Not many years have elapsed since the Reverend Mr. Irving electrified all England with his "unknown tongues;" and there were impostors and fanatics, or fools and knaves, prompt to give an impulse to that memorable delusion by lending themselves to the cheat.
In this civilized country, too—in the nineteenth century—in a land whose sons proclaim themselves to be farther advanced in knowledge and enlightening principles than any other race on the surface of the earth—in one of the counties, moreover, where the refinement of intellect is supposed to prevail to a degree of brilliancy certainly not excelled in other parts of the kingdom,—there—in the neighbourhood of the cathedral city of Canterbury—did a madman, at no very remote date, assemble a host of enthusiastic believers in his horrible assumption of the name and attributes of the Saviour of the World! Yes—in the vicinity of a town presumed to possess all the benefit which the knowledge and learning of innumerable clergymen can possibly impart, did Mad Tom successfully personate the Messiah for several days!
But, oh! how sad—how mournful is it to contemplate the course which the Government of England is taking at the instant while we are penning these lines! A General Fast, to propitiate the Almighty, and to induce Him to avert his wrath from Ireland! Holy God! do thy thunders sleep when men thus blaspheme thy sacred name—thus actually reproach Thee with the effects of their misdeeds?
When misgovernment has brought Ireland to the verge of desperation,—when landlords have drained the country of its resources to be expended in the British metropolis,—when the agents and middlemen have exercised the full amount of petty tyranny and goading oppression upon the unhappy tenants,—when the Irish pride has been insulted by the symbols of subjection until endurance is no longer possible,—when the ambition of many gifted minds has been chafed and irritated at being excluded from a career of honour they would otherwise have pursued,—when all the humanizing effects of civilization have been restricted by a perpetual collision between the triumphant Protestant religion on the one hand domineering with insolence, and the defeated Catholic religion on the other looking for the chance of regaining a lost ascendancy,—when, too, an unprincipled system of agitation has fanned the flame of the worst feelings and extorted the few pence from the pockets of the half-starving peasantry,—when all these influences, forming an aggregate powerful enough to crush the most flourishing country upon the face of the earth, have been brought to bear upon unhappy Ireland, and have reduced her population to a misery which with such fertile causes was inevitable,—there are to be found men who are bold enough, in their deplorable ignorance or their abominable impiety, to accuse the Almighty of having purposely afflicted Ireland!
People of the British Isles! be not deceived by this blasphemous proceeding—a proceeding that would shift an awful responsibility from the shoulders of incompetent statesmen, and lay it to the account of heaven! Our blood runs cold as we write these lines—we shudder as we contemplate the wickedness of this impious subterfuge!
A General Fast to propitiate the Almighty—when the misgovernment and the misdeeds of men have worked all the horrible results complained of! Carlile, Hone, Richard Taylor, Tom Paine, and the whole host of avowed infidels were never prosecuted by the Attorney-general for blasphemy worse than that which attributes to the Almighty the effects of the errors, ignorance, despotism, and short-sightedness of human beings!
God has given us a fair and beauteous world to dwell in,—he has endowed us with intelligence to make the most of the produce of the soil,—and his revealed laws and doctrines have supplied us with precepts competent to maintain order and regularity in society. He manifests no caprice—no change: the seasons come in due course, each bringing its peculiar bounties;—and it depends on ourselves to render our abiding-places here scenes of comfort, happiness, and contentment. But if by our own ignorance, wickedness, or tyrannical behaviour, we succeed in rendering any one spot of this fair and beauteous world a prey to famine and its invariable attendant—pestilence,—if we undertake to govern a country which we have conquered, and instead of applying beneficial and suitable measures, heap insult, wrong, error, and oppression upon its people,—how can we be surprised that the worst results should ensue? and how can we be so wickedly blind, or so vilely hypocritical, as to attempt to cast upon the dispensations of Providence those lamentable evils which we ourselves have engendered?
Again we say that a more abominable insult to the Majesty of Heaven was never perpetrated, than that conveyed by the motives set forth as a reason for a General Fast! The Ministers who have advised Queen Victoria to assent to such a hideous mockery, are unworthy the confidence of the nation. England will become the laughing-stock—the scorn—the derision of the whole world. Oh! we feel ashamed of belonging to a country in which such monstrous proceedings are set in motion under the solemn sanction of the Sovereign and her Ministers!
[28]. Partington's "Dictionary of Universal Biography" contains the following brief but faithful account of that impious and abominable impostress, Johanna Southcott: