bounty its ministers are made dependant. The Gospel, it is said, considered as a system of religious doctrine and morals, is too refined, too spiritual, too severely pure, to secure a ready acceptance amongst the general crowd of men. It becomes, consequently, a matter of grave importance that they whose business it is to expound and enforce it, should be placed above the temptation of securing their own livelihood' by making truth to square with human predilections. Without ascribing to those ministers who are maintained by the voluntary offerings of their hearers more than an average amount of frailty, yet, placed as they are in a position of precarious dependance, it is far from uncharitable to assume that they will not be strangers to a natural anxiety to make their message as little offensive as possible; nor would it be wise to expect from men thus situated that faithful declaration of all revealed doctrines, or that bold rebuke of prevailing errors and of fashionable vices which might be justly demanded at the hands of Christian teachers. This fidelity to the high claims of office, it is urged, will most readily grow out of an independence of position-and they who are in no danger of being deprived of the means of subsistence will be most likely to conform their teaching to worldly prejudices and tastes. It is not our purpose, on behalf of the voluntary principle, to treat this objection as a groundless insinuation. In common candour we feel bound to admit that it is neither devoid of truth nor of force. The ministers of truth, dependent for temporal subsistence upon the goodwill of the flock they feed, are, we allow, in some danger of choosing to proffer palatable rather than salutary doctrines. They are but men-they must needs live-and the sacrifice of temporal prospects to ministerial fidelity is a result which, although not nearly so rare as some have insisted upon, cannot be calculated upon with anything approaching to moral certainty."

DISSENTERS RELIGIOUS DUTY AND RELIGIOUS

PRACTICES.

Illustrated by another Dissenting Preacher of the League Religion.

In our reply to Mr. Giles we referred to Mr. Bailey a Dissenting preacher. For the information of such of our Readers as do not see Newspapers, we subjoin a description of this crusader against the corn-laws as given in the speech of Mr. Roebuck, the Radical Member of Parliament for Bath.

"On the 16th of July, there was a meeting held of the delegates of the Anti-Corn Law League. Their proceedings were reported the next morning in the Morning Chronicle, and of course that report had been read by those who had conducted the business of that meeting. But it so happened that his noble and learned friend did not read the report in the Chronicle, but he had read the same report taken from that paper in the Quarterly Review-not quite so ephemeral a production as a newspaper, and therefore more likely to be communicated from one end of the country to the other. And now I think it my duty, and I never had a more painful one cast upon me, to read, as the justification of my noble friend, the paragraphs from which he derived his information. And it will be incumbent on the gentleman to whom allusion was made (I must mention his name) to explain away his meaning, or at once to justify himself before mankind. The Rev. Mr. Bailey, of Sheffield, said, amongst other thingsspeaking of the people of the town of Sheffleld having refused to communicate their distress to him whilst petitioning Parliament -“It was not words would move Parliament, but force; this should have effect if they did not change their system. He had heard of a gentleman who in a private company said that if 100 persons cast lots amongst them and the lot should fall upon him, he would take the lot to deprive Sir Robert Peel of life. (Loud and indignant cries of "Hear, hear.") He felt convinced that no such attempt ought to be made upon any pretence whatever; but was persuaded of this, that when Sir Robert Peel went to his grave there would be but few to shed one tear over him." (Loud and indignant cries of "Hear.")

Here, as far as words can be understood, was language used of which the tendency (whatsoever the intention of the speaker) was to excite mob and jacobin vengeance to the worst of crimes; and to

