to the improvidence of mankind. I pay several pounds a-year to the church, which I feel to be a payment to their ignorance and wickedness. And I pay forty pounds a-year in direct assessments to the state, thirty-five of which I consider a payment to the joint improvidence, ignorance, wickedness, and imbecility or tameness of my fellow-countrymen, in addition to all that I pay in the shape of indirect taxation. An average of five pounds ayear from every housekeeper is an ample revenue for the management and strength of any nation, and in this country would make a revenue of about twenty-five millions a-year. Now, I pay above forty in assessed taxes-twenty to the poor, above five to the church, about ten in city and parochial assessments, ten in a bread tax to the aristocracy or landholders, besides the incalculable ramification of indirect taxation; being about the half of total expenditure for the necessaries of life. I find, and I know that the majority of my neighbours find, the greatest difficulty in meeting this enormous taxation. I grant that England has more liberty now than it ever had before, or than any other country has ever had since the actions of mankind have been recorded; but, as a set-off, never before was any people so taxed: no people ever paid so proportionately high for liberty. It is sweet, but it is as dear as the brilliant diamond. Expensive as is our liberty, I still say, in comparison, ENGLAND BEFORE THE WORLD. The enormity of the bread tax in this country has never, to my knowledge, been placed in its strongest light; any other tax is trivial compared with it. The church may swallow its twenty millions: the poor, which are a disgrace to human sagacity in its legislative power, may swallow, as they do, in forced and voluntary payments, another twenty millions-the interest of the debt may take its thirty millions, and the expenses of government its twenty millions; but this tax, wherewith to pension the aristocratic landholders of the country, doubles the interest of the debt, and exceeds the other three great items of taxation, for church, state, and poor, united. We have a churched poor, and its, consequent, a very poor or very bad church and state: an aristocracy that forms the legislature, pensions itself, and taxes the nation at its discretion. Independently of what the aristocracy takes in filling, at discretion, all the valuable offices of church and state, of army and navy, it takes a pension of sixty millions a-year in the shape of a bread tax upon the industry of the people.

The tax upon bread in this country is precisely the difference between the price of wheat in our exclusive market, and the price at which it could be brought into that market from other countries.

We have certain laws, called Corn Laws, which have either totally prohibited the importation of foreign corn, or have put such a tax on its importation as to be equal to prohibition.

If we take the low average of twenty shillings a quarter, as the difference between the price of wheat at home, under the Corn Laws, and what it would be if there were no such laws, and allow the consumption to be sixty millions of quarters annually, we find a tax on bread or flour to the extent of sixty millions of pounds.

These Corn Laws are called a protection to the agriculturist; but they are no such thing; they are a general evil to him, the tenant, and a protection to nothing, but the enormous rent-roll of the landlords, which is but another name for a pension arising from the taxes of the country.

Why should the land fetch a higher rent in England than on the continent of Europe or in America? No reason can be shown why it should: like every thing else, it should be left to find its level. The difference to the country between a landlord's having one thousand and a hundred thousand a-year is a difference only in amount of evil, if the ninety-nine thousand be made up of taxation.

But the tax on bread and flour, by which the aristocracy pensions itself, under the name of Corn Laws, is not in itself the only evil. If it were removed, rents would fall to the amount at which the agriculturist could produce wheat as low in price as his neighbours on the continent of Europe or America, and take his advantage in his own market, by his contiguity and less expense of carriage. And if the land, under such circumstances, would furnish no rent at all, there is no reason why it should in the shape of a forced tax. A mere landholder or owner is neither of use nor ornament to the state; while the artisan or man who holds the plough is both useful and ornamental. And another great principle puts itself forward for consideration here that though the land has been parcelled and monopolized by conquest, it is still the people's farm; and its advantages will ever remain a people's right, when they can be conquered back again. It is a part of their life, and should be held only in administration of the best means for general subsistence.

A free trade in corn in this country with other countries would open the way to general free trade all over the earth. And the reason why the partial freedom of trade has failed, if it has failed, in this country is, that it was shackled by its main link-the source of subsistence to the manufacturer, who can produce in quantity so much beyond the home consumption, and who wants cheap bread in return for his cheap produce.

We want in this country the abolition of great masses of our laws. We have too many laws by a thousand-fold. Indeed, the time appears to have arrived, when the Gordian knot of the laws of this country can only be cut and not unravelled-when the Augean stable of British law and legislation wants a Hercules to turn a stream into it, to wash away the whole accumulation of

filth. A new code of all that is necessary is wanted to supersede this old code of all that is mischievous. There should not exist any law in relation to currency, except as to forgery or base coining; no law in relation to trade, to exports or imports; no custom-house, no excise laws; no laws about religion. Life, liberty, and property, are the only things which require legislative protection; and let a necessary revenue be raised in the least expensive and least injurious mode that can be devised. An absolute monarchy, that would produce such a change as this proposed, would be preferable to any form of government that would keep up existing abuses, under the pretence of constitution or antiquity.

RICHARD CARLILE.

LETTERS FROM FRANCES WRIGHT.

New York, 16th Oct. 1829.

