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white-livered cowardice of an unhappy nature . Charles the Second was a notorious beggar ; but did not half so much for our institutions as the irresolute obstinate recreant bigot his brother . "We have extorted good out of bad Princes ; but it is a bad method ; and we are not inclined to it now-a-days . To keep Princes beggars that they may sell us reforms is about as obsolete , idle , and clumsy an idea as was ever born in antiquarian brain . It is starving a vicious horse that he may not kick us , instead of declining to keep a vicious horse in lieu of a serviceable one .
But Lord Brougham ' s veneration for the golden idol goes yet further ; it is his speech on official salaries which explains the rationale of his " constitutional " check upon the Sovereign . On Friday he underwent a new explosion , the subject being the official salaries , at the reduction of which he was wild . He pronounced the proposal to cut down diplomatic salaries as " ridiculous ; " but the notion of cutting down judicial salaries he assailed
again and again , and he wound up by expressing a hope " that he never should see the administration of justice poisoned at its source . " A reduction of official salaries poisons justice at its source— " the source , " apparently , being the purse . Lord Bacon is accused of entertaining that Oriental idea , and the Bacon of our day appears to share it—in theory ; for in practice no one will ever accuse Lord Brougham of seeking his inspiration from that
source . Still the phrase is curious , and it perplexes plain people : the purse , it seems , is "the source" of justice , and the real viceroy over the Monarch !
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LIBEL FIGHTING . Perhaps it is a sign , as Basil Hall might have said , of the low tone of our morals , that we are obliged to ask " the Law " for protection against the dirty work of libellers . The injury attempted by a libeller is strictly of a social kind , seldom tangible or capable of being represented in " damages . " But the retribution to be most effectual might be strictly of the same kind , if society were sufficiently moral to stand up in its own
vindi-. The Morning Chronicle revives this -week two libel cases which occurred last week at our Assizes . Mr . J . Heystek has a controversy with Mr . Ruysennaers , involving some commercial points , and also the conjugal allegiance of Mrs . Ruysennaers , into the merits of which we nerd not enter . But in pursuit of his objects , Mr .
Ileystck resorts to the singular expedient of addressing letters to correspondents of the plaintiff in Paris , Alexandria , and Rotterdam , declaring that Mr . Ruysennaers had attempted to assassinate his wife , that he lived in ' scandalous disorder and immorality , " and was completely insolvent . The jury allowed £ 600 damages , which may perhaps compensate for the commercial detriment ; but how does it set Mr . Ruysennaers straight
with society ? Again , the Reverend J . R . Prynne , perpetual curate of St . Peter ' s , at Plymouth , is the apparent object of a libel charging him with illicit instrumentality in the increase of population ; and he brings an action against the Plymouth Journal . The defence is , that he was not the object , but that the paragraph was written by a Mr . Micklewood , a preacher of the Latter-day Saints , against a Mr . Burgess , another preacher of the same sect , to whom it was intended to do good in a spiritual sense . The jury acquitted the defendant , and the audience applauded ; the whole transaction from the penning of the libel to the defeat of justice being one of the most singular complications of absurdity on record .
Some Liberals iu France have been carrying on a kind of duel by libel , the libel being enforced apparently by its strict truth . Some of M . Thiers ' s political antagonists , seeking to annoy him , volunteered to circulate in the form of a card the following advertisement for a lady who appears to be related toM . . Thiers ,. and also to carry on an honest avocation : —
Madame L . Bitrivt , Sister of M . A . TIIIEttS , Ex-President of the Council of Ministers , # c , Sic ., } keeps an excellent table miridionale at 3 fr . a-head , wine included . Breakfast at all hours , at lfr , 25 c . 44 , lluo Basse-du-llempart , Paris . The retaliation was a counter « card : — Mdllc . , brevetSe de la police , et M . , liberated convict , the sister and . cousin-gcrmain of M . — , a thorough-bred Wontagnard , continue to carry on their business , Hue de la Lune . On va en ville . "
These attacks are very mean and paltry , but it is clear that their castigation is beyond the effective handling of the law . Yet society exercises no effective jurisdiction in the matter ; it shields offenders against decency and generosity so long [ as the offence is committed ia subserviency to party .
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August 14 , 1350 . Most Dear Friend , —We must busy ourselves for yet a couple of letters more with this subject of Religion ; although I fear that some , whose attention I am anxious to preserve , would rather pass to other portions of the social scheme . I would fain consult their wishes , so far as to postpone these two letters to a later point in the series ; but this subject of Religion will not be passed over ,
SOCIAL REFORM . EPISTOUE OBSCUROBTTM VIROBUM . No . III . —Religion : its Discords . To A A .
for many reasons . There is no part of political action in which we do not encounter the false influence of Religion as an obstruction to advancement ; and with almost equal correctness it may be said that there is no part of political or social activity in which we do not detect the want of a true religious influence as the motive to cooperate in advancement . The want of such an influence I
believe is one main reason why the motives to activity have degenerated to the single imperfect and falsely-working motive of self-interest . Amongst some of our " practical" philosophers the predominancy of that motive is boasted as a great sign of peculiar enlightenment in our day . Our devotion to it is punished by something not very different from what is commonly called "the judgment of God , " as most transgressions against the laws of God are punished .
In its nature , the obstructive influence of Religion consists chiefly of dogmatic assumptions , which resist intellectual activity in their own self-defence , and of the discords produced among several sections of the community by devotion to particular dogmas incompatible with each other . In labouring , therefore , to restore the true influence of Religion as an agent in our social and political advancement , we are first to consider the state of things which deprives it of its proper action ; we are first to consider why there is this dogma , why this discord .
