Some philosophers have been of opinion that the history of past ages is a true picture of what the fate of man ever must be; that he is destined for ever to-be the slave of a succession of superstitions--to be the tool and puppet of tyrants in the shape of priests and aristocratic rulers. This is a melancholy representation, which implies inherent viciousness in his nature; and that there will never be a want of rogues to prey upon ignorance. In the coalition of the priest and the law-giver, we invariably find the unchangeable enemy of the human race; for, besides the mental slavery thereby maintained, anything like good civil government is necessarily precluded, that being found impossible while it is leagued with the pernicious inventions of supernaturalism. Have the majority of mankind, who are thus victimised, no remedy against this horrid order of things? * They are not entitled to any, while they find it easier to be cheated than to think for themselves, a case which will always be theirs until they become self-regenerated, by the removal of ignorance; a reform that must be effected by themselves alone, since it is evidently and energetically opposed by their oppressors. Ignorance being the only element in which priestcraft can thrive, or its concomitant, bad government be tolerated; so is it the primary source of that degradation and baseness which rears up the mind-subduing altars, of superstition, whose foster-mother it is; and without whose aid no kind of secular despotism could have plunged man into the abject and contemptible condition he is in at present throughout Europe.** * "Small hopes have the nations! While reason is brought Every hour to be laid on credulity's shrine, Till the truth-seeking spirit submission is taught, And the dreams of a dotard seem doctrines divine!" ** When the humane and enlightened Cortes of Spain would have abolished the Inquisition, the priests told the populace that it would be an infringement of their liberties; and the priests were bettered!' So true is the Spanish proverb, that "Man is an ass that kicks those? who take off his panniers." We repeat, that a better order of things cannot result until man shall, by education and a virtuous reform of his moral habits assert his own dignity and thereby emancipate himself from being the devoted grovelling victim of this theologico-aristocratic conspiracy, and the unjust laws and institutions which ever must of necessity spring from it; whereby he is at all points robbed of the enjoyment of his nature, and vegetates as the regularly trained slave of the most abominable artifice.