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PRIESTS . Birmingham , June 18 , 1851 . Sir .- —I was much pleased with a clever paper on the Philosophy of Christianity , which appeared in the Leader of last Saturday , but I should like to know where it finds its authority | for an exclusive PJJesthood under the Christian dispensation . The office of a priest is required only where a sacrifice has to be made . When Jesus Christ died , the last sacrifice was offered , and the great atonement made ; # ien was the ¦ veil of the temple rent in twain , and the holy of holies was revealed , not to aprivileged body of priests , but to the people , who were at liberty to interpret for themselves the mysteries of God . Jesus Christ was our great High Priest , in whom were centred all sacrifices , mysteries , and power , and he committed hi * charge to all who might believe in him . Christ was in every sense an heterodox priest . Baptized by a layman in water , over which no official claiming supernatural power had muttered ; anointed , not with oil from the hand of an orthodox-constituted priest , but with ointment lovingly poured on his holy head by a woman , and she a Magdalen ; preaching on the mountain ' s s ^ de , und * r the blue heavens , to wondering thousands , he delivered those doctrines which from their democratic nature are opposed to every
assumption of spiritual power by any body of men . Under Christianity there is no such thing as " a holy order set apart and endowed with mysterious power . ' All those who do the will of God , are the priests of God , a contrite heart being the only sacrifice . In the future I see a grand Christian commonwealth , with Jesus Christ at its head , and here all are kings , priests , and prophets to the Most High . There is no church , tor every house is a tabernacle of righteousness . F . is angry with Luther for overturning the pld order of things : well , he did much , but he did not dp enough ; he was but a particle of that stone which is to shatter the feet of Nebuchadnezzar ' s image . Wait till the stone has become a mountain . ' S . H 11 . 1 ..
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PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE . June 24 , 1851 . Sir , —Perhaps never were words more perverted or more incon > istency and dishonesty advocated than under the terms , " Protection , " and «• Free Trade . " TheProtectionists , on the one hand , selfishly aiming at conserving abuses and wrong , and claiming protection for wrong-doing . "Whilst , on the other hand , the Free-Traders , as they are called are endeavouring to maintain their profits in human labour , trafficing in the blood and bones and sinews of men , women , and children ; thereby reducing the industrious and most useful portion of our population to the lowest state of misery , ignorance , vice , and degradation . And for what ? That those capitalists and profitmongers , already too rich , may more and more enrich themselves—whose " gold is their living God , and rules in scorn all other things but virtue . " Such , Sir , are the unholy aspirings of each faction who are now impeding the onward progress to that Btate of virtue and happiness designed by our Creator for the whole human race , and which would easily be attainable but for the ever-artful and cunning machinations of these proud , merciless , and selfish profit and money-seeking factions . Protection and Free Trade are both good in their proper sense and just application , but as made use of by these contending
parties they are mere clap-trap terms to deceive and mislead—the Scylla and Charybdis of the present politics of the United Kingdom . To avoid the sinuosities and crooked policy of each , and to keep clear of both , the working-classes must steer a straightforward and persevering course of honesty , consistency , and truth , neither swerving to the right nor the left . " Fierce to the right tremendous Scylla roars , Charybdis , on the left , the flood devours . "
That some of the working-classes understand this course was exemplified on Wednesday , the 18 th inst .. at a public meeting , convened by the " London Trades Association / ' and held at St . Leonard's-hall , Shoreditch ; where and when Bronterre O'Brien opened the proceedings with a very luminous address , concluding with proposing the following resolution : — " That , while we admit that nations , like individuals , have an undoubted right to interchange their respective surplus free from fiscal or other restrictions ; and while , consequently , we fully admit the principle of free trade as that which should govern international exchanges between peoples possessing freedom , and being proprietors of their own products , this meeting must , at the same
time , protest against the present policy , falsely called free trade , as being unjust in principle , and destructive in practice of the rights and interests of the productive and debtor classes , including all tax-payers , in an much as it is not accompanied with reciprocity , nor with any adjustment of public or private burdens ; and also , while we are compelled to pay taxes oa those articles of foreign growth and production , which it is our interettt to import duly free ( such us tea , cotfee , sugar , from our own colonies ; timber , wines , IruiUt , spikes , drugs , furs , hides , wool , and raw materials generally ) , our ports are most unwiriely uml unjustly thrown open to » uch foreign ma . iiufa « : tuied and ugriculturul produce as our own tenitories can supply in *> uper « buiidMDce , by the employment of our own people , mud upon the production <» f which the « ub » i » t * uM ui Miiiivu * vV out own population dw + ads .
