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Common Sense,

OR

Every-Body's Magazine.

VOL. I.

EDITORS

J. E. N. MOLESWORTH, D. D.

REV. W. N. MOLESWORTH, M. A.

Fine Sense, and Exalted Sense, are not half so useful as COMMON SENSE.-Dean Swift.

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J. G. F. & J. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL;

AND

WHITTAKER, & Co., AVE-MARIA LANE,

1842.

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PREFACE.

ΤΟ

VOL. I.

The completion of our First Volume, like a hill at the termination of the first stage of a journey, presents an opportunity for looking back upon the country we have travelled over, and forward upon that before us. We consider what we have accomplished, and what we have yet to perform. The road we have passed has been rough and disagreeable, but if it lead to a good end we shall not repine.

Plainly as Dissent has lately shewn the cloven foot, yet its rampant malice and would-be tyranny, as here exhibited, would scarcely be credited in districts, in which its mob-rule is more circumscribed. Here dissenters not only pretend it to be a "religious" duty to excite the passions of the populace in opposition to Church rates, corn laws, or any other laws, which it suits their party purposes, or their envy, or their ambition, or their malice, to make their war cry; but they also seem to think that their religion requires them to persecute individuals, who may have presumed to maintain, either by argument or law, any principles, which the absolute mightiness of Dissent chooses to condemn. Making an amazing fuss about freedom of their own opinions, aud consciences, they mark down for personal vengeance all of opposite opinions, who may claim the same freedom. In no case have they more effectually convicted themselves of this inconsistency, and of the tyranny to which, if they had but power, they would subject others, than in their conduct towards the Vicar of Rochdale. From the first moment of his appointment, before they could know any thing of him, but that he zealously maintained the Church, of which he is a minister, and which he believes to be a true Church, he was assailed with gross falsehoods and fierce invectives. On his coming into residence, and attempting to establish neutral positions, in which party feelings might at least for a time be laid aside, and all cooperate for the general good; not only was opposition organized, but it was organized for the purpose of rabble insult, and against the Vicar personally. The same course was followed when, though

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