The Lion.

No. 16. VOL. 2.] LONDON, Friday, Oct. 17, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

LETTER III.

I MUST call this letter the third, by way of distinction; for I know not as yet how many I may find occasion to address to you. I was informed, while I was with you, that there was an agreed or promised silence among the newspaper people of your town as to my visit. The " Journal" did say, that "Carlile of Fleet Street notoriety, is now on a visit to Nottingham;" but that was all, until the proposed discussion with Mr. Gilbert had created a fermentation in the mental stagnancy of the town. I saw, it was impossible, upon every moral calculation, that, the force of the general fermentation, which my appearance and actions created, would pass off without some notice; and I have been waiting to see the extent of it, before I notice the proceeding in Messrs. Kendall and Sewell's yard. Lies I expected; because, I knew the newspapers could not afford, if they were so disposed, to speak the truth as to the reality of what I said and did. To have done it, would have been to expose, to eyes hitherto blind, the worthlessness of the political and moral precepts of those papers.

The proprietors of the 'Journal' were not only promisedly and studiedly silent; but they did all they could do, by personal interference, as I was informed, to prevent a discussion between me and Mr. Gilbert; fearing, groundlessly, that Mr. Gilbert would have been rash enough to have trusted himself to the carrying on of what Mr. Bailey called his "disadvantageous" conflict.

I really do feel that I am great, that I am a little man of very great importance, when I see, as I saw in Nottingham, the whole talent and learning of the town cowering and trembling before my

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62. Fleet Street. No. 16.-VOL. 2. 2 I

presence and dreaded speech. I cannot but feel that I am great and powerful in the promulgation of important truths, when I see all the pretendedly divine messengers and preachers of alleged divine revelations shrinking from a contact with me, as bats and moles shrink from the face of the sun. I must be great and must feel that greatness, when I see that which is called the learning or public education of the country, the reverse of that which I teach, yet afraid to cope with me, recommending silence and non-observance toward my proceeding. Week after week, I publish books which challenge the existence of any truth in that which is called the religion of the country. At every convenient opportunity, I invite oral discussion, with the preachers of this religion. At first, they showed their physical power in their religious revenge, and imprisoned me for six years. Growing ashamed of that, finding that they were losing ground by that line of proceeding, they have set me at large, left me perfectly free to do morally what I think proper to do, and now act as if they had agreed to hold their profits as long as possible, by not publicly noticing the assaults which I continue to make upon them. All will not do. I shall publish from town to town the superiority which I hold over these pulpit preachers. I shall go on to show the honest and well-disposed part of the community, that I court discussion, and that my opponents shrink from it: and, in a few years, I will make the religion of the country stink in its nostrils. I will have the best of its preachers out to public discussion, or I will make them the laughing-stocks of the children whom they mischievously catechise. Mr. Gilbert cannot now exhibit the same boasting confidence in the soundness of his religious doctrines, which he exhibited before my visit to Nottingham. It must now be a perfect mockery for him to throw open his library of a Wednesday evening to all disputants, after shrinking from a public discussion with me. I do not know that he continues to do so; but if he does, I should think it worth a ride to Nottingham to look at him again in his library, to think on the past and smile.

I have now to exhibit the most Christian and most religious lies of that which, as a report of proceedings among some Nottingham Odd Fellows, I have seen toasted, as "The public press of Nottingham;' a press which I shall press into a very contemptible appearance. The first is a lie or rather a string of lies, as one of four articles which I have cut from the Nottingham Journal of September 13, printed and published by and for George Stretton, 14, Long Row, Nottingham. Mr. Stretton is a pretender to religion; let us see how different is a pretence to be religious, from a love of truth :—

The Arch Infidel of the metropolis, who for the sake of gain, has, for some weeks past, been outraging common decency, and insulting the understandings of the good people of Nottingham, has at length been com

pelled to make a precipitate retreat from the town, and has reason to congratulate himself that he escaped with a whole skin. Having publicly announced his intention of speaking to" the people," in the afternoon of Monday last (all of whom, by the bye, who had the privilege of hearing him spout forth his abominable doctrines, had to pay one shilling for admission), a great number of persons, male and female, collected about the door, and on the opposite bank of the canal, within view of the place of meeting, if not within hearing. In the course of a short time, murmurs and reproaches began to break forth against the speaker, and at length the indignation of the multitude rose to such a pitch, that they threatened to drag him from the spot, and souse him in the canal. Finding it impossible to appease the assembled multitude, and to quell the rising storm, the orator found it prudent to consult his safety, by making his exit, with the assistance of the few who were with him, by an adjoining passage, across the canal, and through the meadows, towards Sneinton. As soon as the mob gained a knowledge of the route he had taken, a general chase commenced, and it was with difficulty he and his companions reached a place of refuge for the night.-The next day the monster took his departure from the town, as we are told, in a private manner, no doubt happy that he escaped with life and limb!

This article has been taken up by other provincial papers, which have sent forth a statement in still stronger colours, saying, that I was driven from Nottingham amidst the hootings and execrations of the people. I have heard of such statements in a Birmingham, a Macclesfield, and a Lincoln Paper, and doubtless, it has been a tit bit as a religious lie for every religious paper in the country. The Macclesfield Courier and Herald has it thus, under date of September 20.

BLASPHEMY AND SEDITION.

The notorious Carlile has been driven out of Nottingham, by the voice of the people. The arch infidel attempted to give lectures and spout nonsense to the people of that town, charging his auditors one shilling each. He was pursued across the canal, and sought refuge in an obscure cottage. The ensuing morning he was glad to find himself alive, and scampered off as fast as he could towards London.

