society; and till that can be proved, I shall not give my vote for its abolition. But at present hammer down. Mr. Mac Flourish, student. I shall with grete reediness undertake that tosk upon my seel.-Sir, the queestion, as I tak it, is, whether relegion be of any use to society? And, sir, this is a queestion of that degnity, that grete emportance, that when I conseder the matter of wheech I am to speke, the degnity of the odience before whom I am to speke, wen I refleect on the smallness of my own abeelities, weel may I be struck with the greetest awe and reveerence; for, sir, neither Demosthenes, nor Eschines, nor Cecero, nor Hortensius, ever handled a more emportant queestion; and, sir, should any thing misbecoming drop from me on this grete occasion, though your candour, your beneevolence, might encline you to extend an unmeerited attention, yet, sir, these walls, these stones, these boards, these very bracks, withute ears, withute a tongue, would tacitly express their endeegnation. Sir, it is a queestion, that whoever hath rede history, or deeved at all into the oxceelent mystery of politics, must confees, that all the grete pheelosophers, poets, oraters, historians-hammer down. Mr. Ocurry, solicitor. Upon my shoul, I am very sorry now that the rules of this grate society forced the last very learned gentleman to sit down before he told us his 'opinion; but, whatever it be, I am after being of the saame. It is very true, upon my shoul, what he said, that it is a very grate question, and I do not well know fether I understand it as yet, or no; but this I think, that if religion be a great hurt to the nation, I cannot for my shoul see where the good of it is. This I know very well, that there is a very good religion in Ireland, and they do call it the Roman Catholic religion, and I am of it myself, thoughI don't very well know what it is. There is something about --- beads and masses, and patty nosters, and ivy marys, and I will fight for it as long as I am alive, and longer. And, upon my shoul, I will tell you a good thing; if you are afraid of your own religion, you may send for ours, for I know it will come ; for father Patrick Ocain did tell me, he would bring it along with him. Nay, he tould me, that he had brought it hither before he did come himself. [At which there was a laugh.] Mr. Giles Shuttle, weaver.-I hope no gentleman will treat this thing as a jest, whereof I thinks it to be a very great matter of earnest. Whereof I don't much understand your speech-making sort of work, but this I thinks, that I am as good a judge of these sort of matters, for I am worth a hundred pounds, and owes no man a farthing. Whereof I thinks, I am as good a man as another; for why should not any other man have as much sense as a gentleman? I thinks I knows something of trade; that to be sure, is the main article in every trading nation, whereby- -Here the first paper was broke off. The second is as fol lows: Question. Whether infinite power could make the world out of nothing? The speakers to this question were, Mr. Thomas Tinderbox, the chandler; Mr. George White, boatswain's mate; Mr. Edward Peacock, victualler; Mr. Buge, the shoemaker; Mr. Goose the taylor; Mr. Halt, the maker of pattins; and one great scholar, whose name I do not know. It was urged on the behalf of infinite power, that we have no very adequate idea of it. That there are many things which we see are, and yet we cannot, with any great certainty, tell how they came to be. That so far from our reason being able to comprehend every thing, some wise men have doubted, whether we do, with certainty, comprehend any thing. That whatever we may think we know, we do not know how we think. That either every thing was made by something out of nothing, or else nothing made every thing, either out of something or nothing. And, lastly, that infinite power might more reasonably be supposed to create every thing out of nothing, than no power at all could be supposed to make every thing out of any thing. On the contrary, it was well argued, that nothing can be made out of nothing, for, ex nihil, 0 nothing is fit. That every day's experience must convince us of this; that, by infinite power, we only meant a very great degree of power; but that, if the thing to be done be not the subject of power, the smallest degree will be equal to the greatest. And it was urged with great force of wit and eloquence, by Mr. Goose, that the best tailor, and the worst, were alike unable to make a coat without materials. That, in this case, a tailor with infinite power would be in the same condition with a tailor who had no power at all. And if so small a thing as a coat could not be made out of nothing, how could so large a thing as the world be cut out of the same no materials? The scholar gave a very good answer to what had been offered concerning our ignorance of