No. 6. VOL. 1.] LONDON, Friday, February 8, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

RELIGIOUS DISQUALIFICATIONS FOR CIVIL DUTIES.

There is no Sabbath for the people of this country, in the con-. sideration of this subject. It not only meets us in our daily papers; but those of the Sunday re-echo the theme. The bad feeling, which religion generates, every where predominates, and one half of the business of parliament, and of the country at large, is to attend to religious hostility, either to carry on the war, or to endeavour to make peace, among the religious combatants. What with Catholic Emancipation, the Test Acts, and infidel oaths, and the prosecutions of infidels, the subject is perpetually before us, and every active mind seems distressed by an attention to it. To separate religion from the affairs of the state, and of legislation, will be a great victory over religious tyranny, the tyranny of the established few, and leave a comparative peace through the country. That religion, of which it is said, even upon the pretension of superhuman prophecy, that it was to bring peace on earth, and good will among men, must be very ill understood by those who advocate it, or the alleged prophecy is ironically stated. The effect is the reverse of that which was promised. Seventeen hundred years have elapsed, since Christianity was first introduced to mankind, and there has not been since, there is not now, peace on earth and good will among men. Is, or is not, that number of years a full and fair trial of the system? Or would you wish a similar state of things to continue another seventeen hundred years, without any hope of ultimate amendment; without the least prospect of peace on earth and good will among men. If Christianity were peace on earth and good will among men, then would it be a proper system of religion or morals for all men to embrace; but since Christianity has practically and in effect been, in every age and in every country in which it has existed, a war on earth and bad will among men, what then ought to become of it?

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street.

Do we now see any peace and good will among the various christian sects one toward another? Do we see any peace and good will among these christian seets, toward other religious sects, such as the Jew, Mahometan and the Hindoo? Do we see any peace and good will among them, toward persons who are not religious, or not of any sect? Then where is their promised and boasted peace and good will to be found? Is this quality in the King and Royal Family? Is it in the parliament? Is it in the army or navy? Is it in the established church of this or of any other country? Is it in any of the dissenting churches? Is it in any of our courts of equity or law? Is it among our corporations? Is it in our streets, our houses, or among our neighbours? Is it in our families? Where is it? The answer is lamentable; it is no where! Nation preys upon nation: sect upon sect: family upon family; man upon man: and neither Christianity nor any other religion has yet done any good for mankind; but each has done much evil. Evil, not good, pain, not pleasure, predominates. The physical power of mankind is in alliance with the greatest ignorance, and knowledge with its moral power is as yet rejected and persecuted. Some better principle must spread among mankind, to produce peace on earth and good will among men. All allow that it is desirable; but none produce it. All past religious, social, or political systems have failed to produce it. Robert Owen thinks it is to be done by co-operation, by a community of goods, instead of individual and competitive property; but he finds himself every where opposed by the long standing and deeprooted various pre-existing prejudices. He finds his system opposed by the various systems of religion. There is no co-operating principle, between any two sects of religion. No union can be formed between them to induce them to work together, and to one and the same end. Experience has shown Robert Owen, that he must make his men, before he can make his system; and that co-operation is not a principle to be indiscriminately introduced among all men in their present state. How, then, are we to proceed, to

* OBITUARY.-Died at Edmonton, on the 25th ult., MRS. ELIZABETH TAYLOR, mother of the REV. ROBERT TAYLOR. No notice whatever of the sickness or decease of his venerable parent was sent by the rest of the family to the Rev. Gentleman; and the funeral has been conducted without any opportunity afforded to him of expressing the last honours of filial piety. For many years, this Gentleman has been repudiated from his family, and his letters to his late mother, and others of his family, entreating to be reconciled to them, have, by the advice of the Rev. Vicar of the parish, been invariably returned unopened. Mr. Robert Taylor had always been con sidered in Edmonton as an example of filial tenderness and duty, and his attentions to his mother had attracted the admiration of all who knew him. The last pastoral counsel which the Rev. Vicar had given to this lady was, to beware of her infidel son; for, that, if she opened her doors to him, the Kingdom of Heaven would be shut against herself. Unhappily, the text for such a doctrine was not wanting, and the orthodox divine adroitly quoted, 14 Luke, 26.

mend our men? How are we to make their manners suitable to the production of peace on earth and good will among men ? Christianity has failed to do this. Religion generally has failed. What shall we next try?

Will Catholic Emancipation produce it? We fear not; for that will remove no more of the bad principle, than the exclusion of a few men from offices, which, at least, are as well filled by Protestants as they can be filled by Catholic Christians. The Catholics have had their day: they will never again predominate in this country. Let no one be afraid of such a predominancy. It is impracticable, even if the desire do exist as a project. Nor will their emancipation abate their hostility with the Protestants. Giving them, legislatively, qualifications for civil offices, will only turn the current of their religious hostility into some other channel. That bad first principle will still exist. That is in the nature of their religion, and not in any political exclusion from office. We do not object to their emancipation. We would vote for it. We see nothing to fear from it; and, seeing nothing to fear, we would not leave the Catholics such a ground of complaint. That complaint, weak and silly as it is, forms a bond of union among them, and renders their superstition the more impregnable to the assaults of reason. Remove this complaint, and much will be done to disunite them, they will be the more assailable by good sense. An abatement of the evil, which prevents peace on earth, and good will among men, will be produced; but nothing more than a slight abatement: the religion itself must be removed to complete the good, or as another step toward the completion of the good. That removal is not to be accomplished by any kind of persecution; it is only to be accomplished by the moral power of knowledge, of investigation and publication. Political equality among the religious sects is necessary as a preliminary to summon their attention to the bad foundation of all their various sects and systems; but nothing more than this is philosophically desirable in what is miscalled, or exaggeratedly called, Catholic Emancipation. Will the repeal of the Test Acts produce it?

