most of the German newspapers, and will secure to Ronge's name a distinguished place in the history of the Church. We have heard of one instance in which a single Roman Catholic bought a thousand copies, in order to distribute them among mem bers of his own faith. It was at once expected that a man who thus brought to public judgment the fanatic doings of the hierarchial power-that a priest, who fearlessly expressed what a good Catholic is not allowed even to think that a man who ventured to pass an open, conscientious, and forcible judgment, would bring upon himself the hatred and vengeance of the agents and devoted ministers of that Wicked One, whose power is dissipated wherever the light of truth is diffused, and who is destined to perish before the brightness of that day, the dawn of which is once more rising upon Germany. Yes, John Ronge, who, blessed be God, held fast his integrity, and refused to succumb to the fiat of priestly tyranny, is excommunicated: but whatever may be his own fate, let us hope that he has, like our glorious martyrs of old, lighted a candle in Silesia which shall never be put out.

But the reader has been too long detained from the letter, which is subjoined:

"That which but for a time sounded to our ears like a mere fable, a mere tale, namely, that Bishop Arnoldi of Treves has exhibited a garment called the coat of Christ, for veneration and religious spectacle, you, Christians of the nineteenth century, have already heard of it; you, gentlemen of Germany, know of it; you, teachers of the German nation and of religion, have now been informed, that this frenzy is not a fable or a tale, but a reality and truth. Five hundred thousand persons have already, according to the latest account, made their pilgrimage to this relic, and thousands more are daily flocking hither, especially since it became known that the above-mentioned garment has healed the sick, and worked miracles! The fame of this occurrence runneth through the length and breadth of all nations: while priests, in France, have asserted that they

were in possession of the real coat of Christ, the one in Treves being false. Truly here may be applied the words

He who does not lose his reason at some moments, has none to lose.' Five hundred thousand persons, five hundred thousand enlightened Germans, have already hastened to Treves, for the sake of venerating and seeing a garment. The greatest part of this multitude of pilgrims are of the lowest orders; and besides this, they are exceedingly poor, oppressed, ignorant, dull, superstitious, and degenerated; they desist from cultivating their fields, withdraw themselves from their trades, from the care of their household, from the education of their children; and all this they do for the purpose of journeying to Treves to partake of an idol's festival, to participate in an unworthy spectacle exhibited by the Roman hierarchy. Yes, it is an idol's festival; for many thousands of the credulous multitude are thus misled, and offer devotion and veneration, owed exclusively to God, to a garment, the work of man's hands!

"And what are the hurtful consequences of these pilgrimages? Thousands of the pilgrims starve themselves to procure the money necessary for the journey, and to make an offering for their spiritual enjoyment—a sight of the holy coat. By deprivation or beggary they obtain their money; and, after their return, suffer hunger, want, or become sick, from the exertions of their journey. These external injuries are great, exceeding great, but far greater are the moral injuries. Will not many have recourse to unfair means, in order to extricate themselves from the difficul. ties they have fallen into through their expenses? Many matrons and maidens sacrifice the purity of their hearts, their chastity and good name, destroying their peace, happiness, and the welfare of their families.

"By this unchristian-like spectacle, a door is widely opened for superstition, for merits by works, for fanati cism, and for vices of all description connected with it. This is the socalled blessing promoted by the exhibition of the holy coat, notwithstanding the dispute of its reality or falsity.

And he who exhibits this garment, the work of man's hands, for venera. tion and public show, is leading astray the religious affection of the credulous and ignorant, who are deficient in intellect; he is promoting superstition and viciousness, cunningly drawing their property from the poor starving people, and exposing the German nation to the mockery of other countries; this man is drawing closer the thunder clouds, which hang already heavy and dark over our heads. The man I speak of is a bishop, a German bishop, Bishop Arnoldi, of Treves.

