Where is that well remembered band
Which gather'd round thee at command ?
Where is the mistress of thy hoard,

Thou now disus'd, once, festive board?
Perish'd, or perishing, the rest
Perhaps is better unexprest.

I. W. IMRAY.

DIEGESIS.

FIFTY pounds have been subscribed toward the printing of this book, so that it will be proceeded with immediately and rapidly, not doubting but the future supply will meet the demand for cash. They who have not yet paid their subscriptions are requested to do so at their earliest convenience.

The book will be divided into fifty chapters, the following are some of the heads.-Chap. 3, The Christian and Pagan Creeds collated; Inference.-Chap. 9, The Christian Scriptures, Doctrines, Discipline and Ecclesiastical Polity long anterior to the period assigned to the birth of Jesus Christ.-Chap. 13, References to the Monkish or Therapeutan Doctrines to be traced in the new Testament.-Chap. 19, Resemblances of the Pagan and Christian Theology.-Chap. 20, Esculapius and Jesus compared -Chap. 29, The Sign of the Cross entirely Pagan.-Chap. 35, Demonstration that no such person as Jesus Christ ever existed &c. &c. &c.

R. C.

STRICTURES ON THE PERSONAL CLEANLINESS OF THE ENGLISH,

With a description of the Baths of the Turks, &c.

THIS is a book which has been left with me for publication by a travelling gentleman. It was printed at Pisa, in English, in a small edition of two hundred and fifty copies, the whole of which have been left with me. The price is four shillings, bound in cloth, and, as it contains neither sedition nor blasphemy, may be considered dear. But it is very useful book, and calculated to promote personal and general cleanliness, by showing us, that the Christians, in the aggregate, have been and are the filthiest people in their persons, of all the human beings that have existed on the face of the earth. R. C.

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet-street, where all Communications, post-paid, or free of expense, are requested to be left.

POLITICAL DINNERS,

I HAVE long since worn out the disposition that puts a value on meetings of this kind; but I must confess that I was more pleased with the proceedings of that which met Mr. Shiel at the London Tavern on Monday last, than of any thing of the kind that has before happened. The sentiments of this were below the mark of that which celebrated the birth-day of Thomas Paine at the City of London Tavern in 1826; but there were assembled only seventy-five persons, here not much, if any, less than five hundred, all, indeed, that the house could accommodate, with a host of dissatisfied applications. In Wednesday's Morning Herald, Mr. Cobbett, whose personal malignity in politics is more vicious, more criminal, than that of any public man who has ever stood before a public, insinuates, that this dinner was made up or partly paid for with Catholic rent. Never was insinuation more vile or false. I have no other partiality than a love of truth in the matter; but my firm belief is, every man there paid for his own ticket or if a gift ticket brought a person there, it was a matter of private friendship, and not of tricky politics, about which Mr. Cobbett should be the last man to make an accusation against others.

This meeting at the London Tavern was not without its nonsense. There were professional singers with their Non nobis Domine, their God save the King, and similar nonsense, with two or three stale, idle, useless toasts, and a great deal of hypocritical, disgraceful and rabble-like cheering, by plan, and without the excitement that can alone excuse it. The chairman too, William Smith, the member for Norwich, was offensively garrulous, though his sentiments were generally good, where they were spontaneous, and not planned by customary toasts. And Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62. Fleet Street. No. 19.-Vol. 2. 2 P

the company was insulted in drinking the health, and having the speech of Thomas Campbell, the poet, while he was in a state of offensive intoxication. These were the faults of the meeting.

Its merits were, that it consisted of Infidels, Catholics, Unitarians, Freethinking Christians, and for aught I know, Christians of all sorts, condemning religious persecution, religious exclusion from civil offices, and all the political vices of religion, which occasion political dissensions. It was stated by Mr. Fox, the Unitarian preacher, with great applause, it was the toasted sentiment of the company, that domestic union and national strength required, that neither long creed, short creed, nor the want of erced, should affect the political condition of the citizen. This, with the equalization of the sects, by the separation of the established church, from its wrongfully acquired property, and its income by compulsive taxation, is the grand point for present political union. The man who cannot come to this point, is not worth a rush as a reformer. Without this measure for co-operation, his talk about parliamentary reform, or any other kind of reform, is mere delusion. The first moral step toward reform, must be in equality of citizenship, or in no civil disabilities arising from religious opinions. Our prime minister would be a hero indeed, were he to strike an effectual blow at these civil disabilities, by an entire removal of the practice of public oath-making. This is the sore. It is the oath-making that is now the pivot of civil disabilities from religious opinions. Let us hear no more about Catholic Emancipation, as a partial remedy, but about the removal of this vice of oath-making as the general remedy. The proposal of this general remedy would be much more palatable to the people of England than the partial one, and equal to all that is now asked publicly by the people of Ireland. For the abolition of oath-making, the most unanswerable arguments may be advanced. The circumstance, that oaths are not found necessary among Peers in some cases, and among Quakers in all, is a proof, that they are not at all necessary to the ends of justice or public good.