hold up Sir R. Peel as their object. If anything could add to the dangerous tenour of such language it would be the addition of fanaticism, or pretended religious duty to the maddening passions of party spirit, of class and sectarian jealousy and envy-and of revolutionary combinations. There is a cautionary phrase put in, to screen the speaker from being convicted of intending the crime, to which his language evidently leads the thoughts and desires of his hearers. "He felt convinced that no such attempt ought to be made upon any pretence whatever;' We have heard an Irish agitator use just such language, as a ruse, to protect himself from the punishments of the law. He had described to a rabble, (whom he maddened by artful misrepresentations against their rulers) the means by which the Parisian mob resisted the military, and informed them that what has been done may be done again. But, then, fearing that he might get within the verge of treason, he added, with mock gravity-"not that I advise you to do this! No-No"! Mr. Bailey's cautionary words are followed with the significant appendage "but he was persuaded of this, that when Sir R. Peel went to the grave, there would be but few to shed one tear over him." Now Mr. Bailey may deny, as he pleases, his intention to suggest the crime; (for none can know his intention but himself, nor is it our concern to question it,) but is it possible to mistake the tendency of such words? Are these words the only specimens of the same incendiary and exasperating sort of language indulged in by the advocates of the League; and more particularly by its Dissenting preachers, such as Giles and Bonner, who pretend to be therein discharging a religious(!) duty? Is there not a strange harmony in the religious language of these men ? We have said, and still say, "religious"— for it is under pretence of religious duty, that they utter these firebrand declamations, and the tree is known by its fruits. Their public acts as a body of

Religious Ministers separately convened as such at Manchester-and the official declaration of the Baptist Circular, convict them clearly of this. It is not one, but many, who engage in this work. It will not save them to deny their intention just when the roused indignation of mankind falls upon the league, which they hoped to serve, and which by their advocacy has received the heaviest blow that has been dealt against it. And how do Mr. Bailey and his friends attempt to get rid of the guilt of using incendiary and murder-hinting language, whether intending the result, to which it is liable, or not? First Mr. B's. congregation (like the wise old women who killed Blacky in trying to wash him white) kindly come forward to whitewash him. And how? Do they disprove the utterance of the words, or their obvious tendency? Not they. They tell us that Mr. Bailey had formerly chosen as one of his topics of popular declamation the "legal murder” of “war and capital punishments." And his friend Mr. Cobden in like manner does not deny, that Mr. Bailey spoke the words, but tells us that, notwithstanding his great talents, he was deficient in "tact and discretion." What Mr. Cobden means by this we cannot say; but it is the sort of description which a knowing leader would give to a partisan, who frankly and thoughtlessly "let the cat out of the bag." If Mr.. Bailey be not, as Mr. Cobden's words intimate, a favourer (indiscreet and wanting tact) of the system of terror, and if he be even in private life amiable and gentle, it only strengthens our position, which is that he has adopted a false principle, which leads him to language and proceedings condemned by his own conscience in their results. For whether the words are the fruit of indiscretion or of premeditation, the tendency of them is to deceive the ignorant and hint to hearers excited by rancorous invectives and wicked misrepresentations, that there are persons, who consider it venial, if not meritorious, to

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assassinate; and that fewer men would be found to shed tears over the victim, than to rejoice in the crime, if not to honor the perpetrator. Mr. Cobden may treat the matter as a joke, and give it the gentle character, of "want of tact and discretion." But we, without disparagement of Mr. Cobden's wisdom, may recommend Mr. Bailey to listen to a wiser counsellor, who thus illustrates the danger and the consequences of language so likely to deceive and mislead :- "As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?" (Prov. XXVI. 18, 19.) We do not think Mr. Bailey has a heavy obligation to Mr, Cobden for such a defence. But though we do not presume to decide upon Mr. B's. intentions, there can be no doubt of the tendency of his language; and having used such language, whether advisedly, or unguardedly, he ought not to be surprised or angry at the indignation which follows. His wisdom would have been to be quiet. But how does he act?-with indeed a ludicrous want of tact and discretion. He falls foul of even the ancient idol of dissent and liberalism, Lord Brougham. Because that talented nobleman thought fit to repudiate with horror all participation or sympathy in such religion or policy as Mr. Bailey's, and to point out how the ravings of himself and his co-spouters could serve only their own popularity hunting, and must injure any cause, the whole pack have opened upon him with vindictive yells, and Mr. Bailey among the rest. His Lordship's fate is a beacon to those who court the worship of democrats and sectarians. They are like the idols of the savages. So long as the savage is pleased, the idol is worshipped most superstitiously; but when any thing goes contrary to the prejudices or purposes of the former, the latter is kicked out and rolled into the mud, or cast into the fire. So it has been with Lord Brougham, and he has now