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Bishop Arnoldi, of Treves, whilst addressing your lordship, I call upon you, by the authority of my office and vocation as a priest-in the name of all Christendom, and as a German national teacher in the name of the German nation, and in the name of all national instructors, to abolish the unchristian-like spectacle of the exhibition of the holy coat, to conceal the garment from the public view, and to avoid making the offence greater than it already is! For do you not know -as a bishop you ought to know it— that the author of the Christian religion has not left his coat, but his spirit to his disciples and followers? Christ's coat, my friend, Bishop Arnoldi, of Treves, is the property of his executioners. Do you not know -as a bishop you ought to know it— that Christ has taught, 'God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth!'? And God can be honoured, not only in the temple at Jerusalem, on the mount Gerizim, or Treves, near the holy coat, but everywhere! Do you not know-as a bishop you ought to know it that the Gospel expressly prohibits the veneration of every image and relic? Do you not know that the Christians of the Apostolic age, and during the first three centuries, suffered neither an image (though they might have had many) nor a relic in their churches? Do you not know that the veneration of images and relics is heathenish, and on that account the heathen has been derided by the fathers of the first three cen. turies? It is said, for example, (Div. Inst. II., c. 2.) The images ought the rather, if they had life, to vener

ate the men by whom they have been formed, and the practice of the contrary ought not to be allowed. (Nec intelligunt homines ineptissimi, quod si sentire simulacra et moveri possent, adoratura hominem fuissant, a quo sunt expolita.)' Finally, do you not know as a bishop you ought to know this as well-that the healthy and vigorous mind of the German nation did not become so degraded as to worship relics, until the crusades of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, and then only was its noble idea of the Divine Being, which had been impressed upon it by the Christian religion, darkened by all kinds of fables and tales brought from the East?

"And now, my friend, Bishop Ardoldi, of Treves, you are, I am persuaded, convinced of all this, and understand it probably better than I am able to unfold to you. You are well aware of the consequences which the idolatrous veneration of relics and other superstitions have brought upon Germany, viz., its spiritual, as well as its outward or visible bondage; and yet you boldly exhibit your relic for public veneration. But if, perhaps, you did not know all this, and your only object in the exhibition of this relic was the salvation of Christendom, you would still have laden a double guilt on your conscience, from which you cannot clear yourself. In the first place, it is unpardonable of you, that if the said garment really possesses a power of healing, you should have withholden it from suffering mankind until the year 1844. And in the next place, it is unpar donable to take oblations of money from the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. In other words, is it not unpardonable of you, as a bishop, to take money from the starving poor of our people? Have you not had occasion to observe only a few weeks ago, that hundreds have been driven by want to desperate revolts, and have become the victims of death? Besides, let me caution you not to be deceived by the flocking together of hundreds and thousands; believe me, that whilst hundreds of thousands of Germans, full of ardour, are hasten. ing to Treves, millions like myself

£750,000,000. Intrinsically, and at a fair purchaseable rate, it does not exceed £500,000,000. And what is this to our annual national income of £450,000,000! Little more than one year's purchase. Set aside for seven years the excess of expenditure during the latter years of the war over the current peace outgoings, and the debt is at once wiped off.

But there is no need of such haste; no call for any such extraordinary sacrifices; a much easier and more natural mode of extinction is open. Government has only to be just, to rule without fear or favour; to be equitable towards all classes; to knock off the remaining fetters of commerce and industry; to give the reins to British capital and enterprise; to pursue, in short, that course of public policy which the more enlightened among them admit to be sound, and which concurring intelligence urges upon them, and the debt would quietly disappear amidst the flood of wealth that would inundate the United Kingdom, as the certain fruits of the general expansion, freedom, and fair play.

This, however, requires to be set forth with a little more proof and deliberation. For what we affirm we have precedents, which require only to be repeated and worked out to bear all the results we anticipate.

