sies and schisms; and Popery has not scrupled to create and foster them for the purpose of weakening her adversary, and paving the way for her own dominion: she has fostered them, not only within her own bosom, where she feared to exasperate them by compression or rejection, but without, by encouraging and establishing false principles of religious toleration; and she is the author of nearly all the heresies which have broken out against religion since the Reformation, inasmuch as the bulence; and who, when the whole world spirit which engendered them was one which she had nurtured up by her own ar bitrary usurpation over reason on the one side, and the laxity of her rationalism on the other.

With jealousy and alarm-let us conclude-against the system ;-and not hatred but pity towards the individual, or the Church, in which the system is struggling, with more or less success, for its final and perfect development.

which really fraternizes and assimilates tem framed upon the acknowledged axiom itself with all the worst forms of popular that wealth is the good of nations and of licence, it reconciles the two seemingly man, and impregnated with that spirit of contradictory conditions; it solves the prob- covetousness which the Scriptures declare lem of the prophecy; and may at least re- to be idolatry. If Popery has her worship quire to be watched with no little alarm. of saints, England too has her pantheon of heroes, and poets, and kings, and philosophers, and statesmen, to whom it points the eye of the nation for imitation and reverence, as if they held in their hands the laws and dispensations of good and of knowledge, and whom it canonizes and consecrates in the very temple of God, though the Church knows nothing of them. Like Popery, the age has its miracles-its miracles of art and science, on which it builds its power and claim to obedience, and by which it would cheat the mind to rest contentedly in the wisdom of its system, and to recognize its almost supernatural command over the elements of the world. Popery has trifled with the sanctity of marriage. But the age has its Malthusian theory; and the British legislature has been compelled, openly and authoritatively, to desecrate the marriage tie. Popery has its extravagances of asceticism; but there is an ascetic and monastic system now established in the manufacturing districts and in every parish union of England-compelling, as a punishment upon poverty, that abstinence from domestic comfort, that harsh sad labour, that negation of all bodily enjoyment, which Popery only prescribed as a duty for the improvement of sanctity, or the mortification of sin. How far such a system be necessitated by the circumstances of the country we do not say. That it does exist

Such is our learned and pious author's conclusion; and one consideration, with which we will close, must press his charitable doctrine home to the minds of Englishmen-the state of our own country.* If there be a spirit of evil working from the beginning in the world, and struggling to raise up an Antichrist to confront and battle with the spirit of good upon earth; and if it be for that purpose suborning and moulding to its hands one great branch of the Catholic Church, tempting it with the apple of knowledge and with the lust of power, as it tempted our first parents-and if Providence has severed from the impending corruption, and raised up a witness to the truth, and an antagonist against the evil, in the person of the English Church -and if against this Church, as against their most dangerous foe, the powers of evil have gathered and fought from the beginning, in the hope that with her destruction the conquest of the world would be easy-it would be no strange thing to see an Antichrist, stamped with the same marks and leagued to the same end, rising up secretly upon our own ground, and aim--that it may be necessary—that men, who ing the same blows at the Church, though under a different disguise. Let us ask ourselves if this is not the case.

If Popery has tampered with the faith once delivered to the saints by adding to it, the ruling power of England-the boasted 'Spirit of the Age'-has taken from it. It has introduced a system of education without a creed, or with a creed composed by itself, and omitting every article with which heretics might presume to quarrel. If Popery in its curious profaneness has threatened to touch the most holy and awful doctrines of the faith-the Trinity, and the Divinity of our Lord, the British legislature has fraternized with itself, and classed, under the common pretence of Christianity, sects which openly deny both. If Popery has her adoration of images, the British empire has a worship of Mammon-a sys

See Lect. vi, p. 46.

in their hearts condemn it, feel themselves compelled to submit to it-this must, surely, be sufficient to alarm a Christian at the condition of a nation which has generated such a system.

