The Lion.

No. 7. VOL. 3.] LONDON, Friday, February 13, 1829. [PRICE 6d.

LETTER AND LESSON THE SECOND.

SIR-I begin with compliment and end with criticism. I congratulate you on the best act of your life, in relation to your kingly authority over Great Britain and Ireland. It is found in your expressed wish to the Parliament, that there shall be civil equality among your religiously sectarian subjects, on the condition, that the established church is not thereby injured. I compliment the disposition for civil equality; but criticise the condition on which it rests, as resulting from great hypocrisy, or great political ignorance. Your cession of civil equality will ensure you a peaceful and complimented reign for the remainder of your life; but the established church has long been decaying, was Dever well and rightly established, and must gradually decay to annihilation. Your future wisdom will be found, in not giving yourself any concern about it; but let it take its course, and stand upon such moral influence as it has in the country. If it have not this moral influence, it will not stand, and your royal power will be but mocked in the attempt to prop it. I will copy that part of your late speech by commission to Parliament, which really proves, that the morality of republicanism is subduing the immorality of monarchy, aristocracy, and established priesthood; and exhibits the best specimen of a king's speech that was ever made to subjects.

"My Lords and Gentlemen,

"The state of Ireland has been the object of his Majesty's con-tinued solicitude.

"His Majesty laments that in that part of the United Kingdom an Association should still exist, which is dangerous to the public peace, and inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution, which keeps alive discord and ill-will amongst his Majesty's subjects Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street.

No. 7.-Vol. 3.

and which must, if permitted to continue, effectually obstruct every effort permanently to improve the condition of Ireland.

"His Majesty confidently relies on the wisdom and on the support of his Parliament, and his Majesty feels assured that you will commit to him such powers as may enable his Majesty to maintain his just authority.

"His Majesty recommends, that when this essential object shall have been accomplished, you should take into your deliberate consideration the whole condition of Ireland; and that you should review the laws which impose civil disabilities on his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects.

"You will consider whether the removal of those disabilities can be effected consistently with the full and permanent security of our establishments in Church and State, with the maintenance of the reformed religion established by law, and of the rights and privileges of the bishops and of the clergy of this realm, and of the churches committed to their charge.

"These are institutions which must ever be held sacred in this Protestant kingdom, and which it is the duty and the determination of his Majesty to preserve inviolate.

"His Majesty most earnestly recommends to you to enter upon the consideration of a subject of such paramount importance, deeply interesting to the best feelings of his people, and involving the tranquillity and concord of the United Kingdom, with the temper and the moderation which will best ensure the successful issue of your deliberations."

My theory of republicanism has always admitted, that royalty or monarchy may exist in name, but be morally reduced to a republican character. I have not even a system of republicanism, further than I think representation by full, fair, and free election, the most dignified for all the purposes of legislation and administration of law, and the most likely to be perpetually incorrupt.

Pray, Sir, proceed to encourage a legislation for civil equality among the sects, and be assured by one who is not of any sect, but who is morally opposed to all, that the question of catholic emancipation, or of civil disabilities continued upon or removed from the Roman Catholics, has no future relation whatever to the question of the violability or inviolability of the protestant establishment. Unless the protestant legislature give unasked, the catholics will never gain in England or Ireland a tithe pig or potatoe, nor can they hope to gain such a return of old system. They will certainly seek to reduce the church as by law established, to an equality with their condition; but no catholic can now or hereafter be maniac enough to hope to change conditions with the present established church. The word is gone forth in this country, more powerful than the word of any god, LEVEL AND REDUCE YOUR SYSTEMS AS FAST AS YOU PLEASE, BUT YOU MUST NOT ELEVATE ANY FUTURE ONE ABOVE THE REST.

A few historical facts will show you the ridiculous character

of your professed determination to preserve inviolate the reformed religion established by law, and the rights and privileges of the bishops and clergy of this realm, and of the churches committed to their charge.

He

Henry the Eighth found dissentions of four hundred years standing on doctrinal points in the English part of the church of Rome. He determined that those dissensions should cease. wrote, disputed, burnt opponents, obtained from the Pope for his zeal, the title of defender of the (popish) faith, immediately destroyed the faith and lessened the pope's authority, and retained and has handed down to you most inviolately the contradictory title! He did every thing religiously, but that which he royally determined and pledged himself to do. Whatever he determined to do in promise, broke away under him, and his effected determination ended in doing something contrary to the promised determination. He promised to defend the uniformity of the faith of the Romish Church, which he irrecoverably drove from the country.

All his children were placed in similar dilemmas. The Stuarts, from the first to the last, played a similar game, with worse consequences to themselves. Your family of the Guelphs has been whirled about in a similar religious vortex, until you find all establishment, and even all sects breaking away from your grasp, and the man would be rash, that should attempt to predict what will be the last point of faith which your majesty shall defend. Faith is not a thing or principle to be established or defended. I hold by far the better and more dignified title, as the assailant of all and every faith. That title will stand by me, and such of my family as may like it, to the last of them: and the first English king that shall change his title of defender of the faith, to that of defender of the truth, as it shall be from time to time developed by free discussion, shall sit gloriously and peacefully on the English throne. Your priests cannot support you, nor you them. You are all a chaff before the breath of free discussion. Enveloped in the mantle of free discussion, I feel and exhibit more moral power, than the royally robed defender of faith can exhibit. I am the greater man.

