miracle in all hungry minds. That very astute body, the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, it appears, have collected this year over £28,000; and, like Falstaff's item of bread to a butt or two of sack, the result is twenty foreign converts-being only a cost of £1,400 each-which is duly recognised as the work of God. According to their statement, the Bible and Testament are read with avidity in certain Hebrew schools, the whereabouts of which not being stated we cannot give to our readers, and is not very important to the future denizens of Pandemonium. But one fact seems very prominent at all these meetings, which is that without more Bibles more infidels cannot be converted; and that as God expended his miraculous powers somewhere about the time the apostles lived, there is no hope for more Bibles unless funds can be found to print more in the ordinary way. In fact, cash up is the alpha and omega of all these meetings. To call them annual discussions is a farce. They are, more properly speaking, annual benefits; principal performers, Messrs. Plumptre, Peto, and Cowan, who seem to be especially retained to do the starring work at each of the meetings-in fact, deduct the three and the meetings would be dumb. It would be a knotty point for Colonel Sibthorp to decide the following query: How much, after printing 10,000 Bibles, would there be left out of £28,000 to be shared among the officials of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews. And those who glory in the economy observed in the production of this most holy and most necessary book must never lose sight of the fact that these religious societies have done more to reduce to the starvation point the wages of printers, bookbinders, folders, and stitchers than all the individual competition of booksellers put together; in fact, no grinding act of oppression, intimidation, or chicanery is too dirty to be by them performed-and all, forsooth, under the name of religion. For who, for the privilege of printing or binding Bibles, would mind existing on one meal a day, instead of three ? Or who would mind seeing his children perish day by day for want of food and fresh air, so that he could but contribute to the spread of the Gospel at the antipodes, by the production and dissemination of cheap Bibles? We can readily learn how many Bibles can be produced, but none can calculate how many fireless hearths accrue to the producers, or how many broken hearts they yearly cause. Oh! if angels do weep, how they would mourn over this sickly mania that, having no bowels for want, destitution, and ignorance at home, proceeds at such a sacrifice to deluge foreign lands with such a book as the Bible.

It cannot, however, be denied that some interesting statistics have been elicited. For instance, by a statement made at the annual meeting of the Religious Tract Society, it appears there are ten stamped newspapers of a decidedly infidel tendency, that have a circulation of upwards of ten millions; six unstamped, with a circulation of over six millions; and a series of miscellaneous papers, with a circulation of over ten millions-all engaged in propagating and propounding the same hellish doctrines. To counteract

wilem, but quitting to inform as to the readers, the said society had pubhouse, wax Mucit commencement, five hundred millions of what they are yasant, to torta jittle messengers of mercy; by which they mean those little eams of bed paper, bad printing, and worse orthography, that are wwwyd payout from house to house by a certain class of people who, being sarahne, Chemisives, want to make everybody else so-and the burden of the wamba ni which may be rammed up in admonitions to children not to kampt the Lord by purchasing lollipops on Sunday, and by not allowing them many body in their pockets they manage to make them withstand the

I mating of the Church Missionary Society seems to have beenwounding to the religions thermometer, the receipts-a taking affair. It more than wubscriptions this year have exceeded £94,000. But even in the society, which is comparatively a flourishing concern, it could not be Aayeed that there was a palpable falling off in some of the most prolific ericke of revenue-enamely, the regular subscriptions; for the great total wrose mainly from legacies, which, from the spirit of intelligence now emroad, is likely to prove in future years not so prolific as at present.

One society which, to the friends of peace at least, must appear anomalous, have alen had their meeting, with a live marquis in the chair. The Naval and Military Bible Society, if the statistics be correct, have done their share in pushing the staple article, the Bible, among the men of war. But really when we reflect on the morals of the military, they do not evidence that the efforts made are very effectual; in fact, if the society does not make the soldiers show up their Bibles, as they do their bodies, to an inspector, at stated periods, it would not exercise our imagination over much to fancy they were in the habit of lighting their pipes with the leaves instead of reading them,

The Home and Colonial School Society have had their meeting; and, if the record be true, commenced the day's proceedings by an examination of the scholars, about five hundred in number-and the Earl of Chichester, the dhairman, was pleased to express his gratification at their replies, which may be very good for those who do not know that both questions and answers are prepared beforehand for these great occasions. The meeting terminated as, we had almost forgotten to mention, all do-with a hymn; and in this case with the addition of the National Anthem, so called.

The total results of all the meetings, as far as Christianity is concerned, is anything but hopeful. In spite of two millions of Bibles and twenty millions of tracts, there is hardly one association clear of debt. Look at the Baptist Missionary Society; in spite of a reduction of expenses in India of £2,625, in Ceylon of £200, in Africa of £1,000, and of incidental expenses £150, they have a debt of £6,357, and even then the balance of the year would have been against the Society, had it not have been for a timely donation of £200 by the treasurer, who, doubtless, is a disinterested man, which just enabled

them to say they had not this year expended more than their income. The results, we repeat, as far as Christianity is concerned, is damning evidence of the futility of the attempt to deceive man many years longer. In the face of such facts as twenty Jews converted at an expense of £28,000, or, as in the case of the Christian Instruction Society, where 2,150 Christian propagandists visited 52,105 families with a result which, for fear of mistakes, we give in the words of the report read to the meeting, that More than thirty individuals were believed to have become genuine converts to Christ, the greater part of whom had been united to the Christian church.' This sentence to men of the world would speak volumes, but by the dearly beloved in the Lord, who with open mouth listened to the astounding result of thirty converts, with a staff of 2,000 and upwards of preachers, it was received as thankfully as those most interested in the system could wish.

