In addition to the preachers, we shall, in this town, send a copy of our challenge to the Mayor and Magistrates, and to every public and influential person in it, and pledge our possession of such a case, as, if the attention be won, the conviction must inevitably follow.

We are told, that some Unitarian debaters about trinity in unity, who assemble in Hunter-street, intend to invite us to a discussion. As we have no faith wherewith to speculate; we confess, we have none in their promise. We heard them, last night, talking the most arrant nonsense about the unity of deity set forth in the scriptures; in which they were well answered by a Trinitarian, also on the scripture ground. Men will never cease to be fools, so long as they take revelations in scriptures for their guide, which have no warrant in the things known to exist, none beyond the insanity of mankind. We heard the Unitarian, F. B. Wright, attempt to ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity, by comparing it with the thirty thousand gods of the Pagan mythology. But I plead for the Pagans :-THE MORE GODS, THE MORE REASON. The Unitarian, without a personal devil, is the least reasonable being in the world. He cannot, on scripture ground, stand up in argument with the Unitarian with a devil. The Unitarian with a devil, on the same ground, has no chance with the Trinitarian. The Protestant cannot stand up before the Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic cannot maintain his ground before the advocate of the Pagan religion. The Pagan falls before the scientific Infidel. The whole profession of religion is a corruption of Paganism, and can never become any thing but such a corruption.

The first principle of religion is a personification of a power, the source of which is not to be traced. One such a personification allowed, justifies every such that can be made: and hence the number of the Pagan gods increased with the increasing knowledge and genius of the Pagan world, which was, in its zenith, superior to any thing that has been found among Christians. The angels or genii of the Persians were but a corruption of the Pagan mythology. The angels and calendar of saints among Christians are but a continued corruption of the same mythology. The Pagans had a reason for, and a reasonable account to give of, every god among them. No Christian can show such a reason for any of the sanctified or deified objects of his adoration. The scale of the corruption of religion runs thus:-First Christians, Roman Catholics, Protestant Trinitarians, Unitarians. The little sect of Freethinking Christians is scarcely worth a mention. In or out of London it is hardly known. But it may be rated as the highest degree of corruption that has spaung up in the Christian church. The Israelites of Ashtonunder-Lyne have returned to the highest degree of consistency as Bible or scripture Christians. For a man to call himself a

rational Christians, in any relation to the New Testament or Bible, is to put on more than an ordinary degree of folly. The Roman Catholic pleads justly, that his church is prior and superior to the books of the New Testament. The Israelites plead, that they, taking the Bible as a guide, doat upon its precepts most consistently. Each can successfully plead sincerity of character; but this sincerity of character cannot be pleaded and defended by any other sect of Christians.

RICARD CARLILE.

THE RED LION INN, BOLTON.

THE highly intellectual character of our good host, Mr. Singleton Cooper, of the Red Lion, and the little heaven of domestic comfort and decency, which the amiable manners of his wife and every member of his establishment, have created here, in the empire of Terpsichore and Bacchus, grows on admiration, as it grows on acquaintance. The longer one stays, the more comfortable, the more at home, the more in the bosom of virtue and happiness one feels oneself to be. The charges are more moderate than at any inn, or even at any lodging that we have hitherto engaged. Taking into the account the style of accommodation afforded on such charges, Mr. Singleton Cooper's inn at Bolton, may challenge the paragonship, and is I am sure entitled to be called, the very best and best conducted inn in England.

I forgot to mention, that in addition to the picture-gallery, Mr. Cooper supplies to his best respected guests, an inexhaustible source of amusement in his books, and in the best and most extensive albums and portfolios of scraps and plates, which I have

ever seen.

But I can never forget the truly extraordinary superiority of moral character, and the fine moral lesson presented in the example of a man, so superior to the temptations of his situation, and to the character which that situation would seem to bind upon him. From his portrait in the gallery, (a most excellent one) exhibiting him as a bon-vivant, a perfect Bacchanal, holding up a glass of wine and toasting " Church and King," the church forming the back-ground of the picture, and from an avocation necessarily engaging him "to fill high the sparkling bowl," one would expect to find him any other sort of a man than such as he really is; a man whose pleasures are chiefly those of a superior taste and a cultivated reason, the furthest removed of all men of his age and station from the suspicion of an approach to intemperance. His manners, his appearance, his conversation, mark the character, not of one who has fallen from a superior grade, but of one who has no falling propensities, and who, like Alex

ander, into whatever station his fate had thrown him, would have filled that station so as no man could fill it better.

I cannot deny but that chance and luck in life, seem to hold full hand shares in the formation of character, but can hardly think, that all the blame or praise is Fortune's, when I see the perfectly philosophical conductor of a tap-room, and the as perfectly sottish reporter of a public journal-the dealer in the material that should form and instruct the minds of others, having no mind of his own, and never to be conversed with but when you shall find him too far gone for conversation; and the dealer in wine and spirits, all intelligence and information, and never to be conversed with but with pleasure and improvement; the son of a labouring man, making no pretensions to either education or talent, and in no station calling for them, as intellectual as Bolingbroke; the son of a clergyman whose education and talent are his whole stock in business, as stupid and inebriate as a Jeffery Dunstan. But the intricacy of the scene is, that so sure as the editorial jackall is of such a character, are we sure to be measurelessly reviled and vituperated in the accounts the public get of us and our proceedings in his report. It is not our character, but their own that is to be best discerned in the types that the provincial papers set us in. None are such jealous guardians of the public morals, as those who have no morals of their own to guard. None are so much afraid of releasing the public mind from the restraints of religion, as those who live under no sort of restraints themselves. By the wise and good of all persuasions, our company is sought for, we are received with respect and entertained with kindness. But it is hard for us to tell whether gin or gospel, the fanatic or the drunkard, be most hostile to us; or whether there be a pin to choose in our chance of fair play in the report of a Manchester Courier or an Evangelical Magazine, in the inspirations of blue ruin, or salvation. Gin and grace seem equally destructive of the capacity of telling the truth.

