straight line to preferment, be the Church's doctrine God or No God.

I have watched, in like manner, with eager observance to ascertain as far as I could, what might be the principle of those extraordinary professions of liberality and universal tolerance, which charm the ear, as they cheat the sense, in the inflated orations of O'Connell, the would-be Member of Parliament for the County Clare. The very name of liberality has a charm in the utterance; and when disjoined from that dreadful accompanying qualification Christian liberality, so transports one with the hope of witnessing happier days than man has ever witnessed, as to make one throw up the cap and cry live for ever, for any He who utters it. If O'Connell meant but what he said; if Catholics coming into power would bring into action but a tithe part of the liberality of sentiment and regard to the broad universal principle of justice between man and man, that rounds their periods, gives animation to their eloquence, and resistless conviction to their arguments, who wouldn't help 'em in the struggle for their just right of emancipation? Nay, who wouldn't join heart and hand to get Protestant persecutors entirely ousted, and Popish liberals, or any men who would be truly liberal, put into the seat of representation, in their places? If Catholics could come into Parliament as citizens of the world, as brother-sons of our common parent the country, and would not bring their hate-engendering characterism as Catholics, with them; their emancipation might be regarded as an acquisition to the general chances of human happiness :-but as it is, Oakham Gaol is as tolerable as the Bastile, and one can wear out a life of suppressed convictions and enforced hypocrisy as well under Protestant as under Popish tyrants, and better bear those ills we have, than fly to others which we know not of.

But the principle of Popish liberality betrays itself behind all the flummery of Popish declamation. Hear and be charmed, but be not charmed to sleep by the syren sounds-" We ask only for liberty of conscience," exclaims the Milesian orator. O, demand most just! O claim most reasonable! "This is the struggle in which we are engaged, and in which every honest man ought to participate." Aye, aye, and buy it with his last drop of blood, and pant for it with his last gasp of life. O, what a charm of eloquence is here, sweet to the soul's sense, as the first breath of the zephyrs that fan the face of the heart-exhausted traveller! LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE! at the glorious word, my heart leaps up with rapture, and would tell me "then securities to be of good behaviour for five years to come, shall not be required; then, hireling thieves shall no longer be set on by fanatic idiots in power, to report and mangle the bursts of honest eloquence; then even such as I shall have liberty to address those whom I can engage and please by my addresses; then,

whatever one man can know as well as another, one man shall have his right to affirm or to deny as well as another; then, prosecuting and Oakhamizing for honestly avowed and ably maintained dissent from Christianity, shall be no more. Ah, no! no! My soul, cheat not thy hopes with such a dream of happiness. A Papist's liberty of conscience, like a Quaker's, means no more than liberty to take away the liberty of others. That man of mighty words, means nothing so little as the thing his words would indicate that arm so nobly raised to impress the emphatic period, "liberty of conscience," has a bloody crucifix in the sleeve on't, ready to dash the brains out, of any wight that should stand in need of more liberty than to be obliged to be a member of either of their churches.

Mr. O'Connell, like Saint Grimalkin, has his principle, that would not suffer him to elonge a claw against the poor bat, considered as a member of the fraternity of birds, but would pounce on him in an instant as a mouse. Amidst all his clap-traps about its being "the first duty of a Christian to do unto others as he would be done by, and to love all men as brothers," there lurks an economical sense, a mental reservation, that unbelievers are not to be considered as men; and therefore they, like the poor bat in the apologue, either as mouse or bird, shall have as little chance of escaping as ever. And for all the old cat's vows of extraordinary liberality, Christian whiskers will still reek in infidel blood-an' purr they never so musically about their love for all mankind. For look ye now! the sound of so much liberality has not finished its vibrations on our charmed ears, ere 'tis followed with the shrill whistle of Christian brigandery, the fell war-whoop of crusading zeal against those destined victims for whose blood they thirst, whom he designates as "the revolutionary Jacobins who are spurning alike the altar and the throne, and ready once more to pour the revolutionary lava on Europe." "We offer our young blood,-we offer," exclaims the impas sioned orator, "our country (Ireland) unblemished by infidelity, and unstained by any breach of faith." Ah! for what? For what but to be devoted in the horrible crusade of fixing the tottering pillars of both the altar and the throne, in deeper fastnesses than ever over the crushed necks of those who have the reasonableness to think, that altars and thrones can better be done without, than beds and tables. In fine, I observe that O'Connell's sentiments in reality are but the echo of his Christian brother Don' Miguel's; God preserve our throats from the tender mercies of either of them! Nothing can be really a principle, but such as is of absolutely universal application. Such I hold the maxim to be-All that man hath a right to claim from man is an interchange of kind offices, and of affectionate feelings. He who recognizes and applies that maxim, as the law of his sentiments and dealings towards all men, is a man of principle. He who No. 10.-VOL. 2.

