he had left it, he made some most forcible and impressive reflections on the miserable state of those multitudes, who, in spite of their skill in the mechanical arts and their political energy, were in the leading strings of so foul a superstition. The passage he had quoted was the first and mildest of a series of blasphemies so prodigious, that he really feared to proceed, not only from disgust at the necessity of uttering them, but lest he should be taxing the faith of his hearers beyond what appeared reasonable limits. Next then, he drew attention to the point, that the English Sovereign distinctly claimed, according to the same infamous work, to be the "fount of justice;" and, that there might be no mistake in the matter, the author declared, "that she is never bound in justice to do any thing." What then is her method of acting? Unwilling as he was to defile his lips with so profane an indecency, he must tell them that this abominable writer coolly declared that the Queen, a woman, only did acts of reparation and restitution as a matter of grace! He was not a theologian, he had spent his life in the field, but he knew enough of his religion to be able to say that grace was a word especially proper to the appointment and decrees of Divine Sovereignty. All his hearers knew perfectly well, that nature was one thing, grace another; and yet here was a poor child of clay claiming to be the fount, not only of justice, but of grace. She was making herself a first cause of, not merely natural, but spiritual excellence, and doing nothing more or less than simply emancipating herself from her Maker. The Queen, it seemed, never obeyed the law on compulsion, according to Blackstone; that is, her Maker could not compel her. This was no mere deduction of his own, as directly would be seen. Let it

be observed, the Apostle called the predicted Antichrist "the wicked one," or as it might be more correctly translated, "the lawless," because he was to be the proud despiser of all law; now, wonderful to say, this was the very assumption of the British Parliament. "The power of Parliament," said Sir Edward Coke, "is so transcendent and absolute that it cannot be confined within any bounds!! It has sovereign and uncontrollable authority!" Moreover, the Judges had declared that "it is so high and mighty in its nature that it may make law, and THAT WHICH IS LAW IT MAY MAKE NO LAW!" Here verily was the mouth speaking great things, but there was more behind, which, but for the atrocious sentiments he had already admitted into his mouth, he really should not have the courage, the endurance to utter. It was sickening to the soul, and intellect, and feelings of a Russ, to form the words on his tongue, and the ideas in his imagination. He would say what must be said as quickly as he could, and without comment. The gallant speaker then delivered the following passage from Blackstone's volume, in a very distinct and articulate whisper, "Some have not scrupled to call its power-the OMNIPOTENCE of Parliament!" No one can conceive the thrilling effect of these few words; they were heard all over the immense assemblage: every man turned pale, a dead silence followed; one might have heard a pin drop. A pause of some minutes followed.

The speaker continued, evidently labouring under intense emotion:-"Have you not heard enough, my dear compatriots, of this hideous system of John Bullism? was I wrong in using the words fiendish and atheistical when I entered upon this subject? and need I proceed further with impure details, which cannot really add to the

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'

monstrous bearing of the passages I have already read to you? If the Queen 'cannot do wrong,' if she cannot even think wrong,' if she is absolute perfection,' if she has no folly, no weakness,' if she is the fount of justice,' if she is the fount of grace,' if she is simply above law,' if she is 'omnipotent,' what wonder that the lawyers of Johnbullism should also call her 'sacred?' What wonder that they should speak of her as 'majesty?' what wonder that they should speak of her as a 'superior being?' Here, again, I am using the words of the book I hold in my hand.

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The people'

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are led to

SUPERIOR

under him,' says Bracton,

Accordingly the law-books

(my blood runs cold while I repeat them) consider their Sovereign in the light of a BEING.' Every one is and he is under no one. call him Vicarius Dei in terrâ,' the Vicar of God on `earth; a most astonishing fulfilment, you observe, of the prophecy, for Antichrist is a Greek word which means Vicar of Christ.' What wonder, under these circumstances, that Queen Elizabeth, assuming the attribute of the Creator, once said to one of her Bishops; Proud Prelate, I made you, and I can unmake you!' What wonder that James the First had the brazen assurance to say that, As it is Atheism and blasphemy in a creature to dispute the Deity, so it is presumption and sedition in a subject to dispute a King in the height of his power. Moreover, his subjects called him the 'breath of their nostrils; and my Lord Clarendon, the present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in his celebrated History of the Rebellion, declares that the same haughty monarch actually, on one occasion, called himself a god;' and in his great legal digest, commonly called the • Constitutions of Clarendon,' he gives us the whole

account of the same king's banishing the Archbishop, St. Thomas of Canterbury, for refusing to do him homage. Lord Bacon, too, went nearly as far when he called him 'Deaster quidam' 'some sort of little god.' Alexander Pope, too, calls Queen Anne a goddess; and Addison, with a servility only equalled by his profaneness, cries out, Thee, goddess, thee Britannia's isle adores.' Nay, even at this very time, when public attention has been drawn to the subject, Queen Victoria causes herself to be represented on her coins as the goddess of the seas, with a pagan trident in her hand.

66

Gentlemen, can it surprise you to be told, after such an exposition of the blasphemies of England, that, astonishing to say, Queen Victoria is distinctly pointed out in the Book of Revelation as having the number of the beast? You may recollect that number is 666; now she came to the throne in the year '37, at which date she was eighteen years old. Multiply then 37 by 18 and you have the very number 666, which is the mystical emblem of the lawless King!!!

"No wonder, then, with such monstrous pretensions, and such awful auguries, that Johnbullism is, in act and deed, as savage and profligate, as in profession it is saintly and innocent. Its annals are marked with blood and corruption. The historian Hallam, though one of the ultrabullist party, in his Constitutional History, admits, that the English tribunals are disgraced by the brutal manners and iniquitous partiality of the bench.' 'The general behaviour of the bench,' he says elsewhere,

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has covered it with infamy. Soon after, he tells us that the dominant faction inflicted on the High Church Clergy "the disgrace and remorse of perjury." The English Kings have been the curse and shame

D

of human nature.

Richard the First boasted that the

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evil spirit was the father of his family; of Henry the Second, St. Bernard said, From the devil he came, and to the devil he will go;' William the Second was killed by the enemy of man, to whom he had sold himself, while hunting in one of his forests; Henry the First died of eating lampreys; John died of eating peaches; Clarence, a king's brother, was drowned in a butt of malmsey wine; Richard the Third put to death his Sovereign, his Sovereign's son, his two brothers, his wife, two nephews, and half a dozen friends; Henry the Eighth successively married and murdered no less than six hundred women. I quote the words of the Edinburgh Review,' that, according to Hollinshed, no less than 70,000 persons died under the hand of the executioner in his reign. Sir John Fortescue tells us that in his day there were more persons executed for robbery in England in one year than in France in seven. Four hundred persons a year were executed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Even so late as the last century, in spite of the continued protests of foreign nations, in the course of seven years there were 428 capital convictions in London alone. Burning of children, too, is a favourite punishment with John Bull, as may be seen in this same Blackstone, who notices the burning of a girl of thirteen given by Sir Matthew Hale. The valets always assassinate their masters; lovers uniformly strangle their sweethearts; the farmers and the farmers' wives universally beat their apprentices to death; and their lawyers in the inns of court strip and starve their servants, as has appeared from remarkable investigations in the law courts during the last year. Husbands sell their wives by public auction with a rope round their necks. An intelligent