THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS.
London, 23d June 1852. Sin—I have had, within the last few days, a circular placed in my hands, asking for subscriptions in aid of a cheap publication, named " The True Briton." This circular has appended to it the names of noblemen and clergy- men, and is accompanied by another paper explaining the character and ob- jects of " The True Briton." Loyalty and religion are its leading charac- teristics, and it aims to beget in the minds of the working people higher tastes, and a stronger tone than they at present entertain for the institutions of the country in Church and State ; and also, if possible, to turn the at- tention of the working-people from those cheap publications of which felonry, obscenity, and blasphemy, are the chief features.
One would think that there was here a field sufficiently wide for the exer- cise of such power as a penny paper, however well-supported, was ever likely topossess. The editor of " The True Briton," however, and his noble and clerical supporters, seem not to think so ; for they have included amongst the evil things that are to be attacked the writings of the Christian Social- ists; and they declare that these writings are more dangerous than the filthy and abominable publications that issue weekly from those awful sinks of moral pollution in the neighbourhood of Holywell Street ; and in proof of this most outrageous assertion, the following paragraph is quoted from the Quarterly Review,—where, by the by, it was not applied to the Christian Socialists. "Cheap publications, containing the wildest and most anarchical doctrines, are. scattered broadcast over the land, in which religion and morality are perverted and scoffed at, and every rule of content which experience has sanctioned, and on which the very existence of society depends, openly assailed; while in their place are sought to be established doctrines as outrageous as the maddest raring* of furious insanity— as wicked as the most devilish spirit could by possibility have desired—murder is openly advocated ; all property is declared to be robbery ; the rules by which marriage declared sacred and inviolate are treated as the dreams of dotage; obedience of ever,, description is denounced as a criminal cowardice ; law, as at present constituted, Ts asserted to be a mere desire for enslaving mankind ; and morality is described as an efficient auxiliary to law, for the same mischievous purpose."
I offer no vindication of the gentlemen upon whom this attack is made; it would be an insult to them to do so : no man in his senses can give the least credit to what is here said; nor can anybody who knows the least in the world of these gentlemen, or their writings, have any other feelings in relation to the matter but those of sorrow and disgust. My object in calling your attention to this is, to give the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Reverend J. 11. Gurney, the Reverend John Jackson, and others, an opportunity of explain- ing how their names come to be published in connexion with so disgraceful a document. Surely English noblemen and Christian clergymen cannot have persuaded themselves that any good cause is to be served by a forgetfulness
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