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would put any considerations of his faith, his religion, or his opinions, on a paramount or equal footing with that principle, proclaims à war on principle, and is by his religion itself warped from Nature's rectitude, and made in the truest and worst sense of such a designation, an unprincipled man.

I congratulate you right heartily on the effects you are producing in your Tour through the Country. Had I seen the beautiful and interesting letter signed “A CHILD Of Nature," which enriches your last number, I should have considered that the Bristol Reformation subject was fairly exhausted.

Oakham Palace, August 30th, 1828.

Your's, truly,

ROBERT TAylor.

SUBSTANCE OF A SPEECH,

Delivered Monday evening, February 12, 1827, at the Forum of the Society of "Free Discussion and Mutual Improvement," 47, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, on the following question :—

"Are there any rational grounds to believe man has an immortal soul?”

BY T. R. BAYLEY POTTS.

MR. CHAIRMAN,-As some gentlemen have noticed some of the arguments, which fell from me on a former evening, but those chiefly on minor points, I think it my duty to reply; but first I would observe that the gentleman who proposed this question, wished it to be discussed on rational grounds alone, and wholly independent of scripture. I intend to abide by the rules laid down by that gentleman; for I can assure you, Sir, the Bible is the last book in the world, from which I should expect to deduce anything either rational, moral, philosophical, theological, physiological, or metaphysical. But here I am in an awkward dilemma, for the gentleman who proposed this question, and those who have opposed me, being Christian Soulites, consequently will not allow any thing which may fall from me, to be "rational." This being the case, I shall adduce that which appears to me to be rational, careless and indifferent to every other person's opinion or belief.

Sir,-The arguments I advanced when I had the honour of last addressing you, wherein I endeavoured to prove, from sensational impression alone, that man is wholly material and mortul, that the idea of man having something separate and distinct from his material organization, which the Soulist terms spirit," which is altogether indefinable, and indescribable, as being ideal, imaginative, and chimerical, remains unanswered. The reason is, Mr. Chairman, because the Soulite himself cannot define anything beyond the powers of the mind, which depend upon material substance, and natural organization alone. As I have mentioned the term "Mind," and being desirous to define words which I use sufficiently to be understood, perhaps it will be necessary for me to define what I mean by the term mind. I define mind to be the concentration of the five senses, upon the anastomosing and amalgamation of the nerves of the brain, these nerves are endowed with a power peculiar to their organization, to receive impressions from the senses.

The sentient principle or cogitative faculty is an attribute of these nerves, (i.e. the matter of the brair) depending entirely upon the health of the body, for their power and operation. These nerves ramify all over the body, consequently, the mind is entirely dependent on the ramifying nerves for all impressions, while the ramifying nerves are entirely dependent on the brain for their power of sensation; for if we could suppose a brain isolated and cut off from its ramifying nerves, and, of course all sensations, in such case there could be no mind. Cogitation, or thought, is nothing more than a recapitulation of pre-conceived ideas; for we cannot cogitate but only upon pre-conceived ideas. The component parts of the brain are subject to diseases, as well as the component parts of the eye; in fact, like other parts of the body, the maladies they are subject to, are symptomatic iu some, in others they are idiopathic. During which time the functions and operations of the mind are suspended, and in old age these nerves become rigid, and blunted, the sensational impressions are impeded, we then say, it is an imbecile mind, a second childhood.

Now, Sir, the gentleman who has so boldly stood forward (I may say almost isolated) to defend this ideal doctrine of the "soul," has always confounded real ideas with ideal ideas, and imaginatives with sensational impressions ! -a difference it appears to me, which they cannot distinguish, neither can they conceive how it is that their opponents can perceive the difference.