It would be painful (though not difficult) to trace the parallel much farther. One great feature indeed our mystery of evil wants; the one which round even the sins of Popery throws something of interest and dignity, and captivates the imagination even to delude the reason. It has no unity; it struggles indeed for power; it centralizes, subordinates, systematizes, strives to spread itself into every province of society, to raise up future generations impregnated with its own principles, and to choke and trample on every root from which a different spirit may spring up. But it is too gross and monstrous in its first axioms, too palpably opposed to religion and truth in even its pretensions to them

both, for it to obtain among mankind an extensive or durable sway. Every democracy, sooner or later, will pass into a tyranny. Establish the rule of the many, and the many must finally take refuge from their own crimes and follies in the rule of one. And thus when the features of Antichrist are traced in the spirit of the age, this is to be regarded only as a brief and passing manifestation of its power, coming before us under the form most tempting to our present state of mind, but in reality soon about to pass into some shape more like to truth and goodness, and, therefore, more dangerous to them both.

names of which we have prefixed to this article, scarcely deserve to be considered as literature-they are but a few specimens of the ephemeral spawn of incendiary tracts, advertisements, and placards, with which the Anti-Corn-Law Associations inundate the country. But, affecting to appeal to reason, and having no doubt considerable influence in some quarters, they bring themselves within our jurisdiction; and we on our part are not sorry to accept the occasion they present of bringing-as far as in us lies-to the tribunal of public opinion the foulest, the most selfish, and altogether perhaps the most dangerous Another phase and form may still await combination of recent times. We hardly it, and that phase be Popery. When the can except the great Jacobin league, genwork of the demagogue has been accom-erated by the French revolution; because plished, and an impoverished, bewildered, Jacobinism was a 'bold-faced villain,' enexhausted people is sinking down in the thusiastic and indiscreet, who avowed his agonies of remorse and the darkness or real designs, and was therefore more easily despair of unbelief, Rome will be ready at dealt with than these hypocritical associaits ear to offer its unction and its rule as tions, which, 'grown, like Satan, wiser the last and only refuge from the destruc- than of yore,' assume more cautious forms tion into which it has plunged them; and and more plausible pretences in pursuit of if England once more become Rome's, the same ultimate object. Indeed, this how long will the coming of Antichrist be new League has in many respects fraterdelayed upon earth? Absit, precamur, nized with the old Jacobin spirit of enmity omen! to our existing institutions, which has for half a century taken so many various shapes, and which is now ready to join the new revolutionary banner, that substitutes for the vague motto of 'THE RIGHTS OF ART. VII.-1. The Anti-Corn-Law Circu- MAN' the more intelligible but equally delar. J. Gadsby, Manchester. 1839-ceptive war-cry of CHEAP BREAD.'

1841.

2. The Anti-Bread-Tax Circular. Gadsby, Manchester, 1841, 1842.

The Anti-corn-law agitation was for a time paralyzed by the direction which the late outbreak in the manufacturing districts happened to take. The League had expected to be only lookers-on while the

3. The Anti-Bread-Tax Almanack. Gadsby, Manchester, 1841, 1842. 4. Daily Bread; or Taxation without Re-mob destroyed other people's property, and presentation resisted; being a Plan for the Abolition of the Bread-Tax- Give us this day our daily bread. By One of the Millions. pp 32. 1841. 5. Union, the Patriot's Watchword on the Present Crisis. By the Rev. Henry Edwards, &c. pp. 24. Manchester and London. 1842.

6. The Lawcraft of Landcraft; with Legislative Illustrations. By James Acland, one of the Lecturers of the National Anti-Corn-Law League.

7. Address to the Middle and Working Classes engaged in Trade and Manufactures throughout the Empire, on the Necessity of Union at the Present Crisis. By Richard Gardner, Esq., B. A. Manchester. 1842.

were equally surprised and stunned when some of the ruins glanced off on their own heads. They are now beginning to recover their spirits-we do not say their senses-for, instead of profiting by the experience they have just had of the danger, even to themselves, of exciting those whom, when once excited, they have no power to restrain, they are now busy re-organizing a new agitation, and have even ventured to propose to raise by public contribution the sum of 50,000l., to give renewed vigour to their lawless crusade-a crusade, indeed, we may call it-for, as we shall see presently, it pollutes and perverts the most sacred topics into incentives to pillage and bloodshed.

