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illegible name.
And thus, in the wise order of Providence, who creates nothing in vain, even a blockhead, and a royal one at that, may do an act which may confer as great and as lasting blessings upon mankind, as the longest life of the first of philosophers: which may be a source of consolation to blockheads—high and low, in all time to come. And yet John Bull can talk most grandiloquently about Religion and Liberty, especially when he has gotten a new scheme in his head to deceive and plunder the nations of thelearth, But Religion and Liberty with John must be put under safe and wholesome restrictions. Religion with him is, that every man and nation should worship God according to the dictates of John’s conscience: and Liberty is, the privilege of his bondmen and bondsmaidens to starve on sixpence a day, if their ingenuity cannot extract half a crown out of it. And as John’s pious head and benevolent heart are awfully shocked at the names of slaves and slavery, he allows these Africans, he carries from their native land, to raise his sagar and coffee in his West India plantations—the great liberty of calling themselves apprentices and emigrants. And thus John has, by a wonderful discovery in the science of modern philosophy, extinguished the odious names of slaves and slavery.
There is another important era in the progress of liberty in the old world, which we must notice. And though it is an era full of horrors—at the memory of which the world yet trembles, it is one equally full of instruction. I allude to the French revolution. True it was in part a failure, and all revolutions in despotic countries must at first fail to some extent: because unmitigated oppression descending from generation to generation, becomes sacred and venerable in the eyes of the multitude from its association with law, authority and religion—learning wealth and rank; and upheld by the sword and the exchequer. Such oppression destroys the energy and intellect; of the people, by destroying the independency of the individual mind, and superinduces instead thereof animal passivity, which when goaded to madness as in, the case of the French revolution,—brute madness—it is alike terrible and destructive to error and truth. And therefore it was that the revolution in France failed. And yet its lessons written in fire and blood are scarcely less valuable to the cause of Liberty than is the successful experiment and result of our own revolution. We say scarcely less valuable—; because it stands as a most prominent beacon in view of all the nations of the earth—and to the friends of Liberty in all time to come, to warn them of the rocks on which