It is hardly necessary to explain that it is not the amount of the principal of the debt, but of the dividends, that forms the momentous consideration. It is the interest of the debt, the permanent annuity payable to the national creditors, that yearly absorbs so large a proportion of the public revenue, and exactly as this interest is reduced in amount, in the same proportion may the burdens of the tax-payers be lightened. At the close of the war, the sum yearly payable for interest amounted to £31,576,074; at the present it amounts to about £29,048,746, shewing a reduction since the peace to the amount of £2,527,328.

Now this reduction of annual charge has not been effected by the repayment of principal; nor can it be fairly claimed as the result of a premeditated course of public policy.

1845-FEB.

In

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fact, the measures of government have tended to augment the debt, to add to it a greater amount than they have paid off, and the saving since the peace has been, as we shall soon explain, from another source. Our rulers, we suspect, would have been in no hurry to terminate the war, had they not been exhausted in common with every European belligerent. Over and over again the country would have been subsequently involved in hostilities about some Turkish, Tahiti, or Algeria affair; but the Exchequer was low-was replenished with difficulty—and doubt prevailed whether the requisite sinews could be commanded. It is not so much, therefore, in consequence of political wisdom that the charge of the debt has been reduced, but of the gradual evolvement of those natural and inscrutable laws already alluded to, and which, despite of human folly and human turpitude, work out, under the favour of a benign Omnipotence, the regeneration of nations. It is a consequence of the long continuance of the BLESSINGS OF PEACE. Let this conclusion sink deep into the heart of every tax-payer, and let him, if he wishes to see the entire extinction of the debt, stick fast, regardless of all misleadings, all incendiary appeals, to this inestimable national restorative.

Since the peace the enormous increase of national riches is unquestionable. How could it be otherwise? During the last 10 years of the war, the public expenditure averaged 83 millions; in the following 24 years of peace, it did not exceed 50 millions. So that the saving from this source only amounts to 792 millions. Just so much, in lieu of being squandered in armies and fleets, in government officials, gunpowder, balls, and bayonet, has been absorbed in the augmenting of private wealth, in enriching the artistical and learned professions, the landlord, manufacturer, farmer, and we hope, though in less proportion, the operative and labourer. Just so much has been added to the productive capital of the country, its general enjoyments and improvement, in lieu of being wasted in havoc and desolation -in mere

destructiveness-destructiveness as rank, and certainly often more indefensible, because the parties ought to know better, than that inflicted by the misguided incendiary, who, in the vain hope of thereby procuring better food and wages, or to retaliate some imagined wrong, prowls from his wretched hovel at midnight to set fire to a neighbouring barn or hayrick.

The vast increase of national wealth appears indisputably from the produce of the income tax. Upon this source of confirmation we wish to fix attention, since it cannot mislead or be fallacious. It must, however, be remembered that the increase of riches is much greater than is evidenced by the comparative returns of income in 1815 and in 1843-first, because the returns of 1815 were in a depreciated currency; and, secondly, because, in 1815, all incomes were liable to the tax unless below £50, whereas under the present law no income is liable unless it amounts to £150, So that a large mass of income was returnable in 1815, which is not included in the return of 1843.

From this table (amount of real property assessed to the income tax in 1815 and 1843) many important conclusions may be derived. 1. That the great increase in wealth has not been in the agricultural counties, but in the commercial, manufacturing, mining, and metropolitan districts of the kingdom. 2. That population has followed capital, and that in these districts, where there has been the greatest increase of wealth, there has been, as a natural accompaniment, the greatest increase in population. But, 3, though the richest districts have increased fastest in people, yet -the conclusion is consolatorywealth has increased more rapidly than inhabitants, and the average income of each individual is greater than during the war. 4. Although the average income of each person is greater, the amount of taxes he pays is less, in the proportion of £3 10s. 3d. per head in 1811 to £1 8s. 10d. in the current year of peace. This last is another advantage to the community, accruing from a pacific course of policy not to be hastily cast aside,