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"Jacob saith thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now: And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and men-servants, and women-servants: and, I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. And the mes'sengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother 'Esau, and also he cometh to meet thee; and four hundred 'men with him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed: ' and he divided the people that was with him, and the flocks, and herds, and the camels, into two bands; And said, If Esau come to the one company, and smite it, then the other company which is left shall escape. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the 'Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and 'to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: I am not 'worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, 'which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff 'I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. 'Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from 'the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. And he lodged there that same night; and took of that which came to his hand a present for Esau his brother; Two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, Thirty milch camels with their colts, forty 'kine, and ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foles. And he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove 'by themselves; and said unto his servants, Pass over before 'me, and put a space betwixt drove and drove. And he com'manded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother 'meeteth thee, and asketh thee, saying, Whose art thou? ' and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee? Then thou shalt say, They be thy servant Jacob's; it is a ( present sent unto my lord Esau: and, behold, also he is 'behind us. And so commanded he the second, and the third, ' and all that followed the droves, saying, On this manner 'shall ye speak unto Esau, when ye find him. And say ye moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before 'me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will C accept of me. So went the present over before him: and 'himself lodged that night in the company. And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two women-seryants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.

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And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent < over that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there 'wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched 'the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let. thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name 'shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast 'thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. "And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after C my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called C the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to C face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Pe< nuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew

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The first odd circumstance that strikes us in this chapter, is the host of travelling Angels which Jacob meets, but we are only told that he did meet them, and not what was said, sung, or done there. The next circunstance is the strong proof of Jacob's guilt and cowardice, when he expects to meet his brother Esau. Jacob here displays a true portrait of a villainous, treacherous, and cowardly character, I would draw the reader to a circumstance which I have before-mentioned, namely, of. the boasted river Jordan being no more than a puddling brook: Jacob in his prayer to his God, says "for with my staff I passed over this Jordan," meaning, that when he was going to labour he had nothing but his staff, and now he is returning with great wealth. Jacob is here made to speak of the Jordan as if it was fordable. Travellers who have gone into Asia from Europe with high notions of the Holy Land, and the River Jordan, have been astonished at reaching those places, to see how miserably deficient they were to what they expected, and they have further imagined, that the Jordan has dwindled from what it was in the prosperity of the Israelites down to its present state, which is scarcely a running stream. But no such thing, the Israelites or Jews and their temple, cities, rivers brooks, and pools have been magnified into what they

never were,

(To be continued.)

The Republican.

No. 5, Vol. 3.] LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 26, 1820. [PRICE OD.

CRISIS. No. VIII.

The political hemisphere increases its lower: the gases of misery and oppression are dangerously predominant in its atmosphere; and unless the electric fluid be carefully sepa rated, and withdrawn by some skilful conductor, an explosion becomes inevitable. Those who last year joined in the clamour against the turbulence, the disaffection, and the irreligion of the people, are now become the harbingers of their misery, Those very persons are now beginning to show by mathematical demonstrations, that the distresses of the people have gone on increasing, that they have reached a climax, and that, if the present profuse expenditure of the government, and the payment of the interest of their debt, be to be continued, millions must perish, either by famine or by the sword. What is the answer of our administration to this?" The public service must be provided for, whatever be the consequence.Which is as much as to say, that whilst we hold our places, our safety depends upon the protection of the abuses of the system, every existing patronage and influence is essential to our support, and we are not disposed to endanger ourselves our profits, and our friends, to lessen the burthens of the people. Thus the hostile feeling is increased: on the part of the people it is increased with the increase of misery only, on the part of the government, it is increased by a sense of both wickedness and danger. Every little incident is seized to excite an angry feeling between the citizen and the soldier, and the latter is cherished by the government as if he was defending a closely besieged citadel. The day has arrived, and passed almost without notice, when a soldier might kill a citizen without provocation, and the latter be buried without any enquiry into the cause of his death. Is this England with her. VOL: III. No. 5.

