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establish the most ruinous systems of management-they would destroy the equality and independence of the people-they would convert a very large part of your one grand class into servants, and effectually control themthey would propagate the most mis chievous habits and opinions and they would produce a variety of other grievous evils. What we have recommended, touching the landlords, will, by keeping up rents, be one means of keeping them away; and what we are about to recommend, will supply all that may be lacking for their effectual exclusion.

You must now direct your attention to that most important point, the sup, plying of the people of your island with just opinions and feelings. The divine liberal system must here be your principal guide. Keep the facts for ever before you, that this system carries on a war of extermination against the regular Clergy, the Protestant Dissenters, and the practice of religion; that it constantly advocates those things which form the primary sources of vice and guilt; that it holds up the profligates of this and other countries as the best of mortals: that it ranks hatred of public functionaries and governments among the cardinal virtues, and that it anxiously sighs to reverse all that at present exists in this country. Keep this fact, we say, for ever before you, and act accordingly.

The jobbers will do no little towards accomplishing what the liberal system will prescribe, without you. They will connive at, and encourage, illicit distillation, the robbing the clergyman of his tithes, &c. &c. This will have the most beneficial effect in freeing the people from the restraints which honesty, reverence for the laws, and other feelings of a similarly pernicious nature, impose. In addition to this, the exactions of the jobbers will place the people in that glorious state of hunger and nakedness, of bodily degradation and mental darkness, in which it is almost impossible for men to know and practise the distinctions between right and wrong, virtue and vice, innocence and crime;-in which it is almost impossible for wrong, vice, and crime, to assume any other than the most aggravated character.

Your care, of course, must be to complete what the jobbers may leave

undone, and to take every possible means for preventing others from rendering your combined labours of no effect.

If the established Church of the island resemble that of England, you must be implacable enemies of the clergy, for they will contend against you in everything. You must, as good Liberals and true, detest the Protestant religion in general, and that of the Church of England in particular. It would be most desirable if you could abolish religion altogether, but this perhaps would be scarcely practicable. It seems to be agreed on all hands that man is "a religious animal," and therefore, perhaps, if you oppose atheism or deism to protestantism, you will hardly triumph. It will conse quently be wise in you to war against the regular clergy, by means of any other religion that may possess the greatest number of the following characteristics :

If it call itself a Christian one, it must comprehend in its creed as much of what is flatly opposed to the New Testament, as will make it practical heathenism.

It must invest its priests with the attributes of God-it must place them above God-it must even make God seem to be but their passive instrument; a being existing only to save or consign to perdition as they may dictate, in the eyes of the people. It must exact from the people, for the priests, the most slavish, blind, and abject obedience, and it must give to the priests unlimited authority to decide, in spite of the scriptures, or any other authority, divine or human, what shall, and what shall not, be regarded as religious duty. This will have the blessed effect of turning the minds of the people from their Maker to the priests; it will give the worship and obedience to the latter instead of the former.

Its priests, while they must speak incessantly of their power to forgive sins, and to admit into, and exclude from heaven, any one they please, must instruct the people that salvation depends not on a virtuous and pious life; that it will not be forfeited by a life of the darkest vices and crimes; and that all that is necessary to obtain it is, to go through such forms, repeat such words, and pay such sums of money, as they may dictate. They

must make the people believe, that they may commit the most flagrant wickedness again and again, and still be forgiven, on such terms as all have it in their power to offer; and that the blackest wretch that ever cursed the earth will be sure of entering heaven, if he get that forgiveness from them, which he can so easily obtain. This will have the most beneficial operation imaginable. It will destroy the power of conscience, it will take away the fear of future punishment altogether, it will convince the people that they may commit any wickedness whatever; that they may rob, burn, and assassinate, as they please, and still be in no danger of perdition; and it will, of course, make the religion, to a great extent, the pander of the worst passions and propensities of human nature. Only depose God, and deify the priest; make the name of the one the tool of the other; and substitute the priest's inventions for the precepts of scripture, and your religion will inevitably destroy those pestilential things-public morals.

This religion must, of course, strenuously insist on the suppression of the scriptures, and all sound expositions of Christianity. It must permit the free circulation of writings that contain direct incitements to vice and crime; it must sanction the use of these in the schools, but it must, on no consideration, suffer the people to read the Bible.

