Judge was ever daring enough in villainy to say he would punish a Prisoner for the defence he had made, in addition to the intended punishment for the misdemeanor charged in the indictment. We all know the thing is practised in the Court of King's Bench, but it was never so unblushingly avowed even in that Court, much less by a Common Sergeant at the Old Bailey Sessions. It has been reserved for Mr. Denman to avow the motive as well as to practise the villainy. To complete the flagrancy and inconsistency of this matter, it is only necessary that the liberal, the patriotic, and the humane junior Member for Nottingham should take up the case of the "Man with name unknown," and after presenting a petition to the House of Commons against the corrupt conduct of the City Common Sergeant, propose his impeachment and get him hanged. Mr. Denman may then preserve his consistency as a Member for the spirited town of Nottingham, and the Common Sergeant would but meet that which he richly deserves, and would receive, if justice were done upon him. I will lay it down as a maxim of humanity, that if one man causes another to receive an unjust incarceration but for one year, or but for one month, he deserves hanging, if putting to death makes any part of the laws of the country; or, in other words, the highest punishment known to the law is his due. So highly, in my opinion, ought personal liberty to be valued, and so heinous is the crime of an unjust sacrifice of it on the part of a Magisstrate. Liberty and life are as near of kin as possible. Life to any sensible human being is of little value without the power of locomotion. Life is a liberty the human body derives from Nature, and Liberty is the life of the human mind. In a moral sense they are inseparable relations. Under a Representative System of Government both would be duly valued and respected: under all Monarchical and Priestly Governments, both are subject to the most shameful and shameless prodigality by the Magistrates; and you have convinced us that it is quite indifferent whether they be called Whig or Tory.

The last sentence I have to notice is given in "The Times" with inverted commas, by which the Editor means that they were words verbatim et literatim as spoken by you, and pretty contradiction and corruption they exhibit. In concluding your address before sentence, you are made to say to the Defendant, "Your mind is neither unenlightened nor uninstructed, and you will see that the views you now entertain can only be hostile to the general objects you

The

may have in view--the amelioration of your fellow-creatures. It is impossible that such publications should be suffered to exist." Hey-day! Mr. Common Sergeant! Have you found out a method of destroying those that have circulated? No attempt was made to prosecute the pamphlet until months after the circulation was completed. pamphlet appeared in July, and I heard of no prosecution until November, when the sale was quite exhausted. You admit the man's motive to be an amelioration of his fellowcreatures, and, strange to say, you add, it is impossible such a motive can be allowed to exist. It is no wonder that the Editor even of "The Times" put the sentence within inverted commas, as no one unintoxicated would risk the fathering of it. Your elevation must have added vanity to a corrupt disposition, as nothing short of this could have produced such a sentence. Ever so corrupt a mind with a cool judgment would have never put it forth.

You state your object in passing so severe a sentence to have been to deter others from publishing such blasphemous works. In a former Session, a Barrister, who has frequently of late been connected with you in the same cause, stood up in that Court and boldly stated that the pamphlet contained nothing blasphemous, in the common acceptation of that word. I would call you a corrupt liar to your face, if I were to hear you say the pamphlet was blasphemous; and I should like no better sport than to dispute the truth of such an assertion with you face to face and foot to foot. Deter others from publishing such works, indeed! Why you must be a stupid blockhead, a mere ass, to put forth such an expression, after what you have witnessed and what you have heard. You can no more deter others from publishing such pamphlets than you can check the light and heat of the sun: what the latter is to life and vegetation, the former is to morals and every thing conducive to the welfare of society.

The man you had before you was both enlightened and instructed, as you observed, and his conduct before you shewed him the perfect man. He has read the writings of Thomas Paine; he has read the work, that grand and enlightening work, called Mirabaud's "System of Nature;" and every thing that he could get at really instructive; and although he has had to earn bis food, his raiment, and his books, as a mechanic, and to spare a trifle for a widowed mother, he has more good sense in his head, more virtue and morality in his heart, than you have, by devoting your

days and nights to the disgraceful records called the statutes of this country, to the corrupt and contradictory decisions of corrupt Judges, and to such useless writers as Coke and Blackstone.

I am informed, by a private letter, that in addressing the Jury, you observed, that "it was a misfortune, in this age of refined language, that the obscene parts of the Bible were not omitted." What sort of a Christian are you, Mr. Denman? Do you not know, that one part of your Holy Jew Book says, "If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." You will certainly be excommunicated from the Church for even hinting such a thing from the judgment-seat! The Priests and the Members of the Vice Society will say you are to them and their God a more daring blasphemer than myself. What is your King "Nero," the head of the Church and the sworn Defender of the Faith, to think of one of his Judges using such language from the Bench, perhaps when the women and the boys had been allowed to return into the Court, from which they had been expelled because the Bible was reading? Before another century passes, and the age of language becomes a little more refined, we shall have a Vice Society to prosecute the publication of the Bible as an obscene book, if my little pennyworth of references to the obscene parts goes on in its circulation as at present, and a few more Judges of your irreverent cast get upon the Bench.

