result of it. The scheme-is it a national scheme, or is it a party scheme?—the religion to be supported

is it the religion of Jesus, or is it Church-ofEnglandism?-the means of execution are they uncorrupt or corrupt?-To questions such as these, no answer could have been returned, but a selfcondemning one; and, for the putting of all these questions, in any one meeting, supposing it a free and open one, any one tongue would have sufficed.

Here then is a fraud: a fraud planned and executed from the beginning: a fraud in which all the Archbishops and Bishops, with the addition of Right Honourables in abundance, seem at first appearance implicated.

That as to this part of the whole system of fraud, the Archbishops and Bishops were however, generally speaking, unconscious, nothing is there in this that in the nature of the case seems incredible. What sort of a thing a Committee is-to an Archbishop or Bishop as such, it is not necessary to know that or any thing else.

But the Right Honourables?-look at the Right Honourables!-among them-not to speak of the titled Saints of lower degree-you will see the Lord Chancellor,-Speaker as such of the House of Lords, -the Lord Redesdale, quondam Speaker of the House of Commons-and Mr. Abbot, the present Speaker of the same Honourable House. These lawyers these veteran and wily lawyers-to them is it possible that it should have been unknown

what a Committee is? To them is it possible that it should not have been known, that without an agent there is no such object as a patient-that without a Committer there is no such thing as a Committee? This they might have learnt from Mother Goose: this they had actually learnt from Mother Blackstone.-Ah no:-at the price of no such confession of ignorance would these, or any other such lawyers, be content to purchase the reputation of innocence.

Fraud, under the name of fiction, being the grand instrument of his power-fraud upon the legislature-fraud upon the people-fraud on every occasion-is dear to the man of law; dear to him-primarily for the sake of that same power, secondarily, and by force of habit, for its own sake. Fraud,

in every licensed shape in which he has a part in the management of it (and in what licensed shape has he not a part in the management of it?) it is his interest that to the eye of the public it should be as familiar as possible. Familiar?-Why?— even that by familiarity the deformity of it may, as nearly as possible, be rendered imperceptible. Never without fraud will the man of law do any thing which he can contrive to do by or with fraud, Bad things he does by fraud, because he could not do them otherwise: good things, when they must be done, he chooses to do by fraud,-that by the goodness of the effect the blindness of the public may be deluded into a belief of the goodness of the

instrument.

And whether he is or is not conscious of them (for-no fees being to be got by the perusal of it—his own mind is an object too frightful for the man of law to be fond of looking into)—whether he is or is not conscious of them—in the fictions, alias the frauds, with which the Catechism will be seen to swarm, may be seen the cause of the fondness with which it is hugged, not only by the established priest, but by his confederate, the man of law. The Liturgy, with its Catechism and its Altar, have they not become stepping-stones not only to spiritual but to temporal benches? From interpreting, in the Church-of-England mode, according to the rules that will be seen,* the Oracles of God, the half-bigot, half-hypocrite comes to interpret, according to the same rules, the oracles of the grim Idol, to which, day by day, under the name of Common Law, so many lives and fortunes are sacrificed the Idol manufactured by his pre decessors on the same Bench, with the instrument with which Samson slew the Philistines.

In addition to the universal objects,-common, as just above explained, to all priestly and to all lawyerly fraud, the particular fraud in question had it not any special object?-Oh yes, that it had. It had for its object the blinding the eyes of the Contributors at large, by causing them to ascribe

* See Appendix, No. I. pp. 96 to 106.

regularity to the whole system of irregularity thus organized. Referring himself to Resolution 10, Report I.-under and by virtue of his right, had it happened to any "Subscriber of one guinea an"nually" to make a motion respecting the disposal of the fund-a motion tending for example to the exclusion of the exclusionary conditions-that instant would his mouth have been stopt by the observation, that by Resolution the 4th of that same string of Resolutions, "to manage the affairs of "the Society" was a function that belonged to none but the "Committee of sixteen, besides the "President and Vice-Presidents;" which President and Vice-Presidents were, by Resolution 3, the twenty-six Archbishops and Bishops, together with ten temporal Peers or Privy-Counsellors, to be perpetually nominated by the said Presidents and other Vice-Presidents, (these others being the said Archbishop and Bishops only,) and which said Committee of sixteen were moreover, by Resolution 5, to be nominated by the said Most and Right Reverend President and Vice-Presidents.

Well but (says some surly Guinea-Subscriber)these men, in the choice of whom we had none of us any share is it for these men to do what they please with the money we furnish? and are we ourselves to have nothing to do with the disposal of it?

Oh no, to be sure-(answers some lawyer or lawyer-tutored priest)-Oh no, to be sure-for, by Re

solution the 4th, the management (you see) is theirs and not yours: it is theirs and theirs only. And why should you grudge it them?-For they do not you see it?—they are your own Committee. You and they are the Society, and they are your Committee. Great men as they are, and, out of the Royal family, where will you find greater, or so great?—Great men as they are!-Such is their condescension, they claim to be nothing more. Great men, and so condescending to boot!—is it for such as you to fly in their faces, and act as if you were their superiors?-You their. superiors-and not they yours?

In this fictitious election, thus it is, that with relation to these self-chosen Elect, the supposed Electors are superior and inferior at the same time: superior as touching the furnishing of the money, inferior. as touching the disposal of it: superior to the purpose of shew and appearance; inferior, or rather nothing at all, to every real purpose: to every real purpose, but above all to the purpose of keeping open the door of the instruction, to all persons, by whom, for their own sake, and that of the whole people of which they form a part,-it is so much needed.

But why-when facts are before us-why tax imagination for suppositions ?-He would have been dealt with this impertinently intruding guineaman at Sion-College-he would have been dealt with-exactly as, at the intended courtly meeting