:

I was much pleased to find an honourable exception from the character generally held to be universal in Methodism, in the conversation of a Mr. Myerscough, who has once or twice joined our evening coteries, and who put his objections to Infidelity with a frankness and good sense, and received our answers, with a candour and good nature, as honourable to himself, as instructive to the company his excellence in this respect being the more set off, by the contrast with the ruffianly manners of a plumber, who brought his lead in his brains, and his red-hot iron in his heart, to solder us into the mould of his conceit. He brought his backer or bottle-holder with him, a preacher, who had nothing to do but to second and support his insolence, and he very soon discovered and virtually admitted, that he had come to our meeting to prevent Infidels from being heard, by suffering

nobody to be heard but himself. He was covered with contempt, as he felt that he deserved to be. Enough of him! ROBERT TAYLOR.

STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

I HAVE never been affected by the political mania. I am no politician, no sectarist, no reformist, no Whig, no Tory, no partizan of any man or men, system or systems: and am, therefore, so far, in the predications essential to the character of an historian. I can supply the first desideratum of history, an impartial statement of facts, the evidence of my observance, uncoloured by prejudice, unwarped by passion. And this it is. The country really is in a state of unparalleled distress. It cannot be denied. It cannot be doubted. But let it not be exaggerated. Let not the gloomy impressions it is calculated to make on the mind, betray us into a surrender of the resources of reason. The times imperiously call for the joint action of fortitude to bear the worst, and wisdom to do the best. The great problems for the mind's solution should be addressed by each individual concerned in this great quail, as if on his single suffrage depended the whole issue. It is no time for talking. He who would be ingenious, clever, or eloquent, when he should be wise; or who would waste a syllable from the purpose of communicating truth, is a traitor to his country. To the great question, and nothing but the question, "So help us God," so help us rather the unperverted, undivided energies which God has implanted in us, whereby in evil plight to do the best, and to work out our own salvation!

The great vessel of Social Life, has sprung a leak; nine feet water in the hold; on her beam ends. What fool, what madman, now, would talk of reform in the management, or of cashiering the commandant, of who did it, who caused it, or who foresaw it?

The only rational questions, are—

Results the general distress from general or particular causes ? From causes which are topical, and confined to particular places, and a particular state of things?

Or from causes which are universal, and obtain every where, and likely to obtain under any other state of things?

A mistake in the determination of this infinitely momentous question, would be fatal. To run the hazard of the mistake, is criminal: for what should we gain by any sort of experiments that bore not to the purpose of alleviating the evil or rather, what not lose by the profitless expence of our energies in a quar

rel against fate, in kicking against the mountain, in senseless counsels, and desperate adventures?

We are in a fever, shall we therefore cut off our right hand? The disease is not there. Shall we pluck out our eyes? The disease is not there. Shall we dethrone our King? depose our Bishops? destroy our Aristocracy? effect a complete and radical reform in Parliament? abolish the National Debt? establish universal suffrage? Aye, in the name of God, if the disease were there, if it could be shown to be there: if our so doing, would remove; if it would alleviate; if it would but promise to alleviate the mischief. But not so, does it. Not a ray of hope, not a glimpse of the possibility of mending matters dawn from that quarter of our auguration. But blacker clouds and deeper darkness frown on our temerity and defy our impotence. Our Constitution, both in Church and State, with all its corruptions and abuses, is less corrupt and less abused, than the great body of the people.

The causes of the generally prevailing distress, are not particular, they are not topical nor confined to particular places, but do exist at this time, in other countries, and in almost equal degrees under wholly different circumstances of national government and would exist, under any changes that could be effected or desired in our own. This, I take to be the most important political truth, that was ever offered to the world: if, indeed, it be a truth; which I sincerely think and greatly fear, it is. And if indeed it be so, what quacks, what charlatans, what cheats and impostors are our pretended political reformers in concealing this great truth from general observance, diverting men's minds from the direction in which alone the knowledge and the means of curing their disease can be found, and exhausting their hopes and energies in a ridiculous and ruinous application of their chip-inporridge nostrums, their eye-waters to relieve blindness, balsams for mortifications, embrocations for broken bones, and "matchless blacking" for out-at-the-toe boots!

I wish it may be denied. I hope it is not true. But evidence, in the absence of all counter evidence, takes my conviction by storm, that the state of things is quite as bad or well nigh so, throughout the whole continent of Europe, as in England: that Rouen, the Manchester of France, is but another slander on humanity. That the United States of America, groan under similar unwelcome inundations of vagabond Irishmen,

"Whom their o'ercloyed country vomits forth,
To desperate adventures and to death;"

that the markets are every where overstocked with the produce of manufacture; that no where is a remunerating price to be obtained for capital embarked, nor even an existing price to be ensured to the utmost exertions of skill and labour: that every