You cannot, Sir, be ignorant, that insinuating infidelity through the medium of the political press is one of the deepest arts of political craft. The minister of the day has not a more true or useful friend, than the fiend who takes advantage of popular irritation to propagate irreligion. It not only blights the spirit and effect of all opposition to his schemes, but it causes that defection from the ranks of his opponents, which must be produced whenever means are afforded of creating alarm; and originates the most effective class of ministerial supporters, well known in the political vocabulary under the designation of Alarmists. The Religious Public will naturally sink their political differences in the common support of Christianity. And a large portion of them, unused to the freedom of speculative and philosophical research, are inclined to accede to restrictions on the press, which, though apparently tending to stay the plague, do but in reality increase it. It is not, however, here my intention to discuss the remedies of irreligion. I shall briefly, therefore, call your attention to the circumstances which have made political knowledge an object of greater interest than in the last century. First of all, instructing the people in reading and writing would naturally beget a more extensive curiosity and interest in the public conduct of their affairs. To this may be added the awful and alternate changes of warfare, in which scarcely a single cottage in the kingdom has escaped the loss of some inmate. The financial difficulties attending those wars, and the consequent variation in the demand for labor, have necessarily subjected the poor to great deprivations and sufferings; and it is well known, that ever since the American and French revolutions, there has existed an increasing avidity for political information. An extraordinary manufacturing system has collected together large masses of artisans, whose knowledge and ingenuity are scarcely credible to those who, never merging beyond the purlieus of Downing Street, are totally ignorant of the real state of the country, except from the information gathered from such pure sources as a Castles, an Oliver, or an Edwards. The growing sense and influence of religion among these large classes of the community was, until the last four years, universally acknowledged. In a preceding Letter I have sufficiently exposed the imputation of "blasphemy," with which they are now visited.

I need not, however, go further back for a vindication of the People, than to the middle of the year 1817, when the speech from the throne, as before quoted, which was delivered by the Regent in person, declared: "I have the satisfaction of receiving the most decisive proofs of the loyalty and public spirit of the great body of the people; and the patience with which they have sustained the most severe temporary distress, cannot be too highly commended." I

need not enter into the details of the green bag, the A. B. C. protocols, or the enactment of the six acts; but certain it is, that up to the close of 1817, blasphemy was scarcely heard of. Whatever political sins Mr. Cobbett or Mr. Wooler might have to answer for, to change the religion of the people seemed no part of their object indeed, every politician who writes for popular effect well knows the impossibility of meddling, to any purpose, with religion in a country where it is of various growth, and where the people are divided into such deep-rooted sects and opinions. The disinterred bones of "Tom" Paine were never exhibited as relics of blasphemy, but only as the remains of a political saint.

The parodies of Mr. Hone were the first warwhoop of the Ministry. His trial and acquittal are fresh in your recollection; and though Mr. Hone defended his right of using religious forms of worship as the vehicle of political parody-all other parties, high and low, having done the same-yet, by discontinuing the sale of these parodies before any information had been filed against him, he obviated in a great measure the necessity of any prosecution-made the only reparation in his power, by suppressing them, in deference to public opinion-and was finally acquitted by three different juries of his countrymen, on the ground that his intent had no more to do with blasphemy than Mahometanism. I mention these facts, Sir, as due to the character of Mr. Hone; because, through his whole life connected with the press, he neither before nor since, ever in any way connected himself with that department of publication.

Now then, Sir, came forward the real author of the "blasphemy," who appeared and disappeared from the political atmosphere under such extraordinary circumstances as call for the most marked

attention.

At the close of 1817, W. T. SHERWIN, utterly unknown to the political press of the metropolis, first advertised and placarded a weekly publication, The Republican; but soon discovering this was not after the taste of the present age," it was quickly metamorphosed into "Sherwin's Political Register." Now, mark, Sir; in a year of unprecedented political prosecution no notice was taken of this herald of sedition! The walls were placarded with the pith of his lucubrations; he weekly and openly advocated a change of government, from the monarchy to a republic; he printed, published, and personally sold, in a little hole in Fleet Street, (No. 183,) these publications, and ultimately promoted and established Carlile as his publisher. Carlile, this mere jackall of the tiger, was originally a journeyman tinker, ignorant and illiterate even in the commonest details of vulgar knowledge, who had been a distributor of The Register, but who now became the convenient scape-goat of his employer. Their first joint production was a reprint of the parodies

Mr. Hone had suppressed. An ex-officio information was filed against Carlile, but never tried. The Register proceeded; the same flagrant attempts to push radicalism into republicanism; open and undisguised attacks on all the forms and principles of Christianity; exhortations to the devilish crime of assassination; engravings and descriptions given of those very pikes for the possession and use of which so many houses of the poor were searched, and for the use of which one misguided Scotchman forfeited his life to the offended laws of his country; the reprint of Colonel Titus's "Killing no Murder," with the name of Sherwin as the printer, and sold in his scape-goat's shop. Then followed the reprint of Paine's "Rights of Man," a work which the most extravagant opinion for the liberty of the Press could not justify, in a country where the monarchial form has so long and so gloriously existed, and in the preservation of which all orders of society are alike interested. Emboldened with the impunity of a six months' circulation, the "Age of Reason" was then printed and publicly offered for sale. And by the ill-gotten gains arising from this scandalous neglect of the exercise of the law, the scene of publication was removed to "The Temple of Reason," No. 55, in Fleet Street, where the public were for a year insulted by exhibitions in the windows, such as had never before escaped immediate prosecution. On the dispersion of the Manchester meeting, a direct and unequivocal exhortation to treason and revolt was written with the signature of Mr. Sherwin, and printed by him: the People were then supposed to be ripened to a requisite excitement. W. T. Sherwin retired from the editorship of The Register, to enjoy the well-earned fruits of his patriotism-resigning the continuation of his labors into the hands of his wretched dupe! Then, Sir, was Carlile brought to trial, and delivered over to the vengeance of the law, after a two years' impunity of blasphemy, during which no single week had elapsed when he would not have merited and received a verdict of "guilty of blasphemy and sedition" from any jury in any part of the country.

