"We see disorder pervading every part of society. The poor are set against the rich, and the rich are zealously engaged in oppressing and coercing the poor. Crime increases, and though more churches are building, religion is decaying. The remedies suggested for our disorders, within the bounds sanctioned by the Church, are more numerous than the disorders themselves; but though confusion and anarchy threaten us, the law forbids men to say aught against principles which our rulers have followed, while society has been brought into its present condition. "What the law now decrees against what it calls blasphemy, it decreed, not two centuries ago, against witchcraft. It now denounces the former as displeasing to God; it then denounced the latter for the same offence. Men and women were in those less humane days burned for displeasing God, while now they are only fined and incarcerated. By the progress of knowledge, lawyers, both barristers and judges, have been compelled to give up that portion of the perfection of human reason, and the law against witchcraft has become obsolete. If our view of the law for suppressing objections to the Scriptures, under * the name of blasphemy, be correct, it is not more reasonable than the law against witchcraft. While no lawyer, however, will now lend himself to revive the latter or carry it into execution, there are numbers, we say it to the disgrace of the profession, zealous and eager to apply the former, at least to the penny tracts which are addressed to the poor. "It is therefore with deep regret that we saw so eminent a man as the Attorney-General lending himself to this sorry work. We are ready to admit, as a Tory contemporary has stated, that he has done his duty, and he finds his reward in the praise of the Tories. Nor did he show, as far as we can learn, certainly not in his reply, any reluctance to perform it; people say he did it as if he had something to atone for, and was rather eager to gain the approbation of Bishop Philpotts. His labours were crowned with a success which his own party reprobate. In Westminster Hall he has triumphed, but an appeal lies from that to the world; and even the Whigs, who have heretofore denounced prosecutions for blasphemy as for witchcraft, consider that in the last resort he will sustain a terrible defeat.