This is the real fact, as applicable to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English generation, and is the only answer they deserve. The hackneyed and lavished title of Blasphemer--which, with Radical, Liberal, Jacobin, Reformer, etc., are the changes which the hirelings are daily ringing in the ears of those who will listen--should be welcome to all who recollect on _whom_ it was originally bestowed. Socrates and Jesus Christ were put to death publicly as _blasphemers_, and so have been and may be many who dare to oppose the most notorious abuses of the name of God and the mind of man. But persecution is not refutation, nor even triumph: the "wretched infidel," as he is called, is probably happier in his prison than the proudest of his assailants. With his opinions I have nothing to do--they may be right or wrong--but he has suffered for them, and that very suffering for conscience' sake will make more proselytes to deism than the example of heterodox[326] Prelates to Christianity, suicide statesmen to oppression, or overpensioned homicides to the impious alliance which insults the world with the name of "Holy!"[327] I have no wish to trample on the dishonoured or the dead; but it would be well if the adherents to the classes from whence those persons sprung should abate a little of the cant which is the crying sin of this double-dealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers, and----but enough for the present. FOOTNOTES: {264}[319] [The Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau, author of an _Essai sur L'Histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie_ (Sec. Ed. 3 tom. 1827), was, at one time, resident at Odessa, where he met and made the acquaintance of Armand Emanuel, Duc de Richelieu, who took part in the siege of Ismail. M. Léon de Crousaz-Crétet describes him as "ancien surintendant des théâtres sous l'Empereur Paul."--_Le Duc de Richelieu_, 1897, p. 83.] [320] [For Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, second Marquis of Londonderry (1769-1822), see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 108, 109, note 1.] {266}[321] [Samuel Ferrand Waddington, born 1759, hop-grower and radical politician, first came into notice as the chairman of public meetings in favour of making peace with the French in 1793. He was the author, _inter alia_, of _A Key to a Delicate Investigation_, 1812, and _An Address to the People of the United Kingdom_, 1812. He was alive in 1822. James Watson (1766-1838), a radical agitator of the following of Thomas Spence, was engaged, in the autumn of 1816, in an abortive conspiracy to blow up cavalry barracks, barricade the streets, and seize the Bank and the Tower. He was tried for high treason before Lord Ellenborough, and acquitted.] [322] [_Macbeth_, act iv. sc. 3, lines 7, 8.] [323] I say by the _law_ of the _land_--the laws of humanity judge more gently; but as the legitimates have always the law in their mouths, let them here make the most of it.