state of civil and religious liberty, of refined sensibility and generous sentiment, neither the invitation to the one nor the appeal to the other will be made in vain, when I have shown that to support the Greeks is alike to follow the maxims of prudence, to obey the impulses of benevolence, to practise the law of charity, and to vindicate the religion of Christ and "the ways of God to man."

24. Attempts to remove the civil disabilities of the Roman Catholics have but too frequently excited the whole rhetoric of the Pulpit; and shall it be said that, when the lives of 7 millions of men are in imminent jeopardy-when the question is whether 7 millions of people are to live like free men in the full possession of civil liberty, or are to be made "to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture," (Burke's eulogium on the King and Queen of France,) to which they may be subjected by Turkish barbarity, in the midst of bodily chains and the absence of every mental enjoyment-when the point at issue is whether 7 millions of our fellow Christians are to be permitted to secure the right of following the faith, which we profess, of serving the Christ, whose precepts we obey, of worshipping the God, whom we ourselves adore, or are to be compelled to abjure the Christian name, and, merciful Heaven! to see the children, which have sprung from their loins, educated in all the impure practices of Mahometan belief-shall it be said that on an occasion like this no Minister of God's holy word, himself enjoying "the liberty, wherewith Christ hath made him free," was found to plead the cause of the insulted, injured, oppressed, and enslaved Greek?

25. Daily engaged as I am in the study of the Poets, Orators, Historians, Philosophers, Philologists, and Critics of ancient Greece, and little habituated as I am to English composition, you must, dear Sir, pardon the inaccuracies and imperfections of my style"the spirit," which I have imbibed from their immortal works, "has given me utterance," and "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

26. "Go then, ye defenders of your country, accompanied with every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, where God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success, not to lend you her aid; she will shed over this enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged in the field, many will repair to the closet, many to the Sanctuary; the faithful of every name will employ that prayer, which has power with God; the feeble hands, which are unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the sword of the Spirit; and from myriads of humble, contrite hearts the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle in its ascent to Heaven with the shouts of battle, and the shock of arms. And thou,

sole ruler among the children of men, to whom the shields of the earth belong, gird on thy sword, thou most mighty! go forth with their hosts in the day of battle! Impart in addition to their hereditary valor that confidence of success, which springs from thy presence! Pour into their hearts the spirit of departed heroes! Inspire them with thine own; and, while led by thy hand, and fighting under thy banners, open thou their eyes to behold in every valley and in every plain, what the prophet beheld by the same illumination-chariots of fire, and horses of fire! Then shall the strong man be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark; and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them." (R. Hall's Sentiments proper to the present Crisis. p. 78) With every sentiment of respect and gratitude, I remain, dear Sir,

Your faithful and obliged Servant,

EDMUND HENRY BARKER.

P. S. August 13th.-1. Since the above Letter was written, I have been informed that many and some splendid offers of subscription in the behalf of the Greeks have been made in Letters addressed to you in consequence of your interesting Pamphlet; and therefore I do not now see real reason to despair about the success of a general subscription, to which I am ready to contribute my mite. I trust that but few days will be suffered to elapse, before some high-spirited individuals of illustrious rank or known respectability will have the courage to call by public advertisement a general meeting at the London Tavern or some similar place for the purpose of consulting on the best means of aiding the Greek Insurrection. It appears to me that nothing is so well calculated to effect this important object, as a repeal of the Foreign Enlistment-Bill, because, while this Bill is suffered to remain on our Statute-Book, we shall not be allowed to send to the support of the Greeks what would be the most useful things, arms, and ammunition, and disciplined soldiers; nor can we tempt the brave officers, who have earned renown on the field of Waterloo, "to pursue the track of glory" in Greece, when by interfering in the cause they would or might by the loss of their half-pay sacrifice the comforts of existence.

2. At a period, when, proh Deum hominumque fidem! we are arraigning the bounty of Providence as the cause of the present agricultural distress, when we are complaining of a redundant

population, when we consider that too much land has been brought into tillage, when the English laborer is in vain supplicating for employment, and when the Irish peasant is in a state of absolute destitution, is it not extreme impolicy-is it not perfect cruelty not to afford every facility to such individuals, as desire to procure a subsistence or to try their fortunes on a foreign soil? and thousands of heroic spirits might at once earn bread and acquire fame in the Morea, if they were encouraged to lend their assistance to the Greek Cause.

