ble recalcitrative energy, that tends to throw the mind up again from its degradation, and pump it into a necessity of being reasonable. The Methodists have invented a technical phrase for this, 'tis "wrestling with God," an admission (if the idiots dared to trust themselves with the consciousness of a meaning to their own words), that their God is but an unreasonable sort of a being, and that we should all be the gainers if he could but once be fairly floored. With this view, and in this sentiment, I purposely gave my humble petition to the Right Hon. Robert Peel, the tone that became a petitioner upon my argument, the wrestling character: as hoping this God on earth, might not persist in his inexorability against the force of a struggle, in which the other fellow would be conquered.

I had indeed well perpended the manner of application as well as the matter; the way of doing, as well as the propriety of its being done; I took the exact dimensions of all the difference that could possibly result between any one style and any other, that is, between the most humble and conciliatory, and the most firm and dignified; I have paid Mr. Peel a greater compliment, (though I owe him none), than calculating on him as likely to surrender to the meanness of cringing sycophaney, what he would withhold from right, or what he would be justified in withholding: because that right had not been begged as a favour. In truth, it is not a favour that I seek from Mr. Peel, but it is a right. In granting it, he will but act as a wise and good man ought to act; in withholding it, he is neither wise nor good; and while I sincerely believe and anticipate that he will withhold it, and have far more reason to think and fear that he will, than hope or prospect of his relenting; but I have as little. appetite for piping low and humble to his godhead, as for biting the walls which surround me: every brick and stone of which doth say to me Such, such, even such, are Christians." And would upbraid my folly if I expected more yielding from them, than these. Besides, I had previously analyzed the moral compages of Peel, and found him flint to the inmost core. I had been guilty of two previous humble applications from this house of bondage, that wanted no grace that modest meekness and humility could give them, and I have found it much easier to forgive Mr. Peel for his cruelty in treating them with sovereign contempt, than to forgive myself for having put it into his power to treat me so, which I will never do again.

The proud man's contumely,

The insolence of office, and the spurns,

That patient merit from the unworthy takes,

would never acquire that heart-breaking, and spirit-dejecting power which drives so many to the soliloquy of "To be, or not to be," had they not by the vice and habit of an enervating and priest-directed education, been led to the mistake of supposing

that humility was a virtue ; that is, that the properties of a snail or of a cur, became a man. An ungentle, or a boisterous carriage indeed, or any mode of conduct that trespassed on the dignity of others, or that withheld from others the deference that we should feel ourselves entitled to, if we stood in their places, would itself be tyrannous, and betray that very disposition in the slave who so conducted himself, which all brave and good men despise and resist in the tyrant.

But never can there be fitness, or reason, in bowing and cringing to a mere barber's block with a wig on it, or for honouring a mere Robert Peel, for filling an office, when we find him, filling it only in such a way, as that there shall not be a Jack in the kingdom, but who would fill it as well as he?

It is this sycophancy that defeats the power of praise, and ultimately defeats itself and its own ends; when the vote of thanks becomes a mere matter of form, and he who holds an office, knows before hand, that he cannot hold it so vilely, nor misuse it so abominably, but that he shall be sure of all the eulogies, compliments, thanks, and acknowledgements that are to come in of course, like derry down, at the end of a song; and that Nero shall be no less the Saviour of the people, than Antoninus. And what has a Secretary of State for the Home department, to do, merely as a Secretary of State, to ensure his invitations to Cityfeasts, to have his health proposed from the chair, to have his mudlin acknowledgements of the honour done him, cheered with three times three, and greasy place-hunters “mark him, and write his speeches in their books?"-what, but to be exceeding pompous, arrogant, and proud, to have his ears filled with the kind of stuff that lord and lady wit can pour into them, but deaf to poor men's prayers; to be absorbed in engagements of Heliogabalus's feasts, to keep the chronology of routs, balls, and concerts; but to be inexorably inaccessible, dumb and dead to all remonstrances of persecuted virtue, to all complaints of suffering innocence, to all that the intention of his office was to oblige him to do, but, pocketing the profits of it.

