not render necessary even such a declaration to be made by any persons accepting offices and places of trust, but leaves it wholly in the power of the Crown to require, or not to require, it to be made by any such persons."

In this protest, and throughout the debates on the Bill, a great anxiety has been shown to discover some means by which infidels may be excluded from office. The attempt has failed.We shall wait the complete passing of the Bill, and its obtainment of the Royal assent, before we enter into detail upon it; but as soon as the Bill becomes an act of the Legislature, we purpose to review it, and to consider the attempt which has been made to preserve a test for infidels-a test, which, in fact, if it did or could be made to exist, would disinherit the majority of the House of Lords itself; for no well-educated and well-informed man in this country, or in any part of Europe, at this day, can be a superstitious christian. We must pay the compliment to the mind, not to the honesty, of Lord Tenterden, the present Lord Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street. 2 L

No. 17, Vol. I.

Chief Justice, to say, that, in sentiment, he is notoriously an infidel toward every part of the superstition of Christianity. The same is known of the other Chief Justice (Best). Looking at his past life, and the company which he has kept, we verily believe the King himself to be an infidel toward the Christian religion. Christianity is now a mere scarecrow, sustained, as a politic law,

66

To keep the dull rabble in awe.'

As far as we can show it up as a scarecrow, it shall no longer keep that" dull rabble in awe." It is now publicly denounced as an error and an evil, which was not the case in the last century; and being so denounced, it can neither recover its former position in the human mind, nor maintain its present ground, whatever may be the state of the laws.

The threatening letters of exposure in the Morning Herald and THE LION, sent to Lords Eldon and Lansdowne, under the pretended signature of a Secretary to the Unitarian Association, respecting the Unitarian Marriage Bill, were, we presume, the handy work of Edward B. Singley. As soon as he found Lord Eldon had noticed this publication in the House of Lords, he sent us a complimentary note upon the circumstance, but which, let him be assured, did not cost the postage; nor can he succeed in that trick. We break every letter open and pay for it, if it be a proper correspondence; if not, it is given back instead of postage. Lord Eldon has no longer the majority of the House of Lords at his beck and call. He is now the dissentient protester; so he may be assured, that we shall not give ourselves much trouble to expose him in THE LION: and as for the Unitarian Marriage Bill, no one cares less about it than ourselves, other than as it may exhibit the progressing decay of the Church and Religion established by law. But we detest the mischievous and wicked character of Edward B. Singley, and consider his tricks the work of an evil spirit. We are on our guard; he shall not stir again to our disadvantage; and if an enemy, we will take care to make him fight our battles, rather than his own or those of his employers.

Lord Winchelsea, in his observations on the second reading of the Repeal Bill, said, it was time for the Christians to see about taking care of themselves, instead of giving advantages to the enemy, since places were opened, in which, before assembled multitudes, the authority of every principle of the Christian Religion was disputed. Such is the fact; and if Lord Winchelsea will come to our school, he shall find, that he has yet something to learn about the Christian Religion. We engage to infidelize every shrewd and honest man, that will take a fair number of lessons in our school. Or if the House of Lords will give us an examination at their bar, we will undertake to adduce a sufficiency of honest reasons, why the Christian Religion should no longer

be legislatively countenanced. We pray either King, Lords, Commons, or Bishops, to issue a commission for the investigation of the present known merits of the Christian Religion. And we proclaim before the Christian world, that it cannot be longer honestly supported.

From an unpublished Manuscript, bequeathed by Frederick the Great, of Prussia, to his Royal Nephew, Frederick William the Third.

MATINEES ROYALES.

RELIGION is absolutely necessary to a state. This is an axiom which we should be fools to dispute. The sovereign, who allows his subjects to abuse religion, is a mere dolt; and, if he possess any himself, is no better. Listen well to what I say, my dear nephew; there is no greater tyranny over the mind and heart than religion, for she does not harmonize with our passions, nor with the enlarged views of policy which a sovereign ought to entertain. The only true religion a prince can know, is his own interest and glory. His position ought to dispense with his following any other. He may, however, be permitted to maintain its appearance, on occasion, by way of amusing those who observe and surround him.

If he fear God, or, more properly speaking, the language of priests and women, if he fear the devil, like Louis the XIVth. in his old age, he becomes feeble and puerile, he is worthy of the Capuchin's cowl. Is it an object to take advantage of a favourable opportunity, and seize upon a neighbour's territory? An army of devils start up before you, to prevent your purpose; we are weak enough to believe that we should be guilty of injustice, and take measure with our own hands of the punishment consequent upon our transgression. Still I do not mean to say, that we should make a display of impiety and atheism; though it is necessary we should think, in accordance with the rank we hold. All the popes, who possessed common sense, cherished those religious principles which squared with their aggrandizement. It would be the acme of folly, were a prince to give way to petty miseries, which are only designed for the common herd.

We as much owe justice to our subjects, as they owe respect to us. By this I mean, my dear nephew, that we must administer justice to mankind, and especially to our subjects, so long as it does not injure our rights, or prejudice our authority; for no comparison must be allowed between the rights of the sovereign, and those of the subject or slave.

As it is agreed by common consent, that it is ignominious and villainous to cheat one's neighbour, men have sought out a term,

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