fore, take it altogether out of the hands of Mrs. Carlile, whose present situation will not admit of her being continually barrassed as she has lately been, and give it up to a friend in whom I have some confidence, and for whom I would entreat that generous and liberal support I have myself received, and for which I shall at all times feel grateful, and study to merit by my subsequent conduct;. and I now pledge myself to my injured and fellow-suffering Countrymen, that they may at any time when necessary, command my life, which in that cause of which I have been one of the humblest advocates, I value as little as I have valued my personal liberty. I shall conclude this article, which may be my first and last from this prison by addressing my fair country-women. It was my intention to have addressed you in a separate letter, and which I considered your importance in the political scale of society merited, but the fear of disappointment induces me to seize the present opportunity. It has afforded me much gratification to find thousands of you, such as I personally witnessed at Manchester, coming forward at public Meetings presenting the Cap of Liberty, and making an address publicly to your husbands, relatives, sweethearts, and friends. I am sensible, and I am aware that you are sensible, that under an opposite state of things to the affairs of this Country, the proper place of women would be their fire-sides, but in the present state of things it is a proof of extraordinary virtue to see a female sensible of the degraded state of her family, and the cause of that degradation ; to see that female exposing her fair form to the pressure of public Meetings, and encountering many difficulties to evince an ardour and a determination to assist in a struggle for a change. You have been reviled by a certain portion of the Newspaper Press, and have been called "vile," "profligate," and "vicious;" but it must be no small consolation to you to know, that the most debased prostitute in this Country is that part of the Newspaper Press that has reviled and calumniated you. When you attended Bible and Missionary Societies to uproot the systems of religion, and perturb the peaceable minds of the People of other Countries, when you lent yourself for the purpose of going from house to house to collect pence, and oid clothes to support those societies; you were never then told about staying at home, or neglecting your families; no, to be sure, you were then forwarding the work of Corruption, you were then making a scourge for yourselves; but when you open your eyes and see your error, and turn from this foolish path, you are then to be branded as profligate and vicious, for doing that which nothing but virtue herself could stimulate to do. As I am certain that it could be no common degree of virtue that called you into the field of politics, so on the other hand, I feel sure that you are not to be driven from it by calumny, or slander. Continue to stand forward-as matrons encourage your husbands and sons-as maidens your sweethearts, to do their duty in this Crisis of their country's fate. Your appearance, and taking a part in the cause will prevent much. confusion. The hearts of your children and relatives in array will yearn to behold you opposed to them; your weight, therefore, in the political scale becomes of much more importance than you are generally aware of. I doubt not but that it was the activity and general appearance of the French women that induced the military to side with them, and which you may judge prevented much bloodshed in that Country that would otherwise have occurred. France, although in her present degraded condition, feels great benefits from her Revolution, the peasantry are much better situated than the peasantry of this Country, they are leaving us quite in the back ground in point of civil and religious liberty. You may there see that the horrors which attended the French Revolution, and dreadful indeed they were, such as I think we have no fear of witnessing in this Country, are not to be put in competition with the benefits the Nation has derived from it. Do not be alarmed therefore at the sound of revolution-revolutions become essential to all countries at stated periods. Dorchester Gaol, RICHARD CARLILE. SONG. Tune-" Roncesvalles." BRITONS, from this fatal slumber, Hark! the voice of Freedom calls you, Will you yield to die with hunger? Once Columbia's mighty People Let bold Cromwell's name inspire ye, Let not villain threats confound ye, Fear not gaols nor gibbets dire; Brave, in Freedom's cause to perish W. L. TO MR. RICHARD CARLILE, NEWTON BUSHEL, DEVON. DEAR SIR, Dorchester Gaol, Nov. 24th, 1819. FREED from the bustle of politics, polemics, and business, and consigned to a less painful state of bondage, I have found a little time for reflection and the recollection of former friends: amongst those of Devonshire, I find that you stand high on the list, and should you still remain an Unitarian, I presume, that you will not object to read a-letter from one, who retains a respect for you, although he stands proudly boasting of being convicted of infidelity to the Christian religion. Methinks I hear you demand, "Your reasons for disbelief, Sir?" They are, because I believe, that the great First Cause or the supreme and all influencing Power, which we call God, is omnipotent and allsufficient, and needs no mediator to intercede with him and his creatures; and again, because I have satisfied my own mind, that every species of religion that has existed and been practised on the base of the earth, has been the invention, fraud, and imposture of priests, supported by Monarchical Governments as a necessary instrument to enslave the minds and bodies of their subjects, and has tended to destroy the reason and blind the understandings of all mankind wherever it has been predominant. You further demand, "Where is your substitute?" I say, there needs none. Morality and virtue should be the common study of man, and history informs us, that they never were united with religion but that the ratio of the increase or decrease of the former, has been ever in opposition to that of the latter. Moral virtue is sufficient for man to practise through life, both for his own happiness and that of his fellow-religion has ever made him wretched. Taught by priests, that it is his duty to neglect his temporal affairs, or those that relate to the well-being of his body, and apply himself to the preservation of that phantom which they call his soul, man has continued in misery and unhappiness, the dupe of his own imagination, and the wild and wicked vagaries of religion. Man has no soul that is immortal; the mind of man can scarcely be said to be immortal, because expérience has taught us, that the wreck of ages might annihilate it--he is an animal with a peculiar gift -the gift of speech, which secures to him a peculiar faculty of thought and idea; and this has been satisfactorily proved by Professor Lawrence to arise from a peculiar organization differing from every other animal. I cannot mention the name of Lawrence, without regretting, that he should have suffered his mind to be buffetted from the path of truth by the sycophants of the same profession, backed by an alarmed clergy, and to have suppressed that most interesting of all books his Physiological Lectures. It is another proof of the destructive influence of a corrupt and wicked clergy on the well-being of society. That man has no soul, or no immortal part, may be proved to demonstration. We see the course of all the animal and vegetable creation, we see that it perishes, and again amalgamates with the common mass of matter; we see that one course or generation contains the seed for the next-it produces and perishes: and so on from generation to generation to all eternity. Matter itself is imperishable, and wherever matter exists, vegetation and animation will exist also. It is the vanity and arrogance of man in attempting to account for and reach the first cause that has produced so many idle stories and creeds, which have distracted and destroyed the fairer part of the creation on this orb. Cease, then, to reach at impossibilities, and study that thou canst comprehend. The book of nature is the only book of genuine truth-there you cannot be deceived. To call a written book the word of God, and for man to believe it so, is amongst the first causes of the wretchedness and misery of mankind-let us read the book of nature as the only word of God, and we shall not err. I do not expect that this letter will be altogether agreeable to you, as I recollect in your last, you referred me to something you called the Gospel for |