nated in the last six years, than in the three thousand which elapsed before them. Its course is now so steady, its aims so well known, what it is so well defined, its virtues so apparent, its utility so thoroughly understood, and its power so necessary to human happiness, that we may boldly assert, that neither King, Priest, Minister nor Fanatic, will be able to impede its path, prevent its progress, or circumscribe its limits. history, that as the church of Christ gained ground, learning and It appears from human knowledge were arrested in their progress, concord was banished from the earth, and liberty and liberal principles sunk in the inverse ratio of its increase of power and extent of dominion. And the business of the despotical priest was to monopolize the little which was known, and the cells of gloomy and atrabilious monks, and licentious and dissolute friars, became the prisons of science and the store rooms of neglected literature. Learning thus confined, science chained down, and mankind degraded by superstition and ignorance, who could think or dream of any change? An eternity of vassalage and stupid obedience was insured, and the human race devoted to slavery. We have got over much of this; but much remains to be done. We can think and write our thoughts, and we can naturally benefit by the communication of instruction. Press, and treble thanks to the undaunted champions of its freeThanks to the Almighty dom. Its unlimited freedom will emancipate the world and obtain and preserve cheerful liberty. The blessed press will destroy the enemies of man and establish peace and harmony. The benevolent press will create on earth, the reign of justice and the age of happiness. Then there will be no tyrants to oppress, nor slaves to be oppressed, and virtue and abilities alone will be necessary to pre-eminence among men. To contemplate these in idea is a cheering cordial to the wounded mind and a stimulus to be virtuous. They who feel themselves masters of the world at present must contemplate this with a superior degree of horror. The silken sons of plenty, pleasure, and peace, who repose in uninterrupted luxury and sloth, and inflict their puerile wants, their insipid daily cares, and even their imbecile wishes on the body of an enslaved people, must tremble, sicken and faint before they get over a page of this essay; an essay written by a slave, smarting and writhing under mental and corporeal punishment, quivering and bending beneath fatigue, hunger and nakedness, panting for breath amidst the agonies of despair, and the tortures inflicted by bloody-handed injustice. The tyrant must tremble when his slave begins to reason. The dawn of the poor man's freedom, the sun-rise of his liberty and peace must lower with ominous dread upon the unfeeling oppressor. This paper, and writings such as this, must therefore only be read by men of strong minds, who are rising from the gulph of ignorance, who are scourged by adversity and stung to the quick by the black adders of hopeless misery, who are writhing under the red arm of merciless power, men who are plunged in irremediable distress, steeped in corroding calamity, divested of hope, and whose only reliance rests on the magnanimous efforts of candid despair. Here these may find consolation amidst the keenest suffering of degraded humanity. The author is their brother, existing like themselves under the stigma, reproach and scorn heaped on helpless poverty. The congenial sympathy of insult, bearing want and rags, the sameness, injury, disgrace and feeling will at least produce a fellowship in pain; a fraternity of resentment, an equal desire, if not hope of revenge, the spirit of resistance, the fortitude to bear, the will to be free, or the resolution to die! "Better descend at once to shades below, HOMER. SHEBAGO. THE THEATRE. LIKE all the rest of the holiday children, after so long a term in Dorchester College, I have been amusing myself, or punishing myself, during the vacation, for it is yet a question if it will be more than a vacation, in going to the theatres to see pantomimes and other nonsense. I have been four times to different theatres and once to the masquerade at the Argyll Rooms; and I can conscientiously say with Solomon, that every thing of the kind is vanity and vexation of spirit-schools for vice. I am heartily sick of them, and shall go no more. The solitude of a Gaol has charms for me; but the theatre has none. I see My visit to the Masquerade was the first, and will, I am of opinion, be the last. It filled up nothing of my expectation and the common every day scenes in the streets of London are more interesting and instructive than the scenes of a masquerade. I have no taste for the artificial, however fine and dazzling. through it and feel disgusted with the attempt to cheat. The masquerade at the Argyll Rooms, at the latter end of the last month, consisted, until four in the morning, of romping and vulgar dances. Not one character appeared that was worth a moment's attention. The bulk of the assembly seemed well acquainted with each other, and the most prominent feature was prostitutes drunk and impudent. No well formed mind, male or female, could feel any thing but disgust at such a scene. Many persons appeared in common apparel, without even a mask, and the bulk were dressed in their usual way, with a black mask for the upper part of the face. Enough of masquerade. They are religious, Christian, the concomitants of a Viće Society and the pleasures of a people who are taught religion, but are not taught morality. In the midst of all their revels and wantonness, it occurred to me, that had I been known to the assembly, they would have shewn their love of religion by insulting me. I am not for putting down assemblies such as these legislatively : but would leave them to the progress of knowledge and morality. Indeed, it appears if they were on the decline; for such a masquerade as I saw could not have been so interesting as those which I have read of as having taken place in this and other countries. The Pantomimes of the theatres are still more objectionable than the masquerade. Here vice is the avowed amusement. Acts of theft, assaults, generally upon age and decrepitude, tricks and cheats and practical lying are the sum of a pantomime. Children are here taught by example those acts which they should only know to abhor. They see thefts laughed at, knock-down-blows uproariously applauded, and cruelty in all its grades witnessed as an amusement. The bare circumstance, that a theatre full of people can be found to witness a pantomime is a proof of the prevalence of ignorance and depraved mental appetites. To say that they are got up for the amusement of children is but the greater disgrace to those who