3. Nothing can be more happily conceived than the epithet barbarous, which a connexion of the present Ministry has justly applied to the views and the conduct of the Holy Alliance. For what can be more worthy of a native barbarian than to kidnap the person of the Neapolitan King, to persuade that veteran imbecile to a shameless violation of the solemn oath, which he took to preserve the Constitution, which had been gravely formed by the representatives of the nation in Parliament assembled, and to support him on his tottering throne, to aid him in annihilating the rising liberties of his country, and in decapitating and proscribing their founders, by the presence of those armies, which the Holy Alliance have been proud to deem the liberators of Europe, because they had crushed the tyrannous power of Buonaparte? What can be more barbarous than for Monarchs, who glory in the name of Christian, to retard the progress of civil and religious liberty, to block up the avenues to political knowledge, and to extinguish the moral lights of heaven? Posterity will hear, with an astonishment equal to its disgust, that the magnanimous Alexander, who had the courage not to sink before Buonaparte, when he invaded Russia, shuns the sight and prohibits the importation of certain English Newspapers, because they come from a land of liberty, and tell of its sweets. What can be more barbarous than not to perceive that nothing in reality renders legitimate government so insecure as extreme ignorance in the people? It is this, which yields them an easy prey to seduction, makes them the victims of prejudice and false alarms, and so ferocious withal, that their interference in a time of public commotion, is more to be dreaded than the eruption of a volcano. The true prop of good government is opinion, the perception, on the part of the subject, of benefits resulting from it, a settled conviction, in other words, of its being a public good. Now nothing can produce or maintain that opinion but knowledge, since opinion is a form of knowledge. Of tyrannical and unlawful governments, indeed, the support is fear, to which ignorance is as congenial as it is abhorrent from the genius of a free people. Look at the popular insurrections and massacres in France of what description of persons were those ruffians com

posed, who, breaking forth like a torrent, overwhelmed the mounds of lawful authority? Who were the cannibals, that sported with the mangled carcases and palpitating limbs of their murdered victims, and dragged them about with their teeth in the gardens of the Tuileries? Were they refined and elaborated into these barbarities by the efforts of a too polished education? No: they were the very scum of the populace, destitute of all moral culture, whose atrocity was only equalled by their ignorance, as might well be expected, when the one was the legitimate parent of the other. Who are the persons, who in every country are most disposed to outrage and violence, but the most ignorant and uneducated of the poor? to which class also chiefly belong those unhappy beings, who are doomed to expiate their crimes at the fatal tree; few of whom, it has recently been ascertained, on accurate enquiry, are able to read, and the greater part utterly destitute of all moral or religious principle." (R. Hall's Advantages of Knowledge to the lower Classes, p. 8).

when

4. I shall conclude my Postscript, dear Sir, with the following words of the same excellent writer and admirable man, which I could wish to see engraven on the heart of the Holy Alliance :— "These are not the times, in which it is safe for a nation to repose on the lap of ignorance. If there ever were a season, public tranquillity was ensured by the absence of knowledge, that season is past. The convulsed state of the world will not permit unthinking stupidity to sleep, without being appalled by phantoms, and shaken by terrors, to which reason, which defines her objects and limits her apprehensions by the reality of things, is a stranger. Every thing in the condition of mankind announces the approach of some great crisis, for which nothing can prepare us but the diffusion of knowledge, probity, and the fear of the Lord. While the world is impelled with such violence in opposite directions ; while a spirit of giddiness and revolt is shed upon the nations, and the seeds of mutation are so thickly sown, the improvement of the mass of the people will be our grand security, in the neglect of which the politeness, the refinement, and the knowledge accumulated in the higher orders, weak and unprotected, will be exposed to imminent danger, and perish like a garland in the grasp of popular fury. Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation; the fear of the Lord is his treasure." (R. Hall's Advantages of Ignorance to the lower Classes, p. 24.)