It must positively prohibit the people from entering the churches of the establishment, and the Protestant chapels; it must proclaim the more devout, Bible-reading, Bible-obeying Protestants, to be the greatest and the most unpardonable sinners; it must assert that the clergy of the established Church have no spiritual character, and are a nuisance to the country; and it must maintain, that while there is no hell for its own followers, there is no heaven for the followers of other religions.

The priests of this religion ought to possess, at least, an hundred-fold more of direct authority than the regular clergy; they ought, in truth, to be perfectly despotic. They must insist upon auricular confession, for this will place their flocks at their mercy. They must regularly visit the houses of the people, and carry off by main force the

Bible, religious tracts, and all other obnoxious writings. They must be permitted to inflict the most severe personal punishments on all who may dare to disobey their commands. They must impose penances, which are about equal to the legal punishments of whipping and standing in the pillory, for lighter offences; and they must employ excommunication, which is the loss of character, and ruin—which, if not equal to, is but one degree short of, death-against graver ones. These punishments must be resorted to, without mercy, against all who may dare to enter a Protestant place of worship, or retain in their possession a Bible or a religious tract.

While the priests must thus effectually prevent the people from reading the scriptures, and obtaining religious knowledge, they must shew the utmost indulgence to vices; they must permit the profanation of the Sabbath; if they know that they have incendiaries and murderers in their flocks, they must conceal it from the legal authorities; if they know that a plot is concocting, for ruining and shedding the blood of innocent families, they must not reveal it; they must tell the dying felon that his sins are forgiven, though they know that he is passing, with a lie in his mouth, to the presence of his Maker; they must on no account excommunicate a man for being a murderer or a traitor.

A priesthood teaching a religion like this, and possessing these terrible powers, cannot fail of obtaining the most boundless authority over a people so happily circumstanced as those of your island. It cannot fail of obtaining, virtually, the sovereign authority. It cannot fail of being able to lead, or drag the people, to anything whatever. It cannot fail of establishing nearly everything that the divine liberal system wishes to see established in point of morals.

It is a most difficult matter to give to a peasantry the political feelings which this glorious system inculcates. All the circumstances in which a peasantry is placed, have a natural tendency to make it orderly and loyal. Its minute subdivisions, its occupation, and the difficulty of supplying it with liberal newspapers, of placing before it liberal examples, of establishing amidst it liberal teachers, and of bringing

within its hearing liberal harangues, all operate most powerfully against rendering it turbulent and disaffected. Your main instruments, therefore, in operating upon the politics of your country population, must be your priests, and, of course, these must be furious political intriguers. Their political, will be as boundless as their religious influence, and they will render your people exactly what the liberal system would wish to make them in politics.

It cannot be necessary for us to prove, that the State ought not to have the least influence or authority over the priests-that it should not be suffered to interfere in the smallest degree in their education and appointment that the men who, by acting the double part of spies and tyrantswho, by compulsion and terror, as well as persuasion and seduction who, by inflicting the most grievous punishments, and producing the belief, that they can admit into heaven, or cast into hell, whomsoever they please, hold despotic sway over five or six millions of the people, and terrify the government from taking any measures that may displease them, ought to be independent of, and above, the government. This is too obvious to need evidence to establish it. The priests ought positively to deny the -supremacy of the State, and to assert their supremacy over it. Their head ought to be some foreign potentatesome crafty and unprincipled Italian : a man dwelling in the most ignorant and licentious part of Europe; one who will, in the face of the world, attack your national institutions and liberty, avow his hatred of the Protestants, and assert that they ought to be "extirpated." This man ought to nominate the higher of the priests, and these, his creatures, ought to nominate the inferior ones.

It may, however, be most just and proper for the State to pay for the education of the priests, provided it be restrained from interfering in such education. Nothing could be more desirable than that the State should educate men to proclaim that the regular clergy have no religious character, and that they are a nuisance to the island, to combine with any political faction that may put the public peace and weal in peril, and to sponge

from their starving flocks the money necessary to feed and arm such faction.