It is not our province to pronounce whether this levying money for the avowed We are aware that the publications, the purpose of forcing the legislature to alter

WE

the law of the land be not per se criminally punishable; but we will take upon our selves to say that, considered in connection with all the previous proceedings of those associations, it is illegal and in the highest degree unconstitutional. We cannot conceive that any man, entertaining the slightest respect for the law, the constitution, or even the public peace, would contribute to the funds of these associations, if he were aware of what their proceedings have been, and what, under the pretence of 'cheap bread,' their real objects indisputably are. The summary which we are now about to give of the history of these associations may, we hope, have the doubly salutary effect of opening people's eyes and closing their purses !

We feel this to be the more necessary, because, amongst other exertions towards forwarding this subscription, the advocates. of the League have taken the bold line of denying-not of merely palliating, for that might look like repentance-but of utterly denying the violent language and proceedings that had been imputed to them. An assertion so extravagant, if it had been made by one of the usual organs of the League, we should have hardly thought worthy of notice-but when we find it produced and circulated under the name and authority of a Peer of Parliament, it becomes so grave a matter as to deserve, we feel, to be probed to the bottom. A letter has just been published, addressed by LORD KINNAIRD to Mr. Smith, one of the hired lecturers of the League, and secretary of the London Anti-Corn-Law Association, in which his Lordship avows himself an original member of the League -denies, on its part, the charge of violence, &c., made against it-gives many, of what he no doubt calls, reasons for his hostility to the Corn Laws, and advocates with great earnestness the success of the subscription. We shall not follow his Lordship into a discussion of the policy, justice, or operation of the corn laws; we have debated those questions so recently, and our opinions have stood so entirely unshaken by any adverse argument, and have been so wonderfully confirmed by growing experience, that we are enabled to resist the temptation of exposing the futility and inconsistency on these points of Lord Kinnaird's letter, which indeed exhibits, in a most striking way, the peculiarity which seems distinctive of Anti-Corn-Law writers as a class—namely, that all their facts happen, by a lucky coincidence, to overturn all their arguments. His Lordship is, it

seems, a farmer; and while his letter professes to advocate a low price of corn, it is filled with the bitterest complaints of the low prices of it as well as of every other kind of agricultural produce. The jumble between his profession of free-trade principles, and his agony at the least practical approach to them, is sufficiently comic ; and, if we had not graver matters in hand, we should desire no better sport than to run him for twenty minutes; but our present business is neither with his Lordship's opinions on farming nor free-trade, but with his evidence in defence of the League

with certain matters of fact, which on his own personal authority he roundly denies, and which we think that we can, on still higher authority, indisputably establish. His Lordship's statement is

'THE LEAGUE HAS AT NO TIME BEEN THE ADVOCATE OF PHYSICAL FORCE, OR HAD ANYTHING TO object is to instil knowledge into the minds of Their the people, and to publish facts, the PLAIN STATEMENT of which is quite sufficient to arouse the indignation of honest and feeling men against our commercial laws, without the use of VIOLENT LANGUAGE, which can only injure a cause, instead of advancing its interest.'-Morn. Chron. Nov. 26, 1842.

DO WITH THE LATE POPULAR TUMULTS.

This statement has been, as might be expected, received by the League with great exultation; it was peculiarly welcome, for at the moment of its arrival the League had received some mortifying hints of disapprobation, even on scenes of its former successes. Lord Kinnaird's letter was therefore quite a prize. It has been reprinted and circulated, and quoted and puffed, with great industry and triumph; and who shall now say that the League ever used violent language,'-or menaced the Government with the application of physical force'-or did anything towards producing the late popular tumults'-when a peer of Parliament, himself a member of the League, publicly, and on his own responsibility, solemnly asserts that they did not?

