CHRISTIANITY. 21 



our company, seemed to me true and well expressed. I think 

 my observation of the lower class of Englishmen in the United 

 States generally confirms it. " I have often noticed of my coun- 

 trymen," said he, " that when they cease to honor the king, they 

 no longer fear God." That is, as I understand it, when they are 

 led to change the political theory in which they have been in- 

 structed, they must lose confidence in a religious creed which 

 they owe about equally to the circumstances of their birth, nei- 

 ther having been adopted from a rational process in their own 

 minds. Seeing the childish absurdity of many forms which they 

 have been trained to consider necessary, natural, and ordered of 

 God, they lose confidence in all their previous ideas that have 

 resulted from a merely receptive education, and religion and roy- 

 alty are classed together as old-fashioned notions, nursery bug- 

 bears, and romances. It is partly the result of the abominable 

 masquerade of words which is still constantly played off in Eng- 

 land on all public occasions, clothing government with antiquated 

 false forms of sacredness. The simple majesty and holy authority 

 that depends on the exercise of justice, love, and good judgment, 

 so far from being made more imposing by this mummery, is lost 

 sight of; while all the folly, indiscretion, and injustice of the 

 administration of the law by fallible and unsanctified agents, is 

 inevitably associated in the minds of the ignorant with all that is 

 holy and true. 



The only idea now, these, our shipmates, entertain of Chris- 

 tianity, seems to be, that it is the particular humbug by which 

 the clergy make the people think that they must support them in 

 purple and fine linen, just as royalty is the humbug on which the 

 Queen is borne, and government the humbug by which the aris- 

 tocracy are carried on their shoulders : all, of course, in combina- 

 tion. And nothing would convince them of the sincerity of the 

 clergy short of their martyrdom even that, I fear, should th< 