The Test Acts form nothing more than a corporate privilege, by which many persons are excluded from office; and even these are become comparatively obsolete, by means of an annual bill of indemnity for their violation; a great anomaly, which makes it lawful to violate a law. They are the shibboleth of the established church party, and had the Catholics so dealt with the dissenting Protestants, that establishment had never existed. These acts may be considered the charter of religious spoliation, by which one sect was robbed by another, of the property it had accumulated, and that other took this precaution of the Test Acts, or the shibboleth of an offensive oath, to exclude any future claim, or successful claim, by the descendants of the original owners of

that property. The time has passed in which that claim or restoration was likely to be successful, as far as the Catholics are concerned; and any new claim on the part of the dissenters, is not now to be supposed; for the royal and religious debt of the nation requires this religious payment; and the property now in possession should be taken as the purchase money of past corporate privileges. The removal of the Test Acts will be the removal of one bone of contention among the sects of this country; but the principle on which that bone of contention grew up, will remain, to produce new bones of the kind, for the religious dogs to growl and quarrel over, until infidelity be fashionably and legislatively encouraged to spread its healing wings over all these religions-these Christian disorders.

An interference in the quarrels of religious sects, is an unworthiness on the part of any government. The word government, in its enlarged sense, implies, or should imply legislation, for a whole people and not for a sect, not for any preference to one part, and an exclusion from privilege to another part of the people. But why do we wonder at it? It is not the people that. legislates and governs. The legislation and government has been hitherto carried on by the Royal Family and aristocracy, supported by the two armies of priests and soldiers; the church militant and the state militant, both militant against the people as a whole. This is the evil to be remedied, and the evil will only recede as we approach toward the remedy. There is a vast deal of work to be done in the working out of this remedy. "Peace on earth, and good will among men," is the end sought, and to the accomplishment of this, as we most sincerely desire it, so we conclude, so we act, and so we say, that one of the most effectual steps, toward the breaking up of all religious disqualifications for the civil offices of the state, is to cherish and to encourage the circulation among the whole people of such a publication as "THE LION." Any sectarian view will never accomplish that grand desideratum. The fundamental fault of all the sects, of sectarianism itself, must be set forth and removed. This is done in no other periodical publication than "THE LION," and this justifies its claim on the support of all men, who desire peace on earth and good will among men.

We would address the complaining Catholics, and other dissenters, and tell them, that they have no hope of what they seek, but in conjunction with the advocacy of such principles as are developed in "THE LION." If we did not feel this, we should adopt another, or the other, and the, at present, most profitable course; but we persevere to encounter the pecuniarily unprofitable obloquy of all the religious sects, of the great majority of the people, from an ardent desire to amend their condition and to bring about that peace on earth and good will among men, which will never spring from any other gospel, from any other christianity, than that

contained in " THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RICHARD CARLILE."

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH ON THE REVEREND ROBERT TAYLOR.

As soon as the four judges met in the court this day, February 7th, which was soon after twelve o'clock, the Solicitor-General being called upon, moved the judgment of the court upon Robert Taylor. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Tenterden, read the indictment, and his notes of the trial. No affidavits were put in on either side. The Lord Chief Justice occupied a considerable time, in the preliminary statement of the case, going over the ground reported in the printed proceedings of the trial, which would be unnecessarily repeated here. Mr. Taylor was called on for his address to the court soon after one o'clock. In the course of his address, he was, at least, a dozen times interrupted, chiefly by Mr. Justice Bailey, warning him not to address that to the court which the court did not like to hear. These interruptions broke the thread of his argument, and they were frequently made under a misapprehension of what the defendant was about to say. The following address is that which would have been delivered, had no interruptions taken place. It is the substance of that which was delivered, and is properly that which should appear before the public.

MY LORD,

THE wisdom of British law, allows to a defendant, after a verdict hath been obtained against him, the privilege of pleading in arrest of judgment; and calls upon himself to shew why sentence should not be passed upon him.And this the law does, from a most just consideration of the liability of all human conclusions to error and mistake, and from a humane application of the corollary of that consideration, that it comes within a probability, that the defendant himself, after all hope, of conflicting with what hath been held to be legal evidence, shall be reckless, may yet be able to suggest argument of sufficient suasion, to bid wisdom revoke her decision, and justice drop her sword.

Of this privilege, I now avail myself, being quite sensible of the restrictions under which, alone, I am allowed to speak, and more than sensible enough, of the melancholy augury of any argument offered by one in my situation, against the power that presides, and the authority that must and will conclude.

น

I can only pledge myself in guarantee, for the attention to which my remonstrance may seem entitled; that, however offensive my language has on a former occasion been held to be, I shall certainly use no language now, which can be thought calculated to aggravate that fault, or to forfeit my claim on your attention.

I am allowed, I presume, to offer reasons why the verdict that has been recorded against me, should be entirely set aside; I wish it to be set aside, not indeed, with any view to my obtaining a new trial; but with a view that this Protestant country may never more be disgraced by any trial of the sort again for ever; and that the world may see that though there will be always weak-hearted and foolish men, eager to persecute and wishing to be cruel, there will no more be found men of cultivated minds who will stain the sword of justice with oppression, or give effect to the decisions of fanaticism.

The reasons I offer in total bar of judgment, shall be none other than the most cogent that were ever offered to man, and such as no reason of mán could possibly withstand, unless its actings were forestalled, (as here I have no right to fear that they should be), by a degree of prejudice, against which