THE LAST SESSION. 329 



deeply interested in the continuance of lordly despotism, and the 

 progress of fraud and profligacy : the pensioners, the sinecurists, 

 the little chartered lords of boroughs and cities ; the managers of old 

 charitable institutions ; the hedge-lawyers ; the bailiffs and their 

 fiend-like followers. And who are the people who will support the 

 claims of liberty ? We answer Every man in the land who has the 

 fear of God before his eyes every man who believes that there is a 

 future state, in which his merits and demerits will be canvassed, 

 and in which he will be rewarded or punished. And yet, against 

 these latter the hypocritical cry is raised of " the church is in 

 danger!" The pseudo church is indeed in danger: a church sup- 

 ported by frauds of the blackest dye, trampling on a nation in the 

 name of that meek and all bountiful Redeemer, who impressed 

 upon his disciples the absolute necessity of forbearance, humility, 

 rejection of high places, honours, and dignities, and who himself 

 rode on an ass, the meanest of beasts of burden, to exemplify 

 the simplicity by which the Christian character should be distin- 

 guished : a soi disant reformed church, raised upon the spoils of the 

 scarlet one of Rome, long since shorn, and justly so, of the greater 

 part of its superstitious influence over an ignorant people. But 

 what became of the riches of the despoiled church? Were they 

 distributed amongst the poor and needy ? Were they appropriated 

 according to the doctrines of the great Founder of the true Christian 

 church ? Oh, no : they were awarded to fatten and pamper the re- 

 formed church ; to continue the bug-bear, in another shape, of the 

 necessity of bishops, and archbishops, and sinecurists, and pluralists, 

 and all the sable train of ecclesiastical mummery ; in fine, to raise up 

 a Hierarchy only to be equalled in atrocity by the Oligarchy with 

 which it is now united, to wrest the last crust from the hands of 

 poverty, and barter away the rights and privileges of free-born 

 men. But the lords feel that they are arrested in their career : the 

 awful voice of Public Opinion has sounded in their ears like the 

 thunder of a cataract, which they begin to suspect may overwhelm 

 them ; and their " last session," they perceive, may be indeed the 

 last, in which their antics may be played and their wickedness tole- 

 rated. The banners of the Cross must be separated from the ban- 

 ners of blood ; the union of the cassock and the sword must be 

 dissolved; or the "last session" of the Commons will be the last of 

 its independence and safety. 



