When Beccaria wrote of Crimes and Penalties, the whole world was for torturing either innocents, or criminals, because divines with the bible in their hands, were against Beccaria. And they were against astronomy, and Galileo was one of the victims. The lava at the foot of the neapolitan Vesuvius, the falls of Niagara tell us that the world must have existed, at least, more than 10,000 years: but, with the bible in their hands, geology must be a false science. And Columbus was thought a dreamer: and Spinosa, Machiavelli, Locke, Spurzheim, Bentham, Fourier, were branded with reprobation, and atheism. The philosophers of our century prove, and demonstrate that the capital penalty is as barbarous as the rack was before Beccaria; still, because the bible says: tooth for tooth, and death for death; the criminal, and, too often, the innocent, are not yet spared from the bloody law. And calling themselves the only light of civilization, and social intercourse, they do nothing but forcing mankind back to five thousand years ago! How can the rising generation of America govern themselves, when a certain professor says to his hundred students, that Herschel told a falsehood, when the latter demonstrated that in the moon must have been quakes, and revolutions of matter? And why did the professor treat Herschel so badly? Because, the so called learned man, wishing to admit nothing but what he reads in the bible, thinks God would be unjust to send evils in the moon, where those living beings had not committed the original sin. For the sake of brevity, I will say nothing of Maria Monk, Mathias, and women burned alive as witches by a verdict of jury. In a country where the law permits every individual to worship God in its own way, in spite of which Joseph Smith, and his brother, were murdered in a prison--this only fact shows, that the legislators of this country will lose their beneficial power, unless literature will take the place of divinity. May God defend nations from the wrath of fanatics; and the word Charity, so well understood by Jesus, may it be felt as it should be. It is a shame in a christian land, where we boast so much of our morals, to learn from the mouth of the present Sultan a better tolerance: “Musulmans, christians, jews,” said he to his subjects, “you are all dear to me, you are all my children. If there be one amongst you who is oppressed, let him come forward, and justice shall be done him; for it is my wish, that the laws which are made to protect the lives, the properties, and the honor of my subjects, be faithfully administered, musulman, christian, or jew; rich or poor; soldier, priest, or layman, confide in my love, and in my justice; you are all equal in my eyes, as you are equal before the law: you shall be all treated as such; and the Almighty will reward, on the judgment day, the honest, and faithful servant.”