With the exception of the sound, with the exception of a sermonical, Evangelical, or quaintly religious twang, Mr. Fox made a very excellent speech, proving that what he called Christianity, was no more like, nor so much like the Christianity of the multitude, as it was like unto my Christianity. Mr. Wm. Eusebius Andrews, in the last number of his Truth Teller, says, "the Roman Catholic religion is charity itself, as it came down from Heaven." Without stopping to ask Mr. Andrews where is heaven or what is charity, I would remind him, as I will prove, that Christianity is a thing or a principle which every man shapes for himself, as every man makes his own god. With such men as Mr. Fox and Mr. Andrews, though differing in tenets, it is a

harmless sort of thing; but, what are we to think of it, when it is presented in the following shape?—

·

CASTING OUT DEVILS.-The Kaleidoscope of Bordeaux contains a long account of an exorcism performed by the Curé of Roussillon, M. Soucasse, upon a female named Hortensie Dabordie, who, when in a state of delirium from illness, was pronounced by the wiseacres of the district to be possessed with devils. The Kaleidoscope, after mentioning the facts which preceded the arrival of the Curé, says," M. Soucasse, having inquired the cause of the disturbance, approached Hortensie, and pronounced the name of Jesus. She uttered a diabolical cry,' and the Curé declared that she was certainly possessed. He exclaimed,Fly, fly, and get some holy water and my robes, and hasten for my missal as quick as possible.' He was instantly obeyed. Hortensie was then led to the Church, being sprinkled all the way with holy water, and immediately on their entrance she fell down apparently exhausted. The Cure then pronounced some sacramental words, threw half a bucket of holy water upon her, and then turned himself towards the people, exclaiming, 'Look! look at the little devils who go out of her.' Immediately after this idle ceremony, the sacrameat was administered to Hortensie Dabordie, who partook of it, and directly after this it was pretended that all the devils had flown away. They were 47 in number, and the Curé said that the three last had given him more trouble than all the rest. He declared also, that although he had only seen one fly out of the window, he was certain that they had all disappeared; the one alluded to was black as ebony, and had a dart more than a foot in length."

There, that is the sort of Christianity that suits the rabble of priests and people; and that is in essence what the principle of Christianity has been among the aggregate of sects, and that is what it has been more particularly among the aggregate of Roman Catholics: a devilish principle, a principle of fright, terror and cheat upon the multitude.

Mr. Shiel expatiated on the grievances of Ireland in a very masterly style. The picture which he drew was harrowing to the feelings, and the company seemed to feel horror at the imputafions associated with their government. The responding sentiment of the five hundred citizens certainly was as it was expressed : THE CATHOLICS SHALL BE EMANCIPATED.

The newspapers make those dinner speeches too common to justify an insertion of them here; nor are they of sufficient worth to be considered as boons or guides to posterity. Another century will present the advocacy of very different principles, or present religion in a very different aspect, and as we infidels have now no guides that are a century old, or fifty years old, so, our posterity will certainly not take their rules and precepts from the dinner speeches of this day.

I have felt anxious that Mr. Shiel should find something like fair play and good reception in this country. I do not like the manner in which Mr. Cobbett has annoyed, insulted and belied him, just because, and only because, the name of William Cobbett is not now the standing theme of the Catholic Association.

Mr. Shiel and Mr. O'Connell are precisely the same men now, improved if there be any change, as they were when they had Mr. Cobbett's praise. They have since done and now earnestly promise to do something important for Ireland. They grow more and more interesting to the reforming public, and he must be an enemy to all hope of reform, who would now throw stones at them, or throw impediments in their way. The Catholic Association in Ireland is really a republican institution, seeking to obtain for the Irish people redress from and a cessation of aristocratical wrongs. Daniel O'Connell is a more influential and more useful Tribune for the Irish people, than ever the Romans found in Rome. He unites while he agitates the people to a display of their moral and physical powers, and he cannot fail to awe his opponents into a redress of grievances, upon the systematic ground which he and his co-agitators are now taking. In the relation in which I stand toward him in politics and religion, I perceive his faults; but they are not faults in him, in the relation in which he stands toward the people of Ireland: and rather than impede his efforts on the ground which he has now taken, I would cut off my left hand. The great principle of reform is involved in a lessening of the power of the aristocracy. Whatever does that is with us, and that Daniel O'Connell and his co-agitators are doing.

The best proof of the importance and good management of the meeting, and of the very general satisfaction received by the company in the purpose for which it met, is, that a portion of the newspaper press has imitated Cobbett, and has tried, by lying, to vilify the proceedings. See Cobbett mortified, and I'll engage, that you may see as the cause of it, some more honest man triumphing over his malice. To compare the dinner which Cobbett got up in the same room, in April 1826, when he summoned his friends from all parts of the country to attend it, and when one-half of the persons assembled were from the country, when a long notice had been given, and all his trick and influence used to make the company numerous; to compare that dinner, as to the company and the sentiment, with this given to Mr. Shiel, on Monday last, at a very short notice, is to make a serious drama of the mock heroism of Tom Thumb, and to burlesque the Register-reading William Cobbett, by placing his tricky clap-trap oratory, his mountebankery for the mob, side by side, with the sound principled eloquence of Richard Shiel And yet I do not deny to William Cobbett, cunning, great industry, never more industrious than when he wants to sink a better man than himself, and that sort of talent which long practice and experience give to industry, but which is never more than accumulative, never original, and when, as in Cobbett's case, not always honest, is as often bent to evil as to good. He is an unprincipled man; fixed to no principle; now he does a good thing, and then undoes it by doing something reverse to it; and