I wish I could do so with the complete hope of not giving offence ; but for that I must trust in great part to the good faith of my reader . I am certain that offence is not to be avoided by evasion and indirectness of language . If the spirit of perfect sincerity is not trusted on one side , it cannot be expected on the other . A false religion cannot be a natural religion . I believe that all forms of faith whatsoever have had a common origin , and have in them a common
principle of truth . This is partly because "the laws of Nature , and of the Uod of Nature , " to adopt the title used by an eloquent clergyman of the Established Church , are patent to all the human children of God ; some interpretation of them , therefore , is most likely to be found in every effort at a religious scheme ; it so happens , also , because the power of truth is not altogether to be avoided by the rudest and most erring tribes . Falsehood is not in nature , but in what is put upon nature . Even ignorance does not produce falsehood until it attempts to put its own intelligent sensations into a
formula . Men in any state of cultivation are conscious of the operation of larger powers in the universe than those of which human perceptions can comprehend the scope or nature . Those laws , in which they can more or less distinctly trace the working of what is termed " cause and effect , " are called " natural laws "; p henomena not so clearly understood are referred to " supernatural laws j" and the ruder the nation , the more the idea of the " supernatural" prevails . A little further on in the progress of cultivation , metaphysical notions are added by the imaginative class of minds to the physical attributes of the lower deities . Partly because the original idea is vague , and is , therefore , best reflected by vague expression , these
metaphysical attributes are enunciated as a mystery . Once formed into a form of faith , they are sedulously secluded from scrutiny ; and any new state of cultivation must adopt that settled form oi faith . But the ministers of powers and mysteries , the priesthood , find advantage to themselves in their office ; they multiply dogmas to bring about their own ends .
Thus the mere physical agencies of nature were aeified by the Greeks ; then , having been erected into supernatural individuals , they were clothed in mystery , and presumed to require divers observances ; and then again they were asserted to require certain things convement or agreeable to the priests . In Rome , under the Heathen faith formed b y the mixture of the Greek with the gloomy superstition of the Aborigines , the Chiefs took part in the religious authority , and as Priests used their influence
in augmentation of their political power . The still earlier Egyptians , less artistic , more scientifically disposed , and much more mystical , generalized the facts which they discerned in nature , and presumed for them an universal extension . Thus the existence of the two sexes suggested the presumption that the whole secret of the creation lay in the male and female principles combined ; and to eke out that doctrine a multitude of other
presumptions were devised , and made to fit with evident facts ; the planets , the seasons were employed to illustrate the doctrine . The mythology of the Greeks survives only in poetry , the religion of the Egyptians has been unburied from the pyramids . Now each of those , and of many others that have expired , was the established religion of its country and day—deemed false in other countries , found to be false in later times . Every " Religion , " of every country and time has been similarly pronounced false . Are we
to presume that we have reached the perfect end of human perceptions ? It is true the faith prevalent in our day and country has in it the principle of a longer duration , in being blended with a more refined scheme of morals . Perhaps , indeed , it may be said to have , in what are to be considered its grand essentials , the elements of immortality . But in regard to many of its forms and dogmas , which numerous sects hold up as the essentials , the signs of decay are already observable , in the habitual departure from its doctrines and social deviations from its moral code .
Instead of totally differing as to its history from anterior faiths , that which is commonly received in our day and country bears a close resemblance to those others , in its origin among a rude people , the growth of dogmatic forms , the adoption of obsolete beliefs by the framers of later doctrines , and the multiplication of dogmas to subserve the corporate purposes of ecclesiastical bodies .
The formal part of the Christian religion , as it is most commonly set forth , presents a sort of supplement to the Jewish religion ; deriving its authority from that earlier faith , and incorporating many of its doctrines . We are , therefore , sent back to an examination of the Jewish religion . I will avoid entering into many of the refined and abstruse speculations concerning the authenticity of the historical records , taking them as they come to us . We first find the Jews a barbarous nation , with
certain traditions and written records ; the records seem to embody traditions much older than themselves , written long after they purport to be . Like all rude people , the Jews supposed the existence of a God who was an individual , in the human sense of that word ; he was male , human in form , and subject to many human passions ; he was local , and distinct from the gods of other tribes , though he boasted his superiority over those of any other nation , as an Englishman is superior to a Frenchman . Some of the Jews were captive in Egypt ; of so little importance as to escape notice records But tnem
in . Egyptian . one or , me utionnell of the brickmakers of that day , was bred in the Egyptian church , —so says the history accounted authentic . He had learned—or at least some Jew had learned—in the Egyptian church the mystical generalization of the sexual principles ; and he introduced much of the Egyptian mystery with the name by the Jews held most sacred—a name derived from the Egyptians , in whose tongue it
signified the united principle of creation ; but the Jew did not introduce the explanation of the mystery , only the mystery as such . He had to coerce bis countrymen to do many things repugnant to their stubbornness or indolence , and he employed his divine superior as an authority to frighten them into obedience . This authority he used to compel the making of the ark , their stubborn-
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Atro . 17 , 1850 . ] ® & * & *»***? 493
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FLAX versus cotton . At the late meeting of the British Association , a paper was read by Mr . G . B . Porter , " On the Cotton Manufactures of Great Britain , " in which , after adverting to our dependence upon the United States for the raw material , and the evils arising therefrom , he strongly recommended the use of flax as a substitute for cotton . Could
this be done on an extensive scale , it would furnish employment for a large number of hands in the rural districts , as there are few articles of home produce which require so much labour to render them fit for the market . It would also be an immense advantage to the manufacturers of this country if they could obtain a cheap substitute for cotton in seasons when a short supply from America causes it to advance in price nearly 100 per cent ., as it has lately done .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 17, 1850, page 493, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1850/page/13/
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