I pray you, Sir, and your advisers, and all Protestants, to attend to that which is the only great point of this letter; that the question of Catholic Emancipation has no present or future relation to the condition of your law-established, or Protestant church. The decay of that church is to be brought about by higher than any sectarian means. But as sectarianism has oblained an ascendancy, I do not deny its auxiliary influence, in working the decay conjointly with infidelity, of the established church. I only urge that the decay will not be retarded by the retention of any kind of civil disabilities on those opposed to that church. RICHARD CARLILE.

SCHOOL OF FREE DISCUSSION, 62, FLEET STREET.

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WE are carrying two points at once in this school: first, the example, the right and the propriety to hold public meetings for free discussion, on all subjects, on a Sunday, as a purpose of meeting superior to praying, preaching, or psalm singing; and second, an exhibition of a style of discussion, in which we calmly and mildly follow up the treatise of Cicero, DE NATURA DEORUM, and put the very gods themselves on their defence, when any one can be found to defend them. On Sunday evening last, in the absence of every Christian opponent, save the mystic rational," who opposes and disturbs every company without improvement to self or others, and who, in the endeavour to raticionate superstition, by retaining all its names, and spiriting away their spiritual or literal meanings, excites more contempt than satisfaction among all parties; a sort of proclamation was made to all system-mongers present, to stand forth and submit their systems to the test of free discussion. We hope the day will soon arrive, when our churches shall be occupied for this purpose, and when an appointed officer, at every assembly, shall open proceedings by proclamation, and by way of parody we will suppose the following:

O YES! O YES! O YES! (a phrase very likely to have been handed down from the Bacchanalian or other ceremonies, as a call upon the deity, YES being an etymon both of Bacchus and Jesus.) OUR SOVEREIGN LORD THE KING, (or the sovereign people, or sovereign truth, or sovereign knowledge) RECOMMENDETH, THAT ALL PERSONS WHO ARE SUPERSTITIOUS OR IMAGINATIVE, AND WHO HAVE UNKNOWN OR UNINTELLIGIBLE SYSTEMS TO MAINTAIN AND DEFEND, WILL STAND FORTH AND SUBMIT THEM TO THE TEST OF FREE DISCUSSION.

Whoever lives to see this, will live in the age of wisdom, such as Mr. Cobbett's ancestors never dreamt of.

One gentleman stood forth and advanced a system of materialism upon an atomic principle, which by its varied action of affinity, union, congregation, repulsion and dispersion, round and round, was the cause of all identity and precedent to or productive of intelligence in animal organization, and not consequent to an intelligence without an organization. It was explained, that the atomic principle was not that of Lucretius; but of modern chemistry, resting its first principles on atoms of gas.

Sir Richard Phillips, has an atomic theory of gaseous action; but the doctrine of affinities, repulsions, &c. is too immechanical for the scientific knight. He treats of his atoms as he treats of planets, finding a similarity of mechanism in the motion of the one and the other. Mr. Carlile tries to be deep, and conceits that he is a deep fellow; but he has lost the depth that can fathom these systems, or finds himself out of his depth, when he attempts it.

Has the problem a solution, which attempts to define an atom of gas, whose hitherto known nature, by every experiment, in its relative connections, is illimitable expansion, or illimitable condensation: comprising the apparently contradictory property, in space, of incalculable magnitude, and incalculable diminution? If your atom of gas be not definite, tangible and calculable as a certainty, it fails you wherewith to make a system. Your system is broken at the indefinite point and becomes your superstition, your faith, your god, your source of mental mischief, and probable misery to all who may connect themselves or be connected with it.

Another gentleman presented himself, who had an animacular system, even of the universe of matter, to propose and defend, and spun from it so curious a version of the Christian religion, as would have pleased the orthodox, confounded the hair-splitting sectarian, and have formed an establishment that should, at least have bid defiance to spiritual dissent, if it had not baffled the ingenious efforts at criticism of the scientific materialism of the Christian Priestley and his Unitarian followers. It was so very sublime, that, not having the due inspiration, we almost fear a mis-statement of it. However, we pledge a best endeavour.

The theory was, that all material structure was the work of animalcula; that it had a beginning, and was but progressing toward a filling up and end. Of course we were not so rude as to ask from the gentleman an account of the origin of his animalcular Adam and Eve; because it is not the rule of our school to call for an account of the origin of any thing; and we must have exposed ourselves to the retort, that we can no more account for our animal Adam and Eve, than the gentleman for his animalcular Adam and Eve. All that we can know is, that he has the start of us as to origin; and our beginning is but one of his stupendous animalcular effects! There is such a mixture of the Lilliputian and the Brobdinagian in this theory, that the conception of Swift sinks into insignificancy before it ; and instead of the world of giants having passed away, instead of animal structure lessening, we must hereafter assume its increase and gigantic futu-. rity, until each sun becomes as large as its now solar system, and leaves not even the vacuum of an atmosphere! Oh! for a system that shall stand in competition with this! What a consummation! Then may the grand masonic architect of the universe say-CONSUMMATUM EST! Here is a material system that is finally to put a stop to its own motions, to clog up its pores and vacuities: and then, perhaps, for wonders cease, and all figures are literalized in this system, is realized the story of the Phoenix, our great material nest of animalcula is to take fire, and out of the ashes shall spring a new animalcular Adam and Eve, perhaps, hermaphroditic, bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh, as some ingenious Jews say for their Adam and Eve, to begin a new system! We really conceit that we have reached the inspiration