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How many-how omnipotent are the interests, which engage men to break the mental chains of women! How many, how dear are the interests which engage men to exalt rather than lower their condition, to multiply their solid acquirements, to respect their liberties, to make them their equals, to wish them even their superiors! Let them enquire into these things. Let them examine the relation in which the two sexes stand, and ever must stand, to each other. Let them perceive, that mutually dependant, they must ever be giving and receiving, or they must be loosing-receiving or loosing in knowledge, in virtue, in enjoyment. Let them perceive how immense the loss, or how immense the gain. Let them not imagine that they know aught of the delights which intercourse with the other sex can give, until they have felt the sympathy of mind with mind, and heart with heart; until they bring into that intercourse every affection, every talent, every confidence, every refinement, every respect. Until power is annihilated on one side, fear and obedience on the other, and both restored to their birthright equality-let none think that affection can reign without it; or friendship, or esteem. Jealousies, envyings, suspicions, reserves, deceptions-these are the fruits of inequality. Go, then! and remove the evil first from the minds of women, then from their condition, and then from your laws. Think it no longer indifferent whether the mothers of the rising generation are wise or foolish. Think it not indifferent whether your own companions are ignorant or enlightened. Think it not indifferent whether those who are to form their opinions, sway the habits, decide the destinies of the species-and that not through their children only, but through their lovers and husbands-are enlightened friends or capricious mistresses, efficient coadjutors or careless servants, reasoning beings or blind followers of superstition?

There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favouring their subordination, ensures their utility. 'Tis the same argument that is employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the poor in all countries. And let us observe, that if good in one case, it should be good in all; and that, unless you are prepared to admit that you are yourselves less industrious in proportion to your intelligence, you must abandon the position with respect to others. But, in fact, who is it among men that best struggle with difficulties? the strong-minded or the weak? Meet with serenity adverse fortune? the wise or the foolish? Who accommodate themselves to irremediable circumstances? or, when remediable, who control and mould them at will? the intelligent or the ignorant? Let your

answer, in your own case, be your answer in that of women.

If the important enquiry which engaged our attention last evening was satisfactorily answered, is there one who can doubt the beneficial effects of knowledge upon every mind, upon every heart. Surely it must have been a misconception of the nature

of knowledge which could alone bring it into suspicion. is the danger of truth! Where is the danger of fact? Error and ignorance, indeed, are full of danger. They fill our imagination with terrors. They place us at the mercy of every external circumstance; they incapacitate us for our duties as members of the human family, for happiness as sentient beings, for improvement as reasoning beings. Let us awake from this illusion. Let us understand what knowledge is. Let us clearly perceive that accurate knowledge regards all equally; that truth or fact is the same thing for all human kind; that there are not truths for the rich and truths for the poor, truths for men and truths for women. There are simply truths, that is facts, which all who open their eyes and their ears and their understandings can perceive. There is no mystery in these facts. There is no witchcraft in knowledge. Science is not a trick; not a puzzle. The philosopher is not a conjuror. The observer of nature who envelopes his discoveries in mystery, either knows less than he pretends, or feels interested in withholding his knowledge.

We observed, at our last meeting that it was the evident interests of our appointed teachers to disguise the truth. We discovered this to be a matter of necessity, arising out of their dependance upon the public favour. We may observe yet another cause, now operating far and wide-universally, omnipotently--a cause pervading the whole mass of society, and springing out of the existing motive principle of human action-competition. Let us examine, and we shall discover it to be the object of each individual to obscure the first elements of the knowledge he professesIt is thus that we see the simple manufacture of a pair of shoes magnified into an art, demanding a seven years apprenticeship, when all its intricacies might be mastered in as many months. It is thus that cutting out a coat after just proportion, is made to involve more science and to demand more study, than the anatomy of the body it is to cover. And it is thus in like manner, that all the branches of knowledge involved in what is called scholastic learning, are wrapped in the fogs of pompous pedantry; and that every truth, instead of being presented in naked innocence, is obscured under a weight of elaborate words, and buried and lost in a medley of irrelevant ideas, useless amplifications and erroneous arguments. Would we unravel this confusion, would we distinguish the true from the false, the real from the unreal, the useful from the useless; would we break our mental leading strings; would we know the use of all our faculties; would we be virtuous, happy and intelligent beings; would we be useful in our generation; would we possess our own minds in peace, be secure in our own opinions, be just in our feelings, be consistent in our practice; would we command the respect of others, and, far better, would we secure our own-let us enquire.

END OF LECTURE II.

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

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The Lion.

No. 12. VOL. 4.] LONDON, Friday, Sept. 18, 1829. [PRICE 6d.

INFIDEL MISSION-SEVENTEENTH BULLETIN.

Head-quarters, Huddersfield,
Sept. 13, 1829.

AFTER the completion of all our engagements, by a week of labour to my utmost strength, and much I fear beyond it. This Sunday is at last a day of rest, upon somewhat better successes, and much better hopes here among sincere friends to our cause and applauders of our zeal, in the populous and flourishing manufacturing and market-town of HUDDERSFIELD, of which the worst that can be said is, that it is 189 miles from London, and not so far off as it ought to be from those lampoons on civilization, Leeds and Manchester. "The houses are principally built of light-coloured stone, in a neat style, and the general appearance of the town is of a character calculated to inspire the traveller with an impression that its inhabitants are wealthy and respectable." There is no general fact more legibly written on my mind's observance, than there really is throughout England, a most manifest and apparent relation between the state of mind and the state of things in society; that wretchedness, wickedness, despair, and dirt, are the invariable concomitants of the most intense religion, (cans't thou deny it Manchester?) that well-washed faces, comfortable habitations, courteous manners, and more cheerful dispositions, are found in association with Infidelity or scepticism, (Is it not so Huddersfield?)

