Those who are inclined to attack the character of Voltaire, should read the account of his endeavours for the Calas family. How, when old Calas had been broken alive on the wheel at Toulouse, and his family were ruined, Voltaire took up their case, aided them with means, spared no effort of his pen or brain, and ultimately achieved the great victory of reversing the unjust sentence, and obtaining compensation for the family. It, then, these Voltaire-haters have not learned to love this great heretic, let them study the narrative of his even more successful endeavours on behalf of the Sirvens; more successful, because in this case he took up the fight before an unjust judgment could be delivered, and thus prevented the repetition of such an iniquitous execution as had taken place in the Galas case. The cowardly slanders as to his conduct when dying are not worth notice; those spit on the grave of the dead who would not have dared to look in the face of the living. Claud Adrian Helvetius was born at Paris 1715, and died December 1771. His best known works are "De l'Esprit," published 1758; "Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances Humaines," 1746; "Traite des Systemes," 1749; "Traite des Sensations," 1758. Rousseau wrote in reply to Helvetius, but when the Parliament of Paris condemned the work "De l'Esprit," and it was in consequence burned by the common hangman, Rousseau withdrew his refutatory volume. Helvetius argues that any religion, of which the chiefs are intolerant, and the conduct of which is expensive to the state, "cannot long be the religion of an enlightened and well governed nation. The people that submit to it will labour only to maintain the ease and luxury of the priesthood; each of its inhabitants will be nothing more than a slave to the sacerdotal power. A religion to be good should be tolerant and little expensive. Its clergy should have no authority over the people. A dread of the priest debases the mind and the soul, makes the one brutish and the other slavish. Must the ministers of the altar always be armed with the sword of the state? Can the barbarities committed by their intolerance ever be forgotten? The earth is yet drenched with the blood they have spilled. Civil tolerance alone is not sufficient to secure the peace of nations. Every dogma is a seed of discord and injustice sown amongst mankind." "Why do you make the Supreme Being resemble an eastern tyrant? Why make him punish slight faults with eternal torment? Why thus put the name of the Divinity at the bottom of the portrait of the devil? Why oppress the soul with a load of fear, break its springs, and of a worshipper of Jesus make a vile, pusillanimous slave? It is the malignant who paint a malignant G-od. What is their devotion? A veil for their crimes."