THE HARDEST OF ALL SWEARING.
When Lord Brougham, the other evening, was presenting some petition for the abolition of oaths, there were certain oaths in particular which he might have taken the opportunity of recommending the Legislature to do away with. They are alluded to in the following passage from a letter signed Censor in the Times:—
"As a condition of admission, the Head and Fellows of all Colleges are enjoined to take oaths to the inviolable observance of all the enactments of the statutes. These oaths, to use the words of the commission, increase in stringency and solemnity, in proportion as the statutes become more minute and less capable of being observed. These oaths are not only required but actually taken. Men of high feeling, refinement, education, and, for the most part, dedicated in an especial manner to God's service, are called on suddenly to swear that they will obey enactments incapable of being obeyed."
Oaths such as these are enough to make any man turn Quaker—at least by quaking as he swallows them. Any amount of swearing that ever disgraced a cabstand is preferable to such shocking affidavits; and there is something much more horrible in the oaths of college Fellows than there is in the imprecations of such fellows as coster-mongers. Our army once "swore terribly in Flanders," but never at such a rate as officers of the Church Militant appear to be in the habit of swearing at the Universities: and although there is said to be an awful amount of perjury committed in the County Courts, it is probable that the individuals forsworn at those halls of justice are far exceeded in number by the Reverend Divines who kiss the book to untruth at the temples of learning. It is a strange kind of consistency that objects to rapping out an oath, and yet obstinately retains such oaths at Oxford and Cambridge.
The Plain Truth of it.—There is NO "medium" in Spirit Rapping; for, in our opinion, it is all humbug from beginning to end.
