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made in this letter-that none but thieves shall be imprisoned, or persons convicted of violent assaults that have done injury to the person; and that such persons shall have a certain task in labour to perform in the way of remuneration, and throughout that period of time, to have the greatest possible amount of knowledge forced upon them.

You may assure yourself of one thing, that I am not pleading for a wife; nor do I ever wish to have a wife locked up in the same room with me again, as before. My avocations call for more solitude than such a circumstance admits. My pleading relates entirely to the amount of human happiness, which I desire to increase.

I have brought this letter to a close, and by way of recapitulation will be as brief as the subject will admit.

It has grown out of your assertion, that you felt it to be a duty to prevent all communication between me and other prisoners; and though the reason was not assigned, there was no difficulty in understanding that it related to opinions on matters of religion. I have here shown you, that ALL RELIGION IS VICE; and that, if I had been free to communicate with the prisoners, the very principle in me, which you feared, would have gone to extirpate at least one of their vices.

Almost the first sentiment I expressed in the Gaol was, a desire to be kept as wide apart as possible from the other prisoners; but in asking this, I did not ask to be locked up 23 out of every 24 hours. I did not ask to be daily insulted by being led out as a wild beast, for the amusement, or exhibition of my keepers. I have been now near five years in the Gaol; and though I have had no communication with the prisoners; though I never gave one of them a book or piece of writing of any kind; though I never exchanged a sentence with one of them on the subject of religion (wholly from my own disposition to forbear)-I have unchristianized many of them by the eloquence of silence, and by other influences. I almost doubt if your Gaoler be a Christian; though I most sincerely wish him to remain one, for the benefit of the principles I oppose to him.

Let the matter at least be a matter of consideration with you; that there is one man who asserts, and offers something by way of proof, that ALL RELIGION is vice. It is no light matter; and he who makes the assertion desires to see every thing good and happy among mankind, as much as ever you can do. Excepting this little slip of your tongue, about the impropriety of my having a communication with

the other prisoners, your carriage towards me has been that of a good man. I do not say gentleman for that is a vague word. I say something more-a good man. I have now no further favour to ask. I am altogether satisfied as to my treatment, ud desire no change whilst I remain in the Gaol. I rejoice that I have met with so good a man in authority in the Gaol, to shew the bad ones that I can be satisfied, and that their previous conduct towards me was villainous. Whether I ever do or do not see you again, is to me a matter of indifference. I have nothing to thank you for: I owe you nothing: the treatment which I now receive has nothing of favour in it-it is that common piece of justice on the part of the authorities of the Gaol which good men would never have withheld. Having triumphed over bad men I rejoice: and I say now, what I said in March, that I care not how soon I leave the Gaol: And on the other hand, I wish you and all Christians to understand, that I care almost as little, or next to nothing, as to the time, which Christian persecutors, violators of their own laws, may keep me here. I am well employed and happy.

RICHARD CARLILE.

SUBSCRIPTION FOR MRS. WRIGHT.

MRS. WRIGHT,

Shelderslow, July 11, 1824. A FEW of the inhabitants of the village of Shelderslow in the parish of Saddleworth, and county of York, have thought fit to send you a sovereign, which we beg you to accept, as a tribute of gratitude for your undaunted stand against corruption, and we trust you will be so kind as to acknowledge the receipt of it in the Republican.

We remain, with due respect and esteem-on behalf of the subscribers,

Your well wishers,

DANIEL ANDREW.

SAMUEL DAWSON.

Mrs. Wright returns her thanks.

Mrs. Wright acknowledges the receipt of £1. from her Old Friends; also of £1. from the Translator of Dupuis.

TO THE ROBBED AND PERSECUTED RICHARD

CARLILE.

Ashton-under-line, July 25, 1824.

RESPECTED PHILANTHROPIST,

As the Christians in true Christian charity, and as a proof of their good will towards men, have thought proper to rob and persecute you, we, a few Infidels and others, have thought it our Infidel duty to send you this small sum of £5. 11s. 3d., as a tribute we Owe you, for the inflexible integrity, with which you have maintained the right of free discussion, in defiance of all persecutions. We feel disgust, and contempt, for the unjust, and tyrannical sentences passed on your shopmen; and we equally admire their bold and unanswerable defences-defences that would have done honour to a Demonthenes or a Cicero-defences that the flippant babblers who conducted the prosecutions ought to have copied, as lessons, for their future pleadings-defences that must have procured their acquittal before any tribunal that was not composed of villains or bigots. But they have that reward, in the purity of their motives and in the praise of all good men, that can' never fall to the lot of their accusers, whose names will he handed down to posterity with hatred and contempt.

For the prosecutors to charge infidels with blasphemy and indecorum in their conduct towards him, whom the City Recorder terms his Saviour, is truly laughable and ridiculous! What indecorum have they manifested towards him compared with that manifested by the various sects of Christians, and others, who are tolerated by the laws of the country? The Jew is permitted to deny his mission; the Trinitarian is permitted to split him up into three, as his father Joseph the Carpenter would have split up a log of wood; and the Unitarian is permitted to call him a mere man, and of course, to deny his God head. To form a climax to their absurdities and indignities, the Roman Catholic moulds him into pasties, and gobbles him up as a hungry ploughman would a mutton chop. Yet, all these men are tolerated, whilst you, and your shopmen are immured in dungeons, for merely not being so absurd in your opinions.

With every good wish for your future health and welfare, and that of your noble spirited shopmen,

I remain, your admirer and friend,

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TO MR. CHARLES WALKER, ASHTON-UNDERLINE.

CITIZEN,

I CONGRATULATE you, and all friends, on our progress, and on the certainty of an early freedom of discussion. Were it not for that "proud spirit o' me," I sometimes think it would be a wise trick to sham a total defeat for a few months, by way of stimulating the enemy to more vigorous attacks on a new appearance in the field; for certain it is, that every blow they strike is not felt by us, but rebounds on themselves with an incalculable degree of force, A judicious friend, on reading the reports of the trials of Campion and Hassell, in the newspapers, sent me the following observations:

"If your persecutors were not the silliest of mankind, they would never bring such men as Campion and Hassell before the public, and have their defences inserted in the Newspapers. In a long course of time you sell, say, ten thousand Deistical pamphlets, I mean one pamphlet. But your persecutors cause Deistical sermons to be preached at the King's Chapel in the Old Bailey, day after day to crowded audiences, cause them to be printed in twenty thousand Newspapers, and read, perhaps, by two hundred thousand persons in all parts of the world. Surely, they are by far the best publishers of Deism; all other efforts are as nothing in comparison to theirs."

So alarmed was the enemy about the crowded audiences, and the inquisitive disposition shewn by those audiences, during the trials in June, that, on the trial of Mr. Perry, in July, the court was packed. I could obtain the affidavits of several respectable men, such as pass under the appellation of gentlemen, that, on presenting themselves at the doors of the Court, at the last trial, they were asked the question, "are you for or against:" and if the word for escaped, as applying to the Defendant, the doors were insolently shut in their faces, and all offers of money in the way of bribe refused. This is a matter that speaks

volumes.

The wife of Mr. Perry is the person now in the shop courting prosecution. We have been obliged to send several men back into the country, and have almost daily new

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