I shall take my leave of you at present, by asking, what you think of Shackell and Co.'s three months walk in the King's Bench Prison, when contrasted with your sentence upon the virtuous and the brave Humphrey Boyle? To be sure, they made no defence, which seems to be the way to please modern Judges, and to excuse all sorts of crime! If an innocent man be accused, and offers, in a manly tone, to assert his innocence, he incurs the danger of double punishment, if his Jury be prejudiced, and should return a verdict, of Guilty! This is a dreadful state of things: but this is the true state of the case, the true inference of your conduct, and that of the Judges of the Court of King's Bench; and however strong, or even coarse in some instances, (for I found a difficulty in giving expression to what I felt,) my language to you in this letter may have been, I appeal to the impartial reader to say, whether it be any thing further Vol. VI. No. 2.

than the fair and just comment of honest indignation upon such dishonest, such corrupt, such unexpected conduct as you have evinced in your judicial career.

R. CARLILE.

SIR,

TO MR. R. CARLILE, DORCHESTER GAOL.

Huddersfield, May 10, 1822. I HAVE lately read a Number of your "Republican," in which you openly avow yourself a Materialist; I am, however, persuaded that you would not have said what you have had you considered the matter properly. It is surprizing that after professing to stand on philosophical ground so many years, you should, at last, suffer yourself to fall into mazes of inexplicable confusion. You have for several years been hacking at the principal feature in the Christian faith without marring it in the least; you have endeavoured to hide the truth of it behind anti-theological jeers, and to beat it down with impious contempt: but still its lustre is undiminished, and while you have been trying to shake the faith of Christians, thousands have embraced the same faith.

If you look round you, you must consider the work in which you are engaged very foolish; but for want of such consideration, you still proceed, and when you will end is hard to say, most likely not until you have lost the little reason you have, which seems to be already in a very poor state. You have now taken your stand of ground, which will ever deny all your pretended claims to philosophical science, after all the noise we have had about matter being and not being eternal; you have made assertions which you cannot support either by common sense or philosophy. You now say the mind of man is matter, and that there is nothing else, "all is matter." I am sure no philosopher, who is always supposed ready to define any point on which he ventures an assertion, would have said as you have. The mind of man, you say, is matter, and all is matter; you say our thoughts and ideas are matter, even time itself, if capable of definition. You say that every change that we behold is produced by matter acting upon matter; you must mean every change both in the intellectual and corporeal departments of Nature, you say, "all is matter." if you do not come forward with your philosophical proofs, you may depend upon it, your assertions will be found too weak to persuade men of sense to believe you. Now, then, if the mind of man be matter, I wish for some proof, What I see or handle I know to be matter; let me ask you, have you at any time seen the mind? Have you handled it? Can you name a similitude for it? Or, with all your boasted philosophy, can you define it? If it be matter, as you have declared, say

for

what kind of matter it is. If you cannot define, acknowledge your error to the world. In your challenge to the world you speak of fiction as being distinct from matter, still you say, "the mind is matter, all is matter." What, then, is fiction? If the mind be matter, all thoughts, ideas, imaginations, fancies, fictions, &c., of which the mind at different times is composed, must be matter also. If you should say fiction is nothing, you will be asked to define nothing.

"

You say, every change we behold is produced by matter acting upon matter?" How did such action produce the idea (or fiction, if you like the term better) of the non-existence of matter.

Again, every effect has one common cause, that is, the inherent action of matter, for the agency of man is (by your system) put out of question. How unnatural Nature must be-one man by its unchangeable fate is compelled to be a murderer, another to be murdered; one to oppress, another to be oppressed; one to judge with partiality, another to be the victim of his power; one to range at liberty, another to be confined within the narrow limits of a loathsome prison; one to pray, and another to treat his prayers with contempt, &c.

Now, Sir, if you can set the foregoing questions and objections at liberty, the world will admire your wisdom. Until then, adieu,

THOMAS SHEPHERD.

TO MR. THOMAS SHEPHERD, HUDDERSFIELD.

SIR, Dorchester Gaol, June 1, 1822. I HAVE put your letter aside until this day from the pressure of other matter towards filling the pages of my weekly publication, as I thought it vain to write until the opportunity offered for printing.

From your letter it would appear that all your knowledge of me has been derived from reading one Number of "The Republican," and from this you seem to have drawn. some erroneous conclusious, when you tell me, that after professing to stand upon philosophical grounds for years, I seem now to abandon it for the mazes of inexplicable confusion. You, or any man, has a right to address me a letter, so as he pays the expence attending its conveyance, which you have honestly done, but he has a duty as well as a right to perform, both to me and himself in the matter; he should first know what he writes about; the true character of him to whom he writes; and, lastly, he should make