Although miracle alone could prevent a religion and priesthood like these from rendering such a people as your islanders everything you could wish in morals and politics, still it may not be wise to trust to them wholly. It is better to be doubly armed, than to be without weapons. It will therefore be highly prudent to form a gigantic political faction to act as their ally, and to perform such labours in politics as it might be unseemly in the priesthood to undertake.

The leaders of this faction ought, by all means, to, be lawyers. Lawyers, when they plunge into politics, have far less than other men of such scruples as your faction ought to be wholly free from. These lawyers ought to be fanatical, superstitious, crazy, hot-headed, blind, and ignorant in the last degree; they ought, more especially, to be intensely ignorant of the principles of the British constitution, of the principles of liberty, and of the character of the British people. When these lawyers form themselves into a body, your priests must combine both themselves and their flocks with them: This will, of course, make your people religiously obey whatever the lawyers may dictate. As lawyers, no matter what they undertake, must always have money to work with, your priests whom the state educates must extract from their starving flocks -if seduction fail, they can employ threats and punishments-some fifty thousand per annum for the use of the lawyers. A portion of this money ought to be avowedly employed in bribing the newspaper writers of the empire, and this will necessarily procure you other most potent allies. It will be most wise to secure the assistance of Cobbett, and all such writers. A hired agent established in London may be of great service.

You will now be secure. The established clergy-the government-the whole world-may do what they please, and you may laugh at them all."

You must, however, not slumber in giving to your terrific means operation. Laws are hateful things to the divine liberal system; therefore you must destroy the laws, or render them inoperative. The jobbers will disqua

lify your population for furnishing functionaries to execute the laws, and your priesthood and faction must dis qualify it for furnishing legal witnesses. This will do much towards rendering the laws a dead letter. If the government prosecute traitors-if private individuals prosecute rioters, robbers, and murderers if a clergyman bring an action for tithes lawfully due to him if a member of another reli gion bring an action against a member of yours the expenses of the defence must, in all cases, be defrayed by the funds of your faction. As no private unconnected individuals, whether poor or rich, will be able to contend against the purse of your faction in courts of law, this will supply all that may be wanting for rendering the laws a nullity. It will yield another mighty advantage it will give employment and bread to your lawyers.

The regular clergy are solemnly pledged to their God and their country to do everything in their power to make your people good Christians; they are expressly enjoined to do this by the laws. In so far as their efforts may be successful, they will take the Sovereignty from your priesthood and faction, and give it to the State-they will establish that horrible state of things in respect of religion and politics, which is to be seen in Great Britain: You must, of course, vigorously oppose them. If you suffer them to circulate the Scriptures, you are ruined, therefore your mobs, inflamed and headed by your priesthood and faction, must put down by force their Bible-meetings. Your people must be taught to detest the Bible, and to cry, "Down with the Bible!" and your priests must solemnly charge them, in their official character, not to retain the Scriptures, or any religious treatise, if put into their hands.

If the bigots declare that it is virtual treason for your priesthood and faction to make themselves the censors of the press to prevent the regular clergy from doing what the law and the religion of the State command them to do to prohibit the circulation of the religious creed of the State -to prevent the people from making themselves acquainted with this creed and to prevent the reading of that which is published under the authority of the State, and which is the only genuine source of Christianity-treat VOL. XVII.

them with silent scorn. The present liberality of the nation will render any other reply useless.

If your priests be so indiscreet as to enter into sober disputations with the regular clergy touching the propriety of circulating the Scriptures, reprehend such disputations vehemently. Swear that they cannot possibly produce anything but mischief, and to prove it, shew that the disputations in Parliament-newspaper discussions theological controversies-in fine, ar gumentation and discussion of every kind-only stifle inquiry, destroy knowledge, overthrow truth, and produce every variety of baleful conse quences. The liberal part of the nation will believe you.

If the government, or any fanatics and enthusiasts, endeavour to establish schools among your Islanders, be careful to prevent any religion and mora lity from being taught in these schools, and, above all things, exclude from them the Scriptures. If your people are taught reading, writing, and arith metic, at the cost of the State, it may be of service to you, provided they are taught nothing else. It will enable them to read whatever your priest hood and faction may put into their hands; and, as the wholesome and searching laws of these bodies will suppress all other compositions, there will be no danger of their reading any other.