In concluding our brief review of the annual exhibition of these religious bodies, all they can do or say cannot disguise the fact that the press, creating its intelligence by the power of steam, which intelligence is propelled by the same power daily through the length and breadth of the land, is so disseminating knowledge that the antiquated systems will not much longer hold water. The truth is, infidelity, so called, and progress, which is called infidelity to scare the credulous, must triumph independently of any efforts of its own, because imposition, deceit, and intolerance, have only to be known to excite the hostility of mankind. Such is priestcraft, a system that has connived at and co-operated with tyranny of every form and kind; that has suppressed intellect, that has set man against man, and nation against nation; that has made religion to consist of forms and symbols instead of practical goodness: in fact, priestcraft has been the blight that has made a desert of the human family. R. L. B.

DISSIMILARITY OF OPINION among the learned as to the year when the Deluge happened, illustrating the wide margin for differences of opinion

A BRIEF GLANCE AT POLITICS.

With the vulgar, names have great weight; the wise use a writ of inquiry into their legitimacy when they are advanced as authorities.-Zimmerman.

THE fate of the Whigs, though not the most prominent topic, is politically the topic of the day. Their littleness, incapacity, utter helplessness, and the insolence of their chiefs were never before so clearly demonstrated to the public. They are falling under the weight of their own imbecility-they are upheld only by that force which exists in no country so strongly as in England-the fear of consequences. And they are aware of this. They calculate their ministerial life upon elements furnished by this well-known characteristic of Englishmen; and they acccordingly pander to it, foster it, artfully excite it, and endeavour to live upon it. In point of fact, it constitutes their pretension to office-it is their sole strength. So long as the English mind is content to endure them, they are content to be endured. The prevailing political immorality, which considers national power as the property of the strongest of the aristocratical parties, a tenet rooted in the Whig mind, and shared in by their opponents, sustains them in what we must call their flagrant dishonesty. But it cannot sustain them much longer. The moment when the people have ceased to fear the consequences of turning out the Whigs at any cost, and the moment when the younger and healthier Radicals treat with disdain and unfaltering hostility the pretension of the aristocracy to a personal property in the government, the Whigs must fall. Meanwhile, we have a species of political interregnum, which a tolerated government practically is, and the Whigs have not the slightest objection to be stop-gaps and eaters of broken bread.

Looked at from any point of view, the Whigs are the great obstacles to national progress. They are the busy-bodies, the marplots, the objectionable people who intrude themselves as necessary parties to every movement, and the consequence is that we have no movement at all. They are the breaks jammed hard upon the wheels of the engine of progress. They are the real obstructions, the actual retarders. A witty friend defined the function of Sir Robert Peel to be the Whig propelling engine. He alone has the power to force them up hill; they are always ready enough to run down. And this criticism of them as a party, indicates the treatment they should meet with from the nation. Take away the breaks, overthrow the obstacles, and, if necessary, run the whole parliamentary train off the rails. Let the Whigs be put out, made to resign, and vanish into congenial nothingness. Why fear the consequences? What can they be to be feared? What more fearful thing for English progress, English safety even, than stupidity and blindness at the top of things pretending to direct, impeding thereby all di. rection? What consequences can we expect from this state of things? Mr. Carlyle's famous 'dead ass floating atop of a mud deluge' is a more

respectable phenomenon. Consequences! can any consequences, even the worst and most horrifying, the accession of the Tories, be more fearful and fatal than incapacity pretending to rule, administer, and advise? What keeps the Whigs in power? the threats they are continually employing of resignation. Can anything be more contemptible? Were the Radicals true to their principles, they would give the Whigs an opportunity of fulfilling their threat, and they would be thereby the authors of a national blessing.

But the Whigs have so artfully mixed themselves up with the free-trade question, have persuaded so many men to believe that if they were turned out, free-trade would be turned out too, that it is no wonder in this age of lax political morality, they maintain their seat. But what arrant nonsense

it is. The Whigs did not settle the free-trade question. The People-the nation decided that. The Whigs! if they could they would have imposed a fixed duty. They settle nothing, uphold nothing, do nothing. If they were happily turned out to-morrow, the Tories would not dare to reimpose protective duties on corn. We say they would not dare, at the peril of a revolution, to upset free-trade. Then, whence the necessity of keeping the Whigs in power? Free-trade can take care of itself. The point of honour, how. ever, is to keep the Whigs in power; but this is one of those baneful political superstitions, which necessarily entail political immorality and lead to national disasters. We must destroy this-and to do so the Whigs must be repudiated as impostors.

But we go further than this. The House of Commons is radically corrupt and corrupting Modern Whiggism is but the excrescence of the system. To us the fortune of the people's cause in the House of Commons is a matter of perfect indifference. We have long ceased to regard that House with respect, we have long ceased to look to it for assistance. Accustomed to consider the interests of parties, and to repudiate the dictates of principle, nursed in extravagance, fed upon patronage, wedded to privileges, founded on fictions, reflecting not the image, expressing not the will of the nation, the House of Commons is necessarily an object of contempt to all those who do not pin their faith to the sleeve of aristocracy. The House of Commons is a privileged and tolerated usurpation of the rights of Englishmen. Existing without any rightful authority, existing on a basis of precedent, having no pretensions to be an institution built up on foundations of right, but even pretending only to be founded on expediency, how can it hope to guide the nation in the ways of justice, or preserve it in the paths of peace? It cannot be done. And as we feel no respect for a man in private society who pretends to be what he is not, so we do not feel any respect for a set of men who pretend to be rightful rulers, when they are wrongful usurpers. Possibly this may be treason, but it is truth. Perhaps it may militate against the security of the crown and government,' but it is in harmony with reason and justice. We desire above all things the security and rightful development of the Nation, and if the security of the other things be incom