First. It is false, to say that I made a precipitate retreat from the town of Nottingham. It is within the knowledge of a hundred persons in Nottingham, that I had arranged a week beforehand to leave precisely at the time and in the manner in which I did leave. The letter, which I sent to Mr. Gilbert on the Sunday evening, announced, that I should not remain in Nottingham, after the Monday, on which I had appointed to meet all opponents in the yard of Messrs. Kendall and Sewell. In addition to my having spent too much time in Nottingham, through the pretence of Mr. Gilbert to meet me in public discussion, I was summoned urgently to return to London, in consequence of the health of Mrs. Carlile preventing her from attending to the business. Otherwise, I was bent for Hull, and further north. A week before I left, I promised Mrs. Carlile, by letter, that I would be in London on the evening on which I did arrive. I left Nottingham in the most public way, and without the least fear or cause for fear. I

was in public company on the Monday evening, after leaving Messrs. Kendall and Sewell's yard, and announced to that company the time and manner in which I should leave the next morning. I walked through the streets of Nottingham on the evening as usual, and never felt the least danger, nor any indications of popular hostility tantamount to an open and personal insult, during the whole time that I was in Nottingham, excepting the hostility created by exposing the faults of Grosvenor Henson, an exposition, which, I learn, he has fully confirmed, since I left the town.

Second. It is false to say that my discourse in Messrs. Kendall and Sewell's yard was interrupted by any person, but the drunken Sexton of St. Mary's Church, who on being found there drunk and noisy, was put out and reprobated for his conduct by the people who were on the outside of the yard.

Third. It is false, to say, that any growing indignation was exhibited by the surrounding multitude, or that any indignation or disapprobation was exhibited by those within hearing. Never was man more patiently, more attentively, and more respectfully listened to, in the delivery of a discourse.

It is true, that I did cross the canal and take a suburbal route to my lodgings, in preference to taking four or five thousand people through the streets of Nottingham; but there was no principle of fear in the arrangement. My friends were always sufficient to protect me against any open force that fanaticism in Nottingham could bring against me, and I never heard of any disposition on the other side for the encounter. There was an effort made to raise a disturbance; but it failed. The amiable Mrs. Crosby gave a holiday to the persons employed on her farm, with an encouragement, perhaps a direction, that they should come and insult me. Her head man was in the meadows, on the other side of the canal, doing all that he could do, in the matter, but with all that he could do, he only got himself most heartily laughed at, and he kept up an afternoon's sport for those who were not within hearing of what I had to say. It is most certain and universally known in Nottingham, that I was not disturbed in any thing that I proposed or intended to do while I was there, save and except in the proposed discussion with Mr. Gilbert. I met and addressed large bodies of its inhabitants, I walked as free as any other individual through the streets and its market place, I was very generally known to the inhabitants, in the latter part of my tarrying there, and I never received an insult. I do not remember a single hiss or hoot that reached my ear, while I was addressing any company that I addressed in Nottingham. On three occasions, when I tried to avoid drawing a large crowd through the streets, a sort of hunt was set up, more for sport than for hostility; but this is common to all public men and all public proceedings. That I had enemies in Nottingham is not

to be questioned; that they were savage and malignant, as all such enemies must be, and that they would have done me an injury, if they could have privately and secretly done it, I have not a doubt; such is the nature of religious hostility, when it is not powerful enough to kill, maim or persecute openly; but I have no enemies in Nottingham, who would stand forth publicly and avowedly to be hostile. I never but once attempted to shelter from a crowd of followers, and that was on the evening during which I should have publicly met Mr. Gilbert. This step was taken injudiciously at the recommendation of a friend. I saw the folly of it instantly, and came out of the house again, and addressed myself to the persons on the inconvenience of being so followed, who without a murmur discontinued their pursuit. A crowd did follow from Messrs. Kendall and Sewell's yard, as they did on the former occasion; but they were chiefly children, who liked the sport, and the only act of hostility was the scattering of gravel among the crowd. In passing through the streets alone, I never found the least unpleasant interruption; it was only on some stated occasions, when a crowd was brought together, that I found it troublesome, and then as little so as was inevitable; and as little so as I have seen it on any other occasion. This letter is to be a sort of SCRAPIANA. The next string of lies is a note to a Correspondent, from the same paper, in the following words :

We shall be glad to hear from our respected correspondent Ron any other subject than the one he has directed his attention to: first because no one, save the Arch Infidel himself, and some half dozen of his ignorant and deluded followers, dare to question the existence of a Deity: secondly, because no arguments, however convincing, would be listened to by characters of their way of thinking and lastly, because a public newspaper is not exactly the proper channel for the discussion of such matters, which more properly belong to the pulpit, or to that portion of the press more particularly appropriated to the dissemination of divine truth.

It will astonish, to show the number of falsehoods and contradictions which this short paragraph contains.

First, it says, that no one, save the Arch Infidel and some half dozen of his followers, dare to question the existence of a deity. They even do not dare to question any thing of the kind, in any enlarged sense. I dare to question the existence of intelligent deity; but I dare not question the existence of non-intelligent deity. The question is not about deity; but about the attributes of deity. No one questions the existence of deity, when the phrase stands thus abstracted from attributes; but every one questions the existence of deity, when' the varied applications of attributes be made to the general term. I question the existence of the deity of the Jews, of the Christians, of the Mahometans, and of every religious sect that I know to exist or to have existed; and yet I do not question the existence of a deity, as an abstracted term, expressive of all physical power.