Now, upon each of these points WE JOIN ISSUE with LORD KINNAIRD; and we trust that-considering not merely the rank and station of the champion who has thus thrown down the gauntlet, but the grave importance of the public question he has provoked-we shall be excused for entering into what might otherwise be thought a superfluity of detail.

We must begin by observing that there are two leading anti-corn-law associations : the one instituted in January, 1839, styled

the Manchester Anti-Corn-Law Associa- | the council and other officers, and of Fition; and the other, which grew out of it nance, Executive, and Petitioning Committhree months later, under the title of the National Anti-Corn-Law LEAGUE.

There is little real distinction between these associations-none, we believe, but that the Manchester Association professes to be a local, and the League assumes to be ' a general and national union.' The lead

ing members, however, and governing bodies of both societies being almost identical, both having the same purse, and their professed objects, and the machinery for executing them, being common to both, the two societies may, in common parlance and for general discussion, be considered as one. The formation of the Manchester Anti-Corn-Law Association was first suggested at a dinner given to Dr. Bowring in Manchester, by the friends of Free Trade, in September, 1838. On the 10th of January, 1839, the project was so far ripened that the following persons, who may be considered the founders of the institution, were nominated a committee to solicit and receive subscriptions to carry it into ef fect :

'J. B. Smith, Esq.

Mr. Alderman Cobden
Mr. Alderman Kershaw
Mr. Alderman Callender

Mr. Alderman Shuttleworth
J. C. Dyer, Esq.

R. H. Greg, Esq.
H. Hoole, Esq.'

Manchester Times, 12th January.

On the 28th January the Association was formally organized at a general meeting, which passed several fundamental resolutions, of which the two first and only important ones were :

tees; and the following Justices of the Peace appointed by her Majesty's Commission for the borough of Manchester, in addition to the four aldermen above nained, were elected into the council, viz :—

Elkanah Armitage,

John Brooks,
Robert Stuart,
John Hyde,
A. Watkins,
William Neeld,
J. B. Smith,
C. J. S. Walker,
James Murray,

Thomas Potter, Esqrs.

Mr. Potter (now Sir T. Potter) being at this time mayor of Manchester; and all these magistrates having continued members of the Council of the Association at the period of the late disturbances, except Mr. Murray, whose name we do not now

see in the list, and Mr. Neeld, who was then mayor of the town, but who, in consequence, we believe, of what he saw during those disturbances, has had the good sense and candour to retire from the League. We must also observe that Mr. Holland Hoole, who appears on the constituent committee of the Association, was also a magistrate, and in 1841-2 chief-magistrate, of the adjoining borough of Salford.

The appointment of the too notorious Frost to the magistracy of Newport did no credit to Lord John Russell's discretion as a leader, or his sense of duty as a minister; and we regret to say that whenever subsequent events have called attention to any of his other appointments, particularly in the new boroughs, they are found to be liable, though in different degrees, to the same 1. That the Association be called the "Man- kind of objection. chester Anti-Corn-Law Association," and its ob-him have been generally of a very decidThe men selected by ject is hereby declared to be to obtain, by all legal and constitutional means, such as the forma- ed bias against our political and religious tion of local Anti-Corn-Law Associations, the establishments, and in many respects very delivery of lectures, the distribution of tracts, the unfit for the situations in which they were insertion of articles in the public papers, and for- placed. warding petitions to parliament, the total and immediate repeal of the corn and provision laws.

2. No party political discussion shall, on any account, be allowed at any of the general or committee meetings of the Association; nor shall any resolution be proposed, or subject entertained, which shall be at any variance with the declared object of the Association.'

The other resolutions relate to the amount of subscription, the appointment of

This conduct of Lord John Russell in

the appointment of those magistrates is in every way so remarkable, and we think so reprehensible, that we extract from the debates of the House of Commons (5th of May, 1842) the following summary of his Lordship's nomination of magistrates in some of the principal towns of the district in which the transactions we are about to detail have occurred :