The conspiracy of the Bullionists as it affects the present system of the money laws. By Caleb Quotem. Birmingham, 1847, 8vo. (pp. 16).
This pamphlet is one of a class of which I know very little, in which the effects of the laws relating to this or that political bone of contention are imputed to deliberate conspiracy of one class to rob another of what the one knew ought to belong to the other. The success of such writers in believing what they have a bias to believe, would, if they knew themselves, make them think it equally likely that the inculpated classes might really believe what it is their interest to believe. The idea of a guilty understanding existing among fundholders, or landholders, or any holders, all the country over, and never detected except by bouncing pamphleteers, is a theory which should have been left for Cobbett[[818]] to propose, and for Apella to believe.[[819]]
[August, 1866. A pamphlet shows how to pay the National Debt. Advance paper to railways, etc., receivable in payment of taxes. The railways pay interest and principal in money, with which you pay your national debt, and redeem your notes. Twenty-five years of interest redeems the notes, and then the principal pays the debt. Notes to be kept up to value by penalties.]
THEISM INDEPENDENT OF REVELATION.
The Reasoner. No. 45. Edited by G.J. Holyoake.[[820]] Price 2d. Is there sufficient proof of the existence of God? 8vo. 1847.
This acorn of the holy oak was forwarded to me with a manuscript note, signed by the editor, on the part of the
"London Society of Theological Utilitarians," who say, "they trust you may be induced to give this momentous subject your consideration." The supposition that a middle-aged person, known as a student of thought on more subjects than one, had that particular subject yet to begin, is a specimen of what I will call the assumption-trick of controversy, a habit which pervades all sides of all subjects. The tract is a proof of the good policy of letting opinions find their level, without any assistance from the Court of Queen's Bench. Twenty years earlier the thesis would have been positive, "There is sufficient proof of the non-existence of God," and bitter in its tone. As it stands, we have a moderate and respectful treatment—wrong only in making the opponent argue absurdly, as usually happens when one side invents the other—of a question in which a great many Christians have agreed with the atheist: that question being—Can the existence of God be proved independently of revelation? Many very religious persons answer this question in the negative, as well as Mr. Holyoake. And, this point being settled, all who agree in the negative separate into those who can endure scepticism, and those who cannot: the second class find their way to Christianity. This very number of The Reasoner announces the secession of one of its correspondents, and his adoption of the Christian faith. This would not have happened twenty years before: nor, had it happened, would it have been respectfully announced.
There are people who are very unfortunate in the expression of their meaning. Mr. Holyoake, in the name of the "London Society" etc., forwarded a pamphlet on the existence of God, and said that the Society trusted I "may be induced to give" the subject my "consideration." How could I know the Society was one person, who supposed I had arrived at a conclusion and wanted a "guiding word"? But so it seems it was: Mr. Holyoake, in the English
Leader of October 15, 1864, and in a private letter to me, writes as follows:
"The gentleman who was the author of the argument, and who asked me to send it to Mr. De Morgan, never assumed that that gentleman had 'that particular subject to begin'—on the contrary, he supposed that one whom we all knew to be eminent as a thinker had come to a conclusion upon it, and would perhaps vouchsafe a guiding word to one who was, as yet, seeking the solution of the Great Problem of Theology. I told my friend that 'Mr. De Morgan was doubtless preoccupied, and that he must be content to wait. On some day of courtesy and leisure he might have the kindness to write.' Nor was I wrong—the answer appears in your pages at the lapse of seventeen years."