It will be highly necessary for you to malign and blacken the regular clergy in every possible way. Protest, that when they obtain a portion of the tithes which are legally their due, they rob and ruin the people. Although it is a notorious fact that tithe-free land pays more in rent alone than titheable land pays in both rent and tithes, prove, by the unerring science of Political Economy, that the tithes are a ruinous impost which the occupiers of titheable land have to pay beyond what is paid by the rest of the community. Although every one knows that if tithes were abolished, the landholders would demand more than their amount of additional rent, prove, by the said unerring science, that the abolition would put their amount annually, and for ever, exclusively, into the pockets of the occupiers. Although no one is ignorant that, if the churchlands were taken from the clergy, they would, whether sold or given

F

away, pass to men who would raise the rents, and spend these rents out of the island, still prove, by the said unerring science, that the possession of these lands by the clergy involves the island in ruin. If the clergy attempt to perform their duty, protest that they are generating bad feelings, and fomenting rebellion. If they labour to teach the people the principles and practice of genuine Christianity, without reference to particular creeds, denounce them as men who are a plague to the island. Never spare them, except when they are silent-when they totally neglect their duty-and when they suffer your priests to do whatever they please.

On the other hand, you must lavish all the panegyrics that language will supply, on your priests;-declare that they are the most spotless and meritorious of God's creatures;protest that everything they do is most constitutional, lawful, just, and necessary swear that they ought to suppress the Bible, and all expositions of the religion of the State-that they ought to keep the people in the most horrible ignorance and depravity that they ought to prevent the regular clergy from performing their religious duties that they ought to occupy the first place in, and to form the chief principle of vitality and power of, a tremendous political faction, which threatens to involve the empire in war —in a word, that they ought to do anything they please. Prove that it is impossible for them to possess too much influence and authority; and that the laws, the Constitution, the government, the public weal, the interests of society, in short, everything in your system, ought to be subordinate and subservient to them.

The lawyers and other members of your faction, your priests, and your newspapers, bribed or unbribed, must daily scatter this profusely in every corner of your island. It must be served up in such language, and with such adjuncts, as may be the best calculated for making an impression on the people. If any slanders of the Protestant religion, and the clergy of the Church of England, can be invented so foul, filthy, revolting, and devilish, that even your very lawyers and priests cannot repeat them, let any such person as Cobbett, print them in his paper, then let them be copied into your

other papers, and then let your faction, and other engines of circulation, de luge the island with the papers.

The tuition of your people will be imperfect, if you do not fill them with intense hatred of Great Britain. If they indulge any kindly feeling towards this wretched state, they will be in danger of imbibing some of its pernicious opinions and habits. Your priests, lawyers, and other instruments, must, therefore, continually tell them, that Great Britain enacted the most cruel and unjust laws against their ancestors, but they must conceal the fact, that their ancestors provoked these laws by their conduct-they must tell them, that Great Britain holds them Now in chains, and makes them the victims of intolerable oppression, but they must carefully conceal all she has done for them. Your lawyers must tell them, that nineteen twentieths of the British women are strumpets from reading the Bible. Cobbett must tell them that England is "the land of bastards," and that its peasantry are monsters of depravity. The Morning Chronicle must tell them that the English are the most sensual and immoral people in Europe. The Edinburgh Review must supply them with libels on the British people-in a word, all those liberal persons who have magnanimously filled themselves with scorn of their country, and who can only speak of, to vilify, it, must assist in causing them to detest Great Britain. When everything in the cha→ racter and circumstances of your Islanders, will lead them to devour this with the utmost greediness, and when everything that may tend to contradict it can be effectually kept from them, your success in filling them with the most rancorous and inveterate hatred of Great Britain, cannot fail of being most perfect and glorious.

After having banished or destroyed almost all who could form an upper or a middle class-almost all who could set proper examples to your people, and who would have an interest in setting such examples-almost all who could fashion your population into a society, and prevent it from becoming one gigantic, unorganized, ungovernable, terrific mob: after having reduced the mass of your people to the lowest point of ignorance, penury, depravity, and lawlessness-taken from their eyes all beneficial example-fill

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