provide such amusements, and to such parents as they who suffer their children to make periodical visits to such scenes. A pantomime, such as those now exhibited at the theatres, is sufficient to impress indelible depraved notions on the minds of children, calculated to form bad characters that would not have been otherwise formed, and every way productive of new vice. Even some of our tragedies are not less unexceptionable. Macbeth should never be performed. Here the assassination of a good man by a villain is the leading trait of the play, and a woman exhibits herself on the stage with her hands bathed in blood, holding two blood-stained daggers that have just done their work, after having stimulated her husband to commit the murder by a union of the art of the syren with the fury of the vixen. It is possible, that the reality of such a scene might have passed; but it is not likely to occur again, and, therefore, not a fit subject to be remembered by an exhibition on the stage. A play-going people must be in some measure a depraved or unhappy people. It must be a flight from domestic misery, or a depraved taste for an amusement which a well-formed mind cannot enjoy, and which is not needed by they who seek mental and moral improvement. It is a waste of time; in addition to which a great expence is incurred and nothing good is gained for the health of the body or the mind. R. C. CATHOLIC QUESTION. and it may THE season for this nonsense is about to commence, not be amiss to take a Republican view of its progress. That it does not promise success to the Catholics in the present year seems to be admitted by the Catholics. That it never will, is the sentiment of all who think freely and view public matters impartially. The men who manage this question are tricksters, and tricksters never do good to a cause that embraces the interest of millions. They may obtain individual and momentary advantages; but they are sure to find exposure, and are ultimately thrust aside upon all large questions, or such as take years for their accomplishment. The Catholic Question is a trivial question, and, but for the noise it creates, deserves not the attention of the wise and honest. It is a question about the division of spoils, and admits a prior question-Should those spoils be made to be quarrelled about? If there were no more important question connected with this Catholic Question, I would be found among its most strenuous supporters; but I see the whole of the clamour about this trivial and secondary question to be mischievous, and I feel a desire to expose it. I do not deny, that the Catholics are an injured people in their relation to the Protestants; but I do deny, that either of them should make a spoil of the community, and quarrel about the division. Such is the sum and substance of the Catholic Question. The Protestants gain more than a proportionate share of the spoil. As one proof of the trickery of the leaders of the Irish Catholics, they are about to hold a grand dinner in Dublin, for the purpose of inviting over from England the friends of civil and religious liberty, to swear fidelity over a dish of potatoes, and to drink success to the Catholic Cause with a glass of whiskey. This is an Irish way of serving a cause. He who can go to Dublin from any part of Britain to dine, must be rather a hungry than a useful friend to civil and religious liberty. The next step must be to take a trip across the Atlantic, to dine with the American Catholics, preparatory to a session of the English Parliament, that the sympathy of the one may become a prepared salve for the wounds to be certainly received from the hostility of the other, Alas! Poor Catholics! How are you duped! And duped you will be, until you can discover, that there is something wrong at the foundation of your claims; that neither Catholics nor Protestants have a right to make a spoil of the labouring man. I am a friend of, and an advocate for, civil and religious liberty; but I have no invitation to go to Dublin to dine! How is this? There are Protestant Bishops invited, or to be invited, English Members of Parliament, and, as a matter of course,some few of our old women; but there are to be no men who will dare to speak the truth and fairly state the Catholic Question. What is to be gained for the Catholics by the success of their Question?-a right to hold certain offices without the use of certain preparatory words! The Catholics are spell-bound; if they were not, they would see, that they are now as morally eligible to all offices in this country as they can be, or as any other persons can be. I find no obstacles to the filling of any office in this country, but in the choice of those who have the power to appoint. And all the obstacles of the Catholics are those of the imagination. There are no obstacles sufficient to justify all the clamour that we hear upon the subject. And yet I will not admit that any Catholic can be more particular, as to what words he uses, than myself. But if asked, to gain an advantage, to use certain words, of the meaning of which I feel ignorant, I will use them. And so would the Catholics, if they were wise. But as matters stand, Catholics are already eligible, under their own notions of words, to all offices that are really useful to the mass of them; and what would they more? What will the sending of Catholic Members to Parliament avail them, until the whole people can unite in the choice of such Members? Nothing. Their clamour is a clamour to no good purpose. They are wasting their means for the gratification of a few noisy individuals who have private advantages in view. R. C. THE GOD FOR A SHILLING! THIS newly painted God is likely to make more noise in the world than all his predecessors. If it be prosecuted, it will form a striking feature in the history of this country. Simple as the thing is to all appearance, it speaks loudly upon and cuts deeply into the remaining superstition of this country. Its poignancy is made visible in the faces of thousands who daily look on it. Some laugh, but most feel astonished at the idea that this is the god of the Bible, and some few grow angry enough to quarrel about the exhibition. Had the print formed a part of a religious illustration of the Bible, it would have passed as a proper object for devotion with the devotees of the Bible; but as it comes from me, it is called a horrible blasphemy. The same would be said if I were to publish a Bible. I have seen religious descriptions of the Bible God quite as ridiculous as this print. In one Bible I have seen the God with a face as the sun is drawn, and all the lower limbs clad in armour. Roman Catholic Missal, I have seen the Holy Ghost overshadowing the Virgin Mary, and the representation was In a |