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What, Sir, are we to take the impotence of imaginatives for the experience of sensational impressions? Are we to deny that matter can think, because they tell us it depends upon something which they cannot define? No Sir, this imaginative idea of an immaterial soul is altogether without a basis, for what can we know of it, or what can be the use of it, if it cannot be defined? The Soulite himself cannot disconnect, he cannot disentangle it from the properties of matter, though he professes immateriality," or spirit," which he tells us is to live in another state, after our present body is disorganized and decomposed; yet he is necessitated to come back to nature, and materiality. He continually confounds it with "something," substance, brain, mind, and real ideas. In fact, every thing I ascribe to matter, the gentleman on the last evening, in one line, in one breath, and in six short words, used as synonimous terms "his mind, his soul, his spirit," and consequently we may suppose he means one and the same thing. Now I do not want them to define mind, I can do that myself. I want them to define this immaterial something, which they tell us thinks as by deputy for the mind. What would they say to me, if I were to tell them that mind is material and immaterial at the same time? This "soul" then is of no use in this present state. The mind, which is wholly material, is sufficient to perform every office here. It is only on the score of living after the body is dead, that the soul can be of use. In fact, Sir, the hypothesis of an immaterial soul can only be supported on an hypothesis equally as absurd, viz. on a belief in a future state of existence, or of rewards and punishments. Now, if the Soulite cannot receive any sensational impression of its existence while here, if he cannot define any thing but matter, its properties and attributes, is it not one sare proof, that the idea of his living in a future state is altogether imaginative? for it is evident, that the belief in a future state of existence, however consolatory, still it is only imaginative; now an imaginary belief By religion a Swedenborgian.

amounts to nothing. If we had one single real idea of its truth, we then might expect it to have influence on our actions, instead of which, those who entertain such belief, generally use it only as imaginary, for we never find it influence their actions as it regards morality, but they are generally influenced in their actions, and are kept in awe by the penal laws alone.

A gentleman who delivered his opinions on the subject on the last evening, told us, that "the faculty of thinking was not a property of the matter which composes the brain, but that the brain consisted of material substance and immaterial substance, and that all the early writers on the subject had allowed the existence of immaterial substance, and that thinking depended on it."

Now sir, no writer on anatomy or physiology, I ever read or heard of, uses the term immaterial substance, as indicative of real existence. I know that Mr. Locke in his work on the "Human Understanding," and other metaphysicians, frequently talk about immaterial substance, but I do not allow that they define what they mean, or that they separate it from material substance; they generally speak of it in the same manner as the gentlemen do here, viz. as though we all allowed it existence; they have no idea that this is the thing in dispute. Well, sir, as the brain is the seat of thought, and thinking depends on immaterial substance, what part of the brain I How am I to would ask, must we allow to be this immaterial substance? distinguish it, or separate it from matter, seeing that the Soulist himself cannot do it?

I have no idea of the existence of anything which is cognizable to the senses, as being anything else but matter, and the idea of anything existing not cognizable to our senses, appears to me, to be only imaginative.

I am not much versed in anatomy myself, but writers on that science, and physiology, inform me, that the nerves of the brain are tubular, that they are furnished with ganglions, and a fluid. Am I to suppose that the tubes and the ganglions are material substance, and the fluid immaterial substance? or, (as the gentleman jocosely said,) is the cerebrum and cerebellum immaterial substance only?

But is the nervous fluid cerebrum and cerebellum, cognizable to the senses? Yes! it must be answered.

Then they must be matter! my applying to them the term immaterial substance, will not make it so; it will still be matter. How shall I get over the difficulty? I cannot separate them because I have never received an idea of their separate existence.

But if we allow part of the brain to be immaterial substance, we have a right to allow other parts of the human body to be immaterial substance also.-Am I then to allow that the humours of the eye are material substance, and the retina immaterial substance ?-Monstrous absurdity!

Now sir, if that gentleman, or any other who believes in immaterial substance, will be so kind as to point out to me, the manner I can use either of my senses, so as to establish an infallible criterion, to distinguish or discriminate between material substance and immaterial substance, they will confer a very great favour on their very humble servant. They shall be had for ever in my grateful remembrance. I hereby promise to renounce my present opinions in regard to materiality, and to embrace immateriality, and become a Soulite for the rest of my life.