«« Thi « meeting , therefore , protests against such a system , as being neither free trade , nor fair trade ; but a trick cunningly devised to cheapen home labour , in order to enrich the raonied portion of society at the expense of the slavery , pauperism , and ruin of the produotive classes of this country . " This resolution was seconded , in an argumentative speech , by Mr . A . Campbell , and ably and even eloquently spoken to and supported by several working men , and , being unanimouxly carried , vras followed by a vote of thanks to Mr . O'Brien for his able exposition and powerful advocacy of the People ' s cause , in the presence of -A- Looxek- on .
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MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER . Leeds , June 17 , 1 R 51 . Sir , —Mr . Friend asks some one of your readers to solve him a difficulty arising from his interpretation of Scripture : if my understanding of the matter will help hi « n t a solution , he is welcome to it . Levtt . xviii . 6 , regards kim-hip or consanguinity , not affinity , and has , therefore , no direct relation to the prop > sed marriage law ; a wife ' s relatives are not equivalent to one ' s own kin ; hence a natural objection to mairiage with a woman " near of kin" is none whatever to one merely " allied . "
It is to no purpose to quote " They twain shall he one flesh" against the clear fact . The fact must interpret the possible sense of the speech—the speech cannot alter the fact . The phrase is timply a common Orientalism , signifyii g , " They two shall be treated as if they were one person , " just as with the commandment , Love your neighbour as if he were yourself , " i . e ., with equality . It is certain that a man cannot be his neighbour ; and it is equally certain that marriage does not literally make man and wife one flesh . There is and can be no interfusion of nature—no consanguinity .
A passage following the text makes it plain that no consanguinity was intended to be expressed ; for Christ teaches that , for one cause at least , a man might put away his wife ( he cannot put away himself—a real ' oneness" ) , and marry again without committing adultery . A tie , therefore , thus dissolvable during the life of the contracting parties , was not a tie of blood or nature ; and if not so withthe wife , much less with her sister . But "Might it not be inferred from Levit . xx . 21 , that it is equally unclean to take a wife ' s sister as a brother ' s wife ? " No ! I know that Bishop Jewel ' s authority is against my denial , but his reason —( ' * it follows directly by the same" ) —is neither precious nor brilliant . The analogy of the sexes is not , cannot be . and never was , established . As a personal sin , indeed , adultery is the same both in men and women ; but it is not the same in its relations and consequences to the family . All nations make a distinction here . Read Levit . xx . 10 , and then ask if it ever was inferred by the Jews from this parallel text , that " the woman that committeth adultery with another woman ' s husband , they shall surely be put to death" ? Did the Jews put prostitutes to death ? If not , why not ? The fact is , that no more remarkable distinction is observed in all the Mosaic laws than this very difference of relationship between the sexeB . The Bible , therefore , doeB not oppose the proposed law . —Yours very truly , F . R . Lees .
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MALTHUS AGAIN ! Urussels , June 9 , 1851 . Sir , —Allow me to thank you for the insertion of my letter , and also for your comments upon it ; and although I am prepared to join issue with you on the charge that my " assumptions are too wide , " 1 shall postpone their defencq ; because I am still of opinion that we were mixing together two questions essentially distinct , and therefore that it will be better to discuss them separately . In my last letter I tried to show that the population theory' would not he affected by the nationalization of the land . I shall now state us clearly and as briefly as I can wlmt that theory is . Malthus ' s theory was as follows : —Nature has endowed every description of organized existence with unlimited poueis of increase ; unlimited , that ia , except in ono respect—the difficulty of procuring food . That there is ^ no npecie . s of animal or plant which , if supplied with the requisite quulity of food , would not cover the whole earth in the course of a tew thousand years ; and , consequently , that it is through the operation of this cause alone , viz ., the difficulty of obtaining subsistence ; that the various epecies of plants and unimulu ure kept within their present limits ; that mun Jorins no exception to this rule ; he , too , is < ndow * d with unlimited powers of increase , and these powers are kept in check by the same force which restrains all other animals ; lii * numbers , like their * , ore kept down by ineuna of food .