Should it come to pass, that a succession of applications to Parliament in my behalf, should become troublesome to him, that the public notoriety of my wrongs should be too prominent to be set aside by neglect, or to be answered by repetitions of his already avowed contempt; or should I happily succeed in engaging the advocacy of some, whom he may not find it politic to treat with neglect, or to answer with contempt: then, will this little man in the great office, endeavour at my expence, to invest himself with the credit of liberality, and grant what he can no longer withhold, laying all the blame on me, as not having applied in the proper way, that it had not been granted before.

Under these views, and prognostications, my purpose was so to address the man from whom I expected so little favour, as to

provide for the solace of my own feelings, in the anticipated issue of his treating that appeal as he has others. If I had had better hope, I should have used an humbler tone. But, in my heart I don't like the man. I have a very ugly opinion of him, and I'd rather live on short commons all my days, than chew so much wormwood, and swallow down the spittle, as I must, e'en to choaking, to have been more than civil to him. A fellow-I say not who he was, spoke of me as an object of contempt"turn thy complexion that way," and I think that my letter to the Right Hon. Robert Peel, who knows the thief that so spoke of me, was miraculously civil: and if it wasn't, I dont care, for I am sure it was, as civil as possible.

Severe experience has enforced on me the moral lesson, that in any case of adversity or wrong whatever, a man should never let his sufferings betray him into meanness, nor sink into such an attitude of supplication, as he cannot rise from again with dig nity. The well-standing in our own esteem, is (I am sure, for I have felt it,) to be provided for before all considerations-to be ensured at all hazards-to be held through all sacrifices.

Without this jewel, fortune! we are poor,

And with it rich take what thou wilt away.

I never knew, nor heard of any man whom it was in the power of fate or fortune to drive on desperate counsels, who had not first parted with that "immediate jewel of his soul;" and better it is, I am sure, a thousand times, that a good man should make up his mind to suffer the worst that can befal him, with silent dignity, than that he should aggravate misfortune, by meanness, or run the hazard of accumulating contempt upon calamity.

Our great and glorious cause itself, to which I cheerfully surrender my life, (and I mean the surrender, when I pledge it.) never yet gained an inch by any sort of compromising, concilia ting, or truckling measures. Our enemies are not to be cajoled, outwitted, or manoeuvred into defeat. This, Robert Owen, and his sticklers have found; this, the Universalists, Bible Christians, and Demi-semi-anything-arians of all sorts have proved; this, the God-and-mammon-London-University will find; and the fruitless issues of all the go-between works that have characterized and disgraced our periodical literature, have demonstrated. All these juggling and managing men, that are for doing things so very judiciously, and for mixing the spirit of priestcraft, with the advocacy of truth and reason, in reality do more harm than good; and, by their example and conduct, serve to keep greater knaves than themselves (if there be any) in countenance; inducing, in any converts they may make, a diathesis and character of mind, not a whit better than the superstition from which they had been reclaimed.

Who, blind to thought's fatiguing ray,

As fortune gives example, choose their way;

Not virtue's foes-though they her path decline,

And not her friends-though with her friends they join.

Had I written the most humble and obsequious letter that the pen of man could compose, to Mr. Secretary Peel, it would have been attended with no better success, than the worst issue that could follow the free use of the style and cadence that becomes our cause. But I should have been in an infinitely worse plight as to my own feelings, in the painful smartings of having put it into his power to despise me, and having been refused, with the horrible addition, of having deserved to be refused.

