admit that the word eternal, can be used only as it regards that first cause, or power; he cannot conceive an eternity of things produced, without producing causes; he can neither think or speak of nature and its operations, but power must be the last conception of his mind, and the last definition of that mind's conception on his tongue. Beyond this he cannot go, and even if he could, he would only find a more remote cause, all the rest being mere effect. This brings me to the second doctrine of Materialism, of which a material first cause is the first principle. I find, however, that this doctrine is quite as helpless, if not more so, than the first. We, however, will take up the proposition as it stands. A material first cause is stated; that first material cause, principle, or power, then, must have been eternal, that is to say, it was from for ever able to produce, and of course never inoperative. What then becomes of a first effect, if a first effect be admitted? Then must we admit that prior to that effect an eternity had elapsed, in which nothing was produced; thus through all that eternity, there was no power sufficient to produce, and hence no power at all, for a cause without an effect is an absurdity, and with one no less so, that is to say, if we deny immaterial agency. The three brief syllables, cause (and) effect, involve all systems, all essences, all things; he who denies this, denies all existences, and with the rest, his own; yet by mere material cause and effect, we arrive at nothing, saving the knowledge, that by their means alone, nothing could have existed; to the proof of which assertion I adduce the three following: AXIOMS. 1st. If cause and effect never began to be, but always were, then are they of equal eternity, and therefore eternally independent of each other, by thus separating them they are destroyed, and nothing could have been produced! 2nd. If there was a first material cause, it must have been an eternally producing cause, and therefore never could have had a first effect, or before that effect, it had not power to produce, and was not. Thus nothing could have been produced! 3rd. If there was not a first material cause, there could not have been a first effect. Whether there was or was not, a first effect, there could not have been a first cause with the effect, the cause was inoperative, and powerless for ever prior to the effect; without the effect, the cause effected (that is to say) produced nothing. Thus nothing could have been produced! (To be continued SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR THE REV. R. TAYLOR, PROM KILBARCHAN. Sir-About three or four months since, when your Lion made its first appearance in our village, we (the younger and most numerous class at least,) were as ignorant of the sufferings of the Reverend Robert Taylor, and the doctrines taught by Mr. Carlile, as we are now of the rewards of heaven or the punishments of hell. "The Lion" has been the means of collecting for the Reverend gentleman, the sum of £1 15s. 10d. sent hereby. This sum is in truth a trifle, but considering our recent information, and the obscurity of the village, we hope this like the poor widow's mite, will be accepted as a sincere token of gratitude for that seed of truth and philosophy, which, by his aid and by the instrumentality of the Lion, has been planted amongst us. This seed, is yet small, (generally speaking) but it is of the mustard kind, 'twill soon be greater, 'tis a thriving plant here, and if it spreads its branches as wide everywhere, your Lion will soon be the monarch of an universal forest. What you have already done, makes your name like a spell, to warm the heart of every one who loves the truth, to give you more than thanks. What you may yet do, what Mr. Taylor (we rather hate Reverend before Taylor, because Reverend is a hateful word), may do, or any other persecuted man, shall, instead of Reverend praying, have our support. I have the honour to be, Sir, Clerk. Robert Allan William Lang John M'Intyre William Spiers A friend to the cause of freedom A friend to all sinners of whom I am chief. Rom. 9th chap. A friend to all Deists of whom I am chief. Psalms 14th, An enemy to anti-Christ, whether orthodox or infidel An enemy to all creeds, whether trinity or unity A lamb in a den of lions A thinking Christian From a miller An admirer of the 16th chap. of Ezek. Do as you wish to be done unto Superstition, who begat religion, who begat persecution, always a trinity in unity John Dougal, divinity student, the enemy of canting infidels, never to be paid of course 006 A Citizen of the World A friend to the cause LETTER 44.-FROM THE REV. ROBERT TAYLOR. ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH, FOR FORGERY. DEAR MR. CARLILE,-My thoughts and feelings have been so much engrossed by the cases of Fenn and Hunton, that I cannot so conveniently turn them to any other theme, as to a calm weighing of the arguments, for, or against the justice of the sentence which has been passed on them. I mean not in reference to their particular cases, but to the general principle on which men in this country, incur the penalty of death, by such offences as these poor men have committed. I shall be most happy to see the arguments, which at present seem to me to be irrefutably cogent, met and overthrown by sounder and better reasonings. It would in my view, have been happy, if in legislation as well as in morals, the sophistical and mischievous term MERCY, had never been coined; all the ideas that answer to it, are a perversion of understanding, revolting to reason, and incompatible with moral right and fitness. Let a man but ask his own reflections, how any unmerciful act, could possibly be just, or any just action, be a cruel one; or with what moral fitness, should passions and feelings of any sort be allowed to usurp the throne of reason, and to countermand the edicts of righteousness, and he will soon trace back the origin of this technical idea, to its matrix in the breast of tyranny, its subserviency to the purposes of the oppressor, to give unreal virtues to the tyrant, and irrational expectations to the slave, to put grace on inconsistencies, and make a merit of a weakness. The arguments which make for, or against the justice of the punishment of death for forgery, should be weighed, independently of any consultation of our feelings or interests in reference to particular cases; and necessarily lie in the subjunctive mood, as only to be entered on, after our determination of the preliminary question, whether the punishment of death be justifiable for murder or treason, or in any case whatever. If this be determined in the negative, our question, of course, exists no longer. But if it be admitted, that society, has a right to protect its own paramount interests, at the expense of the lives of individuals; and that in the social compact, individuals can justly and fairly make over that right of war, a toule outrance, against the invaders of their lives or properties, which belongs to them in their individual capacity, into the hands of delegates and representatives: I see not how a line can be drawn, that would cut off the murderer or the burglar, and spare the guilty forger. Be it, that the object of law, is not revenge on crime committed, but the prevention of crime likely to be committed. In a commercial country, no crime is so likely to be committed as forgery; ergo, no crime so expediently to be prevented, by a No. 24.