Printed and published by J. Carlile, 55, Fleet Street.

boasted laws? Can such things be the perfection of reason? Is this a constitution of things to be revered? No. It must be a military despotism, by whatever means it has been established. Law is converted into an instrument of war, and is wielded by a faction with power, to crush the intelligence of the age, to stifle a sense of injury, and to support the abuses and corruptions of misrule only. Justice is no where found in the country. Her painted figure only is visible in our courts of law and iniquity. We have the shadow to torment our eyes and senses, whilst the substance is sought in vain. The Lord Chief Justice of England said lately, that no man in England was beyond the reach of the law. He uttered a wilful falsehood. Has the law reached the magistrates and yeomanry of Manchester for the murders committed by them on the 16th of August last? Can the law reach the soldiers who have lately mutilated the inhabitants of Oldham? Has the law reached Edwards the plotter and instigator of the Cato Street bubble, which has cost the life of five men, and the banishment for life of many others? Has the law reached Lord Castlereagh for his seat selling in the House of Commons? Let the Lord Chief Justice answer those questions before he again prattles about the efficacy of the law. The law cannot reach ermined and surpliced hypocrites, flagitious ministers, nor their bribed supporters. The law is become a shield for tyranny and villainy, and the terror of those only who exclaim against it.

It may be granted to the Lord Chief Justice, that the law may reach all the above-mentioned persons, and in this, as in many other instances, it would be better late than never. The law reached Empson and Dudley, and the law also reached Tresilian, a Chief Justice of England, all those men went to Tyburn on a hurdle, and were hanged by the neck until they were dead. The law brought Charles Stuart to the block, and again the law brought those to the gallows, who brought that monarch to the block. The law provided a sumptuous funeral for Oliver Cromwell, and the law again enabled Charles Stuart the Second, to dig up his putrid body and hang it on a gallows. But then it must be observed, that the law, which brought one party to the gallows, was the subversion of that law, by which the other party were put to death. Thus it may be fairly argued, that the law is omnipotent and also omnivorous, each party in power destroys its opponents, according to law. The Spanish nation, which has abolished the absolute authority of Ferdinand, and made that power rest in the people, has

acted according to law; no objections are raised against tha illegality of the measure, whilst on the other hand, if Quiroge, Riego; and others, had failed in their attempt, Ferdinand would have put them to death, according to law, as he did Porlier and Lacy before. If the same circumstances were to occur in England, as have occurred in Spain, the whole nation would hail it as a necessary and glorious revolution, whilst they will allow the present party in power to sabre, dungeon, and decapitate, whom they please, with scarce a murmur. Thus the true definition of law, under the present systems of government, is the caprice of a ruling power. Law and justice never go together, unless the whole government and system of jurisprudence and judicature emanate from the people, which by no means the case in England. Law, like religion, is a mere word, they are words of sound without any confined application, they vary with circumstances. Hypocrites and tyrants say, that both are necessary to bridle the multitude, therefore, they may be considered as the forerunners of slavery; the one imposes an unequal and unjust restraint on the body, the other on the mind, Laws are essential in all societies, when they emanate from those they are intended to bind. Religion is a non essential, it has no basis, it cannot be defined, it is in a word, the ground of imposture only.

Nothing can afford a stronger proof that the law of this country is nothing more than the caprice of the ruling party, than what has lately occurred in our courts of law. Messrs. Osborne and Ragg, booksellers of Birmingham, have been lately sentenced to an imprisonment in Cold Bath Field's prison, for selling a copy of the twelfth part of that highly important publication called the Black Book, whilst the original publisher in London has heard no complaint against it, and I presume has sold near 10,000 copies. Russell, of Birmingham, and Tucker, of Exeter, have suffered imprisonment for selling the parodies on parts of the Book of Common Prayer, whilst an hundred thousand of the same parodies have been sold in London publicly, and have produced a considerable advantage to the publishers. The case is this, that a corrupt and wicked administration, with an immense patronage and influence, have, by their means of packing of juries, the power of imprisoning whom they please, and so as they shut up those persons in prisons who are obnoxious to them, it matters not under what charge, or by what means. In point of justice, I ́ should have been tried as a confederate in that conspiracy for which Messrs. Hunt, Johnson and others are suffering imprisonment, but I being in a prison and as the period of my im

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