I know that a friend of mine, with the best and kindest inténtions, but, sure, too hastily, intimated to Mr. Peel, that though I shall (should health permit) hold out against giving the required securities even to the completion of the sixth year of imprisonment; yet the securities would be forthcoming, and resorted to for my instant deliverance, in case of sickness. Ah! I would have that dear friend know and feel for me, that in my best pride of health and spirits, (and there breathes not upon earth a man at this moment in better health and spirits,) no prognostication of any sickness that could possibly befal me, would be so formidable to my apprehension, as that, that brought upon me a necessity of quitting my present situation otherwise than with honour. I have been unjustly a prisoner; and every day that I am continued such, is a continued crime. It is oppression, injustice, tyranny; and I will take care that it shall fasten the foul and damning blot of infamy upon the name of the villain, whoever he be, that hath the power to give me liberty, and gives it not. It is not his, but mine-my right, my sacred right: not that which I an to seek for like a beggar's alms, by currying favour, sneaking, cringing, and praying; but that which I demand and challenge as independently of grace or thanks to any man, as I lay this hand on this heart. But as for going sick and going dead, I assure you I never mean to give my voluntary consent to either; and I thank my stars that have given me a constitution that wears well enough, without any familiarity with that sort of meditations: but an' if (which God avert) if I shall be to be found one day with my face upwards, on what bed more gloriously, how with more honour, than here,-just here, the martyr of the best cause that ever was in the world-here sealing the sincerity of conviction with which I have opposed Christianity, the perfect hatred with which I have hated it, the mighty and unanswerable arguments with which I have justified that hatred. Could the

dream of ambition promise me a more glorious epitaph than the next edition of DIEGESIS, that should announce that its author died as he lived, holding honour dearer than life, and truth sweeter than liberty,

I own that glorious subject fires my breast,
And my soul's darling passion stands confess'd j

Beyond or Love's or Nature's sacred laws,

Beyond myself, I prize OUR GLORIOUS CAUSE.

In a word, it cannot be ill with me, while it is well with that and I shall think no length of imprisonment wearisome, and nothing that can happen to me evil, so long as I shall be master of the convictions of both friends and enemies, that the cause, in my hands, never moulted a feather.

In staying here, (as I now entirely calculate that I shall do,) after. February the sixth, I shall, from that time, bring into action what further means of being troublesome to the saints my then situation and circumstances shall give me. Should I then, or at any time after then, obtain my liberty, as far as I can calculate from present views and intentions, my very first steps should be, to wait on the Lord Mayor, on Mr. Peel, the Common Council, &c. Aldermen Brown and Atkins, the City Solicitor, &c. to invite the honour of their attendance at the NINETY-FOURTH dicussion of the Christian Evidence Society-on which occasion, the Rev. Orator should deliver again that very oration, for the delivery of which he hath been so unjustly persecuted, in challenge of all the talent, learning, and ability, lay or clerical, that should be present to answer and refute the arguments it contained. Further measures would be determined by further councils. But certainly, -never, never will I cease to be the enemy of Christianity a tout outrance,-never will I fail to do less than the worst I can against it, nor will I cease to be the assailant, the offending, the invading, the aggressing party. Never shall there be the Christian missionary on earth, who shall be able to show that his zeal and labour to plant Christianity, have o'ermeasured mine to eradicate it, to set all hearts against it, to warn all creatures from it, and to hold it up in its true colours, as what it is indeed,the disgrace of human reason, the bane of human happiness, and the GREATEST CURSE THAT EVER BEFEL THE HUMAN RACE.

Oakham, Dec. 27, 1828.

Your's truly,

ROBERT TAYLOR.

TO THE REVEREND JOSEPH GILBERT.

REV. SIR, I have taken the liberty (and I hope a pardonable one) of sending you a few observations upon the subjects of your three first lectures on "Modern Infidelity.' I write merely to show you in what I think yon have been mistaken, so that you may correct either me or yourself, in your subsequent observations, should you think it necessary. In your first lecture, I lament to say, that you displayed, to my mind, more cunning than ability; or rather, perhaps, more ingenuity than truth." You seemed as if you was aware of the formidableness of your opponents, and of the desperate chance of victory, and like a general that has been beaten from the field, and taken refuge in his fortress, you