TO RICHARD CARLILE,-I have received with sincere pleasure your communication. It comes from an honest and a fearless man: a character precious in proportion to its rarity. With, or soon after, this letter you should receive the remaining file, in continuation of the present volume of the "Free Enquirer," which closes this week. We are about to issue a stereotype edition of the past volume, of which we shall forward a copy to you, and one to Robert Taylor, when complete; which in all likelihood, will not be for a year, as our present intention is to issue it, for the convenience of our new subscribers, weekly, with the numbers of the coming year, or second volume. Great things are in preparation here. We have succeeded in starting the public mind in the great northern cities, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, on a plan of national education, equal, protective, and republican. This is the point of union, and has been already made the turning point of the elections in Philadelphia. If the public mind advance in the ratio it is now advancing, a few years will effect a moral revolution in the country. I leave this in a few days for the south: my immediate object is to remove my colored people from Nashoba to Hayti; but I shall make the journey (I take the western route through the states to New Orleans) conducive to other objects. You can learn nothing respecting the state of things here from the public prints: they dare not speak, being dependent on the professional classes. The editors too, in general, are the most corrupt class in society: many exceptions to this, and such are secretly friendly, but fear loss of patronage until the moment when it shall be safe to take sides. The world now is divided into two classes-those who wish the good of mankind at large, and those who only wish their own. The distinctions of country,

and indeed all other distinctions, are merging into this one broad moral division.

We peruse THE LION with much interest. What may be its circulation? I mean how many do you judge may read it? I write in haste, amid all the engagements preceding departure. Health and success to all honest labourers in the great human vineyard.

FRANCES WRIGHT.

New York, 16th Oct. 1829.

ROBERT TAYLOR,-I tender you my warm acknowledgments for the beautiful copy of your valuable DIEGESIS, which is about to serve as the text-book for a converted Christian minister who labors in the same path you have struck out in London. From great pressure of my engagements at the present time, I have as yet but an imperfect acquaintance with your work, looking to improve it further during the journey and voyage which will occupy me during the approaching winter. Abner Kneeland (the venerable apostle spoken of above), better versed in church learning than perhaps any man in this country, says, he gleans from the DIEGESIS more new and unanswerable matter on the subject it embraces, than from any work he has ever opened.

We send you the "Free Enquirer," in continuation. Our second volume commences next week; when we also commence a stereotype edition of the first volume, which has completely run out when completed, we shall forward you a copy of the

same.

Wishing you a long life of usefulness, I am, dear Sir,
Your friend in a common cause,
FRANCES WRIGHT.

AN ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, BY THE REV. ABNER KNEELAND, AFTER READING "THE DIEGESIS" OF THE REV. ROBERT TAYLOR

(From ne New York Free Enquirer.)

THE CHRISTIAN STORY.

Ye Bishops and Clergy, Ministers and Laity, Priests and People, of every sect and denomination of professed and professing Christians, it is time for you to lay aside all your bickerings and strife among yourselves, and unite in defending the groundwork on which the whole citadel of your profession rests. It is of no moment whether you are Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians, or Universalists, so long as each and all of you are charged, and charged without defence, as resting on a foundation as false as it is foolish-as fictitious as it is pernicious. No longer contend that

"the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin," to those who can be credulous enough to believe it, and thereby give encourage ment to the greatest of sinners, until you can prove the reality of the blood of Christ. Know, then, that the real existence of Jesus Christ, the reality of his crucifixion, and of course the reality of his resurrection, are all called in question; and until you establish these facts beyond all possible dispute, or reasonable doubt, it is in yain to contend for any thing in relation to the Christian story as Christian: for all that is true in Christianity, aside from these facts, and what grows out of them, is just as true without them as with them, does not depend at all upon them, and has been known in the world from the remotest antiquity.

The Rev. Robert Taylor, in his "DIEGESIS," written in the prison at Oakham, and recently published in England, has denied the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, or that such a person was crucified under the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate. He contends that the whole gospel-story is fictitious; that it did not originate in Judea at all; but was transplanted thither by some of the early partisans of the Egyptian monks, (who finally assumed the name of Christians, or else it might have been at first charged upon them in derision,) who broke off from the parent stock, similarly as the Protestants broke off from the Catholics, and set up for themselves. And in that notorious age of fraud and forging, a great variety of gospels were written to suit their own purposes, clothing an old story with new names, both of persons and places; and among the many gospels then written, four were finally selected, by whom it is not known, and without any reasons being given why these were preferred to others. He admits, however, the existence of Paul and the authenticity of his epistles, and the historical part of the Acts of the Apostles, making all due allowance for interpolations commencing in Acts at the commencement of the 13th chapter, and leaving out all that is miraculous.

"To the question, then," says Mr. Taylor, "on what ground do you deny that such a person as Jesus Christ existed as a man?" The proper answer is,

"Because his existence as a man has, from the earliest day on which it can be shown to have been asserted, been as earnestly and strenuously denied ; and that, not by enemies of the Christian name, or unbelievers of the Christian faith, but by the most intelligent, most learned, most sincere of the Christian name, who ever left the world proofs of their intelligence and learning in their writings, and of their sincerity in their sufferings; and because the existence of no individual of the human race, that was real and positive, was ever, by a like conflict of jarring evidence, rendered equivocal and uncertain."

As proof that Christianity did not originate in Judea, among