It has been said that this arch-blasphemer, Mr. Sherwin, could not be made amenable to the law, from his cunning avoidance of all vending and publishing. But, Sir, it is notorious that he lived near Islington-possessed printing presses-employed several journeymen-weekly accounted with Carlile for profit and loss-daily sent trucks and cart-loads of his printing from his private residence to Fleet Street-made no secret of his avocations to many persons in London; and is there a human being who will deny that one quarter per cent. of the money lavished on Oliver, Castles, and Edwards, would not have purchased one spy to convict this midnight owl, as the author, and printer, and proprietor, of these base at

tempts to corrupt the minds of the People? Not only was this open to the law officers of the crown; but Edwards, that well-known compositor in the Cato Street conspiracy, was almsot daily in Carlile's shop, lodged opposite to him, wormed himself into his confidence, actually moulded and cast the figure of Paine, so prominent in the shop, was the maker of the little images hawked about the streets, and daily possessed himself of what was coming in and going out! Yet Mr. Sherwin, his weekly visitor, was permitted to escape; and with his honest industry has opened an establishment in a respectable part of the city, adorned with religious books on "grace," and baptism, and Shakspeare's plays, "All's well that ends well!" congratulating himself on his ingenious extrication! and, perhaps, often flattering himself that he is not the late Mr. Sherwin, of Fleet Street. What process of adult baptism has converted and regenerated this child of grace? and by what minister was he confirmed?

I put it to the feeling of every man who loves his country, his religion, and his laws, whether this culpable neglect of the law can be justified? These facts are notorious to hundreds in London; and I ask any man, whether the application of the law in the first instance would not have prevented all that subsequently occurred for three years?

Sir, it is at all times a violation of our best feelings to drag private character before a public ordeal: but one who has acted so public a character can have no pretensions to so premature a retirement. What security have we, Sir, that this insidious apostle of "blasphemy" will not renew his apostolic missions on similar opportunities? Sir, I think you are bound, by your professed love of religion, to urge a Parliamentary investigation of this mysterious subject. I conceive Ministers bound, by their professed abhorrence of blasphemy and sedition," to assist you in this investigation: it is a sacred obligation due to the injured character of the People; and if Ministers do not yield every possible assistance, the unavoidable inference must be, that "blasphemy" is a most useful ingredient in the political cauldron, where the system of a new and doubtless improved liberty is concocting. If this Mr. Sherwin be a penitent, let him make a public confession of his sins: if still abiding in his iniquities, let the State do her duty to repress them. An imperious sense of duty, Sir, on my part, has urged this public citation; for it cannot be endured, that, for the sake of an individual, the People should rest quiet under the bitter calumnies heaped with no sparing hand upon them, in this their day of burden and reproach. I know nothing of this self-dubbed Patriot and Reformer, of his origin or pursuits, except from the murmuring whispers which an ear

not willingly shut may easily hear; and I have, therefore, studiously confined myself to facts of public notoriety.

Thus, Sir, I have exposed to you the sole and polluted source of this exaggerated "blasphemy," which has, after all, disseminated only a few paltry reprints of Palmer, Diderot, Voltaire, Volney, Paine, and often-refuted and long-forgotten English sceptics-in the total, I will venture to say, not amounting to the sale of Dr. Chalmers's volume on the Evidences of Christianity. And, with respect to the class of society amongst whom this miserable trash has circulated, if we deduct the portion sold to the curious and speculative men in the higher and more educated ranks, a remnant only remains for the lower classes of society, which, compared with the innumerable religious publications monthly and annually dispensed to the people, is but as a grain of sand to the myriads of the sea shore. Sir, I write from correct and thorough information now before me; and I affirm, that there cannot be a more monstrous falsehood, than this blasphemous taste imputed to the people. It contradicts the most notorious facts and the most evident character of the times: and you, Sir, well know that it is asserted, by the very same men who prefer the charge of infidelity, that there is an increase of evangelical religion. You know that, both in the church and out of it, the latter tenets are discouraged by the present Ministry, and that excess of Methodism is the fear of their minds. You well know, that from the first accession of the Dundas influence up to the present moment, evangelical religion has been opposed in Scotland, and all preferment withheld from its professors you know that the "wild men" have been snubbed, and the moderates advanced. You cannot have forgotten the early and rancorous opposition of the majority of the ruling party to the Bible Society, merely because founded on a principle of filiation and comprehensive charity: and although it has since received a partial support from some of them in occasional attendance at the Meetings, yet you cannot be the dupe of a craft, which after failing to strangle an infant in its birth, merely adopts it, "to make the best of a bad job." You must have seen the honors of

'I cannot refrain from noticing here, as part of the same system, a circumstance which lately excited great disgust in a midland county. A certain nameless apostate, well known as the Guilford Rat, lately informed an unfortunate female criminal, that as he could not hold out to her any hope in this world, so he took the opportunity of intimating to her, that in his opinion she had little to expect in another-and that the wild and visionary opinions of the vulgar Christianity would sadly disappoint her reliance on them! I thought of the following passage in Bishop Fell:-"It is indeed to be wished we would cease to invade God's peculiar, by judging those that must stand or fall to him: but if we will needs take his office, it is but equitable we take his rules too; and in our wrath remember mercy. But God be blessed,