-Vol. 2. 3 c punishment whose terror of example shall be found most likely to prevent it. Murder, is less likely to be committed, and, therefore though it be in itself more heinous, it does not originate so urgent an expediency of flying to the extreme means of prevention. There is a natural feeling in all mens' hearts, of disgust and horror, and an instant disruption of all social sympathies and alliances with the murderer; which natural feeling aids, (and aids by more than half of the whole stress) the preventive terror of the law; but, this important aid, is materially wanting, in the case of the gilty forger, whose crime, though actually more dangerous to the community, is so far from being naturally abhorred and shuddered at, is (as it seems in the moral notions of the Quaker Hunton) not naturally a crime at all; and, therefore if an absolute necessity of preventing it exists, it calls by so much with a louder voice than murder, for the recourse to the extreme means of prevention. The murderer who escapes detection, or who obtains a pardon, is yet likely to be attended through life with "compunctious visitings of nature," which may keep alive in his mind an undiminished horror of his crime; nor stands he under any likelihood of being again placed in circumstances to tempt him to repeat it. The forger who escapes, may (on the principle avowed by the Quaker, Hunton) be well at peace as to any upbraidings of his own conscience, may chuckle over his exploit, as "hardly to be called a fraud;" may claim and obtain again the rank he before held in society, and be surrounded with circumstances of stronger inducement than ever to tempt him to repeat his crime. The consequences and tendencies of impunity, or of the chance of escaping with impunity, to the forger, are more extensive and more dreadful, than any consequences or tendencies of impunity to the murderer. And if there be a principle which authorises the taking of human life, in any case whatever : the wicked forger's is that case. They who would substitute some other punishment, rather than that of death, as being more likely to deter men from the crime of forgery, must do so, on the supposition of some punishment that might be devised more terrible than death; and therefore, if they be right in reason, ought not to pretend, that they are actuated by stronger considerations of humanity than those who arg for that which is, (argumenti gratia) the lighter punishment. But that they are not right in reason, is a fair inference from the apparent premises, that they are not right in nature. The idea of life, cannot be entertained in any state separately from life's sweetness; and if it could, who would be the devils that could wish or bear to be the ministers of that perpetuated punishment, which, on the hypothesis, would be worse than death? The expense and tax upon the humane and generous feelings of our nature, in being obliged to withhold for ever the re-acting's and sympathies of nature, from those who had once been assigned to that, worse than death, which had been substituted instead of death, would tend infinitely more to harden the heart, than a Bartholomew's day of executions, that ended with the day. We should soon begin to relent, and then to pity, and then to send relief to the sufferers under that sentence which had been passed, as more likely to restrain from crime, than death itself; and all the more, and all the sooner, by the measure of the sincerity of our conviction, that their punishment was of that grievous and heavy weight supposed; and if we shouldn't, we should soon become by dint of an habitual and justified counteraction of the best spontaneities of our nature, as hard-hearted, and consequently as wicked as the victims of our justice. Not to urge, that a punishment, which on account of its being more formidable to men's apprehensions, would be more likely to deter them from crime, than the punishment of instantaneous death, resolves itself after all, into the only difference of a lingering and protracted death. Landing poor criminals on desolate islands, enforcing them to labour in the mines, or shutting them up in perpetual imprisonment, would indicate no more of humanity, than might be shown as conspicuously, by abolishing the use of the drop in our executions, and leaving the poor wretches to kick till the crows ate 'em. On this relenting, and sympathising feeling of the many, the forger, permitted to live, would calculate, and would calculate accurately, the chances of his redintegration into a state as good, or not much worse than that from which the notoriety.of his crime had cast him. He would assuredly grow up faster to the healing of the wounds that law had inflicted on him, than the wounds that he had given, would heal. And where walks justice then? 'ere the children had grown up, to a perception of the horrors of their loss of fortune, and the miseries of dependence and labour entailed upon them, the whitewashed villain who had forged away their birth-rights, might have recovered his place in society, and have lived to become the superior of the victims of his crime. A punishment short of that of death, yet sufficient in its terror to deter from the commission of forgery, could never be brought to bear on such a character as that of the forger; because nothing short of death could take from him the intellectual resources, the commercial owledge, the ingenuity and tact which enabled him to commit the crime, and would as certainly enable him to defeat or to neutralise the severity of any lesser punishment. The particular disease of mind which leads men to the commission of forgery, is an impatience of that humbler grade in life, to which fate has necessarily assigned the many. It is a gambling spirit. Its life and element is a calculation of chances. Be the hazard to be incurred, less than the hazard of life, and a thousand greedy aspirants would rush into the game. To such men as those who commit forgery, who generally are, (like the Quaker, insensi |