I have entertained five audiences, entirely in the course of this week, respectively at Wigan, at Blackburn, at Bury, at Hyde, and here at last at Huddersfield, where I have received notice, sore against my will, that exertions of this sort must no more be repeated. I say nothing of an enemy, that first waited on me at Liverpool, and who still dances attendance on his opportunity, to ride on any holy gust of wind, to writhe himself through a key-hole, or an unclosed window-frame, or in any way he can, when without introduction or compliment, he rams me his iron crow-bar into

No 12

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

my mouth, and with most ruffian rudeness, refutes all my argu-
ments and subdues my reason itself; by giving me the lie in my
teeth, and (oh the brute!) bidding me "hold my jaw.”.
But a briefer summoner, of higher diplomacy, and more authorita-
tive, though not more severe challenge, who is for doing his mis-
sion, at first call, and will take no more, but would have laid me
with my face upwards in a few hours, has brought me a message
from Pluto's gloomy reign, to signify that his infernal majesty in-
tends to call me over the coals the next time I attempt to enter-
tain five audiences in a week. I return my best compliments to
the king of terrors, and assured him, that rather than abide the
eternal irritations of that fiend of the crow-bar, who kills by
inches, and cows my better part of man, while venturing no fur-
ther than into the harbour or mouth of my dominions, I would
account it a happiness that the more decisive and generous inva-
der should" into the bowels of the land march on without impe-
diment," possess himself of the citadel of the heart at once, and
send me to my fathers.

THE SHEPHERD OF HUDdersfield, A PICTURE.

The shepherd, literally, is not more characteristically distinguished by his bluff manners, his coarse features, his swagging gait, his crooked staff, and his companion and equal in every respect, his shag-dog, than the shepherd spiritual-who tends and fleeces the sheep of salvation-is by the peculiar cut and cast of his whole makings. You could not mistake him. You could not even in idea, separate the form and bearing of the child of promise, who " spun five hanks at four years old, who never cost his parents a single halfpenny, but who earned his own maintenance from the first moment that he breathed this vital air, and who educated himself"-to the full effect of becoming a shepherd of Israel; and so he exchanged the spinning of hanks for the spinning of sermons, the coarse garments and hard rough hand of honest labour, for the superfine black coat, the lily fingers, the plump rotundity of form, the dumpling head, the spectacle-bestrid nose, the Barclay and Perkins's Entire cheeks, and all appliances and means to boot of glorious priestcraft. You could not, I say, in your mind's eye, form a different picture of such a man, than precisely such as your eye would realize in the shepherd of Huddersfield. After his own description of himself, and of his miraculous infancy, which I have given in his own words, the reader's imagination will fill up the outline of the picture of this babe of grace, this cunning rogue Isaac, as his mother used to call him, this second Daniel of gospel-mongery, and hank-spinning. If he were not something short of the proper stature, if he had not a callow pate, pig's eyes, a vulture's nose, a goose's voice, a lookye-up ken, a knock-ye-down gait, an infinitely voluble utterance, a never-stopping clacker, with all the slang of the tabernacle, and all the lying at the catch, tripping, trapping, and troping,

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labouring to misunderstand, and then chuckling at victories gained over his own misunderstandings, the "my dear sir-ings," and "now my dear friend-ings" of the gospel-shop-in a word, if he were not impudence itself personified, there would be no truth in physiognomy.

This prodigy of talent, this flower of Methodism, was eager for the encounter with my brother apostle: and all liberality, candour, and "the gentleman" as he calls himself, (his four-year old five hanks, and halfpenny education notwithstanding) shook hands with me most sweatingly, to reconcile me to the pretty compliment that " he would dispute with Mr. Carlile, as being a sincere and honest character, but that he would have nothing to say to so base a character as Taylor." How sincere, how honest is the man who shakes hands with baseness? However, I owe him all the gratitude due to the honour of his five-hanks hand, paid for in the endurance of every ill-mannered, scurril, villainous insult, that his unsought-for familiarity, gave him his opportunity to put on me.

He has not addressed me in any one sentence of which the gist and purpose was not to convey an affront.

His mode of spinning, is to attack through a trepan, upon the consent of the bystanders. With a saucy wink of the eye, and a defying nod of the head, he endeavours to hook his opponent on the catch of " You know that, sir, very well.” This, accompanied with an unspeakably disdainful writhing of the nostril, a glance thrown over the rim of the spectacles, a thrusting-forth of the lower-lip, and a chuckle of self-gratulation, goes to the effect of enlisting the vanity of the audience on his side, and making his opponent seem to accept the compliment paid to his knowledge, at the expence of his sincerity. That is, it is a fivehanks way, of giving an affront, and making an opponent put up with it at the same time. You have the man, and all that such a man would be likely to say, in the audacious interruption of his opponent, contrary to the terms of the controversy which he had laid down, and which had been strictly observed towards himself, with a come, come, Mr. Carlile, be honest,--which I believe in my heart was something more than the shepherd or his sheep either could be, if they were to try at it. An intense degree of faith is absolutely fatal to the faculty of speaking truth.

Truth is a frigid, calm, and calculating quality; faith is a redhot-fire brand, and burns out all the impressions which evidence should make on the mind's observance.

Thus, on the conclusion of the debate, upon calling for a show of hands to the question, whether Mr. Carlile, or his opponent had the best of the argument, nothing could seem more apparent to a cool observance, than that there was a most decided majority in favour of Mr. Carlile. Upon my stating this, in the most respectful way I could, five hanks at four-year old, knocks me down with a shrug to the bystanders-and a " yes, sir," that is just like the other false representations which you have given to the world.

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