Truth

.—What kind of a government must that be where it is judged libellous to tell the truth of the creature, but praise worthy to calumniate the Creator? What kind of government, or rather what kind of tyranny must that be, where the noble and investigating mind of man dares not promulgate known truths, where the scrutinizing eye of the philosopher has penetrated, but where that eye dares only see in secret? What can we think of a state where our religion is the patch-work of priests, and our system of policy the Dagon of a few wily and idolatrous knaves called statesmen? Where, upon the only subjects worthy of disputation or minute enquiry, all the noblest faculties of the soul are hushed into silence, and fettered down to the received opinions of an age of superstition and prejudice, on pain of the most cruel and vindictive punishments? Truth in such a country is a stranger: she wanders up and down like a houseless pilgrim, not having where to lay her head; and if she chance to stray into some lowly cottage, she is driven out with unrelenting fury, by some loyal brute or other, in the person of an ignorant, hot-headed magistrate, or a bigoted intolerant priest! Thus persecuted, and thus driven from all society, she droops her head in piteous languishment, yet still struggles against the opposing tide, each struggle fainter than the former, and her fate still tumbling in the balance, till at last she is overwhelmed at once by the strong arm of power, and plunged into the pitch shades of everlasting night!