"Attempting to get their own," cried I; "is that the way you designate robbery? for that, I suppose, is what you mean."

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Aye! there it is," said he. "None of you smooth-faced gentlemen, who, though forced to walk on foot while others ride in their carriages, but toady those real robbers of the poor, by calling that robbery which is only justice. If you ever heard of the laws of nature, you must know that the first of them is equality as to property, and every thing else. Nay, a community of goods was originally the law of Christianity; but soon the rascally priests abolished it; after which men grew rich by robbing others of their share. Yet if one of the robbed attempt to recover part of his property, he is himself called robber, and hanged like a dog, or shot like a carrion crow. Out upon such a world!"

He said this with such emphasis, that though I believed him mad, I thought him at least sincere. He, however, went on :

"Of course, too, you soldiers (for I still believe you to be one) should all be put down; fathers, instead of being tyrants over their children till twenty-one, should have no authority after they are fifteen; for I would follow the laws of nature in every thing, and they shew, that boys are then marriageable, and marriage (if it be allowed at all) at least shews the time for emancipation."

"Allowed at all!"

"Yes. For where can we find nature speak so well as in the brutes, who in most things far excel us?

There is at least no wickedness among them, and there are no marriages among them; and children, as soon as they can provide for themselves, leave their fathers and mothers, and never know them again. Is not this unanswerable ?"

"I quite agree with you," said I, much amused, and wishing now to draw him out.

"I don't believe you," replied he, "for just now you would not allow that masters and fathers were rum commodities; and if it was not for your knapsack and black stock, as you say you come from Oxford, I should take you for one of those black-gowned hypocrites, who, under pretence of godliness, humbug people out of their rights. Was there ever such a barefaced pillage as tithes? Yet, forsooth, it is all for our good, to enable them to pray for and instruct us; as if we could not pray for and instruct ourselves! With my good will, Oxford and Cambridge, and all such harbours for designing priests, should be burnt down; and if the priests along with them, it would not be amiss, for they have been the cause of all the miseries of the world, from Adam. Why, the very grammar paints them to the life:- Bos, fur, sus, atque sacerdos.'"

"I thought,” said I, “that line had only been to denote the genders of the nouns mentioned, not the character of sacerdos.”

"So those who only skim the surface think," returned he, contemptuously. "They see not that even Lily in this intended (though he veiled it, from fear of the tyrant law) to depict the clergy in their proper

colours. I am, however, translating some of these rules, in a sort of verse, for the instruction of the people, and if you buy my book when it is published (it is cheap, in order to be more widely distributed), you will find the English run thus:

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Bos-when among his neighbours' wives;
Fur-when gathering his tithes ;

Sus-when he swills at parish feast;

Sacerdos-to complete the priest.""

"There can be no doubt of all this," said I, beginning, however, to wish to get rid of my new preceptor; when, looking at me with stricter scrutiny, he observed,

"If you are sincere, perhaps you will give me a proof of it when we arrive at Reading-to which I suppose you are going-by enrolling your name in a society which I have instituted there, and at which I am to lecture this evening. The disciples are already numerous; you will have to pay twenty shillings subscription to cover expenses, and what you please to me, as lecturer and instructor in the real rights of man."

"You are a public lecturer, then ?”

"Yes; for I look upon myself as born to renovate society, and lighten the darkness even of Europe, but of England in particular; for, from want of mere moral courage, the wisest and best spirits in it are content to be oppressed by fools and cowards. Such are the monopolizers of wealth and power. But I am setting up, and am daily more and more successful, a new code of laws, which will extinguish all abuses what

ever, being founded on the eternal rights of nature : one of which is, to have all things in common."

"Wives and all?" asked I, affecting great simpli city.

"We have not yet got to that pass," returned he, "from the inveterate prejudices that oppose us; but after a few more lectures I shall not despair of it. This evening, however, is set aside for another part of the subject, which will be worth hearing should you attend."

"Pray what?"

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Why, you may have heard (or, as you are not an inhabitant of Reading, perhaps you have not heard) that a poor man was shot two nights ago, in the act of what was called breaking into the mayor's house; shot by the mayor himself!"

"And was he not breaking in ?” asked I.

"Why yes; if unbarring a window, merely to get what he had a right to, is breaking in."

"With what intent ?"

"Aye; that is the true question. The poor man was starving; the mayor lived in abundance. The man had a right to his share of the fruits of the earth; the mayor had too many of them. This, however, the distressed man did not well know, till he had attended my lectures, and convinced himself that he had a right to deliver himself by his own act from the injustice of the laws of property. He therefore only wished to take from the monopolist what might bring them more to the equality intended by nature. To do this, he certainly tried to get into the house in the middle

of the night, and was savagely shot in the attempt. I am to lecture upon it this evening, and shall prove it a cruel and bloody murder."

"I have no doubt of it," I answered; "but pray, in proving this from the law of nature, may you not run a little risk from the law of the land? May not this very mayor think himself libelled, to say nothing of the community ?"

"The mayor! the community!" cried he; “what can they do? Though you come from Oxford, you seem not to know that the schoolmaster is abroad; and the march of intellect is such, that they dare not interfere. If the mayor was to do so, he would be shot to-morrow. But I hear the Wallingford coach behind us, on which I have an outside place to Reading, having, in fact, come from Wallingford, and was only walking till it should come up. Farewell. I trust I shall see you in the evening, and that what you will hear may quicken your ideas. Ask for Dr. Firebrass's lecture-room. Anybody will shew it you."

“Dr. Firebrass! You have then graduated at a university. May I ask if it was at Oxford ?" "God forbid !"

"God forbid! But I am Dr. Firebrass, nevertheless."

At these words the coach coming up, to my relief I own, this institutor of a new code of laws, which was to supersede all the old ones, and renovate Europe, took his leave, and was soon out of sight.