public opinion, there is none so over-bearing and tyrannical as ignorant public opinion; nor any to which a man of spirit and feeling will less willingly submit.

In conclusion, I would suggest to every man who wishes well to his race, the propriety of giving this subject a minute and attentive examination. R. D. OWEN.

"What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor."-Isaiah.

The following extract, from a correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, will apply to all the other counties, above quoted, as well as to Wiltshire:-"I will give you but one example of the state to which the Labouring Population are reduced-it is not a picked case, but a fair specimen of the mass. Wages 88. per. week. Expenditure: rent, (say) 9d. per week; fuel, 1s. 6d.; soap, candles, &c., 9d.; leaving 5s. for food. Now, taking the family to consist of a man, his wife, and four children, (and I think the average number may be somewhat beyond this,) we see that it is just TENPENCE a week for each; or allowing them food three times a day, it will give something less than one halfpenny a meal."

The Hand-Loom Weavers, in the manufacturing districts, are in a still more deplorable condition: wages less, and rent, &c.,

more.

The names before Lord Brougham's have residences, &c., as well. Lord B., as a pensioner, is included, because he is the thick and thin supporter of the New Poor Law, whose scale of allowance to the destitute is about 1s. 3d. per week. The liberal conductors of Chambers' Edinburgh Journal think is. per week sufficient.-The Publisher.

Watson, Printer, 15, City Road, Finsbury.

PROSSIMO'S EXPERIENCE.

ON THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY

"SAFEST TO BELIEVE,"

or the Balance Struck.

BY R. D. OWEN.

London:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY

J. WATSON, 15, CITY ROAD, FINSBURY.

PROSSIMO'S EXPERIENCE.

My mother was a devoted sectarian; devout, yet I think not bigoted in her religion; and an affectionate and careful parent. She inculcated in her children, with unwearied zeal, the mys terious doctrines of her sect; and she lost no opportunity to confirm and strengthen the first impressions she had made. Was any one among us sick? she sat, hour after hour, by his bedside; and administered, by turns, temporal comforts and spiritual instruction. Had we lost a friend? his death was spoken of but as a translation to another and a better world. Did any of us ask, with childish curiosity, to be told a pretty story? it was related to us out of the Scriptural pages. We were told of the place above for the good boys and girls, and of the place below for the wicked; and when we inquired, with childish simplicity, who were the good and who the wicked, we were taught, that whoever believed that God had a son called Jesus Christ, and read the Bible with reverence every morning, and said prayers with devotion every night, was a good man; and that whoever disbelieved this doctrine, or neglected these forms of worship, was a wicked reprobate, called an infidel, or an unbeliever, or an atheist.

My father was not of the orthodox persuasion; but, however unwilling he might be that his children should become sectarians, he did not for many years interfere with my mother's instructions. He excited our youthful minds, indeed, to observation and inquiry; but he never called in question my mother's infallibility. His was a strong, unprejudiced, and comprehensive mind; yet either from regard to my mother's feelings or to the world's opinion, he forbore, even when our questions led to it, from undermining our belief.

I recollect, for instance, after I had listened patiently to an explanation from him how seeds produced plants and trees, and had asked him where the very-very first seeds came from, that his answer did not go to shake my belief in Moses' story of the creation. And when, on another occasion, fresh from my mother's lesson on the almighty and all-pervading power of the christian Creator, who made the sun to shine and the trees to grow, and every thing to live and move-I inquired of my father whether God went under the roots of the trees and pushed them up; I remember that he smiled, but only said, he did not know how it was done.

Thus was I left to form my own conclusions regarding my mother's religion; and she soon found me an apt scholar. I entered with zeal and earnestness into her doctrines; thought much of heaven; and prayed regularly that I might go thither when I died; read a portion of the Bible daily; and amused myself on Sundays as little as my restless spirits would permit. When I look back on my state of mind at that period, it surprises me not so much that my reason was deceived, as that it ever escaped the deception. I was made to believe that all good, kind, benevolent, and amiable men and women, were orthodox christians. The very word good, I had learnt to receive as meaning pious. I had never, that I knew of, met with a sceptic: and imagined that one might spend a life-time, without witnessing so extraordinary and shocking a phenomenon. I lived in a religious atmosphere, and I imagined that it extended over the whole earth. I had just heard of heathens and pagans; but I thought of them only as a handful of blinded wretches, to be found shut up in some small remote quarter of a world that bowed to Christ alone as its God and Saviour. To set up my own opinion against that of all good, honest, respectable menand indeed almost against that of the whole world-was a degree of presumption which had not even entered into my ideas to conceive.

I recollect, that when I was told of the earth's rotundity, ana of our antipodes walking with their heads turned away from ours, I held out long and stoutly against the possibility of such an arrangement; and abandoned my scepticism most cautiously and unwillingly. But, for religion, I had heard it spoken of so early, and so often, and so confidently, that it did not ever. occur to me that it could possibly be doubted, except from wilful wickedness or hardened depravity. Of unbelief from honest motives I had no conception; for I had never heard or thought of such a thing. Religion I knew not as a matter to be questioned, but only as a thing to be believed; for I had never been instructed to examine, but only to receive, its lessons.

I know not if I have succeeded in conveying to you an accurate idea of the state of mind in which, as a child brought up on the lap of orthodoxy, I found myself. No one, I believe, but he who has been similarly situated, can accurately conceive the situation. It is to have eyes, yet not to see; to have ears, yet not to hear; to have judgment without exercising it; and to have reasoning powers, without daring to use them.

I have often, since the time my eyes were first opened on the delusions of my infancy, reflected on that strange, unnatural state of mind. And these reflections have been thus far at least useful to me, that I have learnt never to express, nor even to feel, anger-nay, scarcely impatience, towards those whom I see similarly deluded.