We Bee , then , on the one hand , an unlimited power of increase ; nnd on the other , u limited supply of loud —population tending to advance in a geometrical ruiio , white the meant * oj uub » iuten < a could not be made to advance in more Uiun an uiithmetiuuji j- * Uo-7 So at }«»« t naUl MalUius . Population if unotookrt , -wvuki MhMi 09 M i 2 , 4 . 0 , wlul * fo » d
would only advance as 1 , 2 . 3 , 4 . But populart ^ whatever its tendency mi < tht be , could nevtr actu 11 advance beyond the mi ans of subsistence ; it ,. \ l only press , with a continually increasing force asai * the barriers which stayed its progiess . This it d d Every in -Tease in population was attended by an i creased difficulty in obtaining food—with an incre of toil , or an increase of want . - e To this doctrine of Malthus it was objected , th t there is no such relation between the different rat of increase of population and food , as that etated Granting that population would increase in a geo ! metrical ratio , why should food increase in only an arithmetical one ? Why should it increase at all >
Is it not evident that its rate of increase depends upon a multitude of causes altogether independent of the rate at which population is advancing ; such as the knowledge , skill , industry , and habits generally of the community ? It depends upon these , wluther the production of foo i can be increased at all ; and if these are favourable , why should not their increase be in a geometrical ratio , as well as in aiiv other ?—at any rate , the relative advances in the geometrical and arithmetical ratios , on which you lay such stress , fails you —there is no such relation . And so objectors , having ascertained that the difference in the rates of inciease is not exactly in the ratio stated , conclude , much to their own satisfaction , that there
is no difference at all . Still there remained the old facts—an unlimited power of inert ase , and a limited quantity of laud on which to increase . But to th »* e who urged these it was rep . ied , as you , sir , replied , that till the earth is fully peopled , and is made to yield all it is capable of yielding , those facts may be salely unheeded . When that day arrives , let the people of that day see to it . In order to judge of the correctness of this reply , it will be necessary to state the law of return to labour bestowed upon land .
The law of return to capital and labour employed upon land is , that in any given state of agricultural knowledge and tkill , an increase in the capital and labour employed is not attended with a proportionate increase in the produce ; by doubling the labour you do n «» t double the produce ; or , if you double ihe produce , you must do more than double the labour . The truth of this law is proved by the fact that inferior land is cultivated ; for if , by increasing indefinitely the labour upon the best land , the produce could be increased in proportion , why should any other ever be brought into cultivation at all ? Inferior land means that which , with a given amount of labour
bestowed upon it , yields a less return . Why should this less return be submitted to , if , by employing this extra labour on the land already in cultivation , a better return could be got ? That it is- so employed is a proof that it is at least as profitable to have recourse to a worse soil as to expend the additional labour upon a better ; that the limit at which a proportionate return can be obtained for additional labour has been reached ; and , consequently , that every increase in the amount of food , which an increasing population needs , must be obtained at a continually increasing cost ; either the people generally must work more , or they must eat less .
From this law we learn the answer to the common objection against the population theory — the objection , namely , that till the earth is fully peopled this theory is chimerical . The answer is , that the objection would be valid if all land were of equal fertility ; but all land is not of equal fertility , and where any portion of it . except the most fertile , i 8 obliged to be brought into cultivution , the limit is reached , other things remaining the same , at which population can advance , without deteriorating the condition of the people . '
. . It is evident that , if the operation of this law of a continually decreasing return to labour bestowed upon the land , were not modified bv some other law , the people of every thickly inhabited country would long since have been reduced the utmost miaery . This modifying law is the law of progress in agricultural knowledge , whoso constant tendency is to throw the worse km of land out of cultivation , by enabling the belter one * to produce nil the food requited , and , consequently ,
t < i relieve the pressure of un increasing population-So now we have , instead of a geometric < 1 ratio « population , and an arithmetical ratio lor ngriciimif produce , population udvuncing in a geometrical n * and agricultural produce in un uncertain o " ' J u " the advocates of the population th ' ory are W ' ^ hince , the advance in the quantity of food cun » o adjusted to the increase ot |> opulution , to n '' J ij ' ui increase of population to that of food—a not tinned ) tu .-k if Mr . Mill , is right , as I most firmly belu-ve ^ is , in suying that the condition of the gr (' " . "Vj the people , ut any given time , depends upon . . ,, l population is advancing more rapidly i ban agric » . knowledge , or agricultural ki owled ^ . moie ri |» ' J than po , ululion . And this udjus ment they "" P , l 0 muke by inculcating upon all the t-acredn » ' > l ^ j < luiy tvery man owes to »< cieiy , to his child ''"» ^ to hiniKelt , not to bring I . ting- into ihe wO 1 jSj U . © ha » u ruiionul prospect of providing for them , ia the hwrd-Jwurtetlneaa Oi preaching such • Jy ,, Mi 00 a ? Xiaiaj > ia , ftr , * o ., *•*•
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Leader (1850-1860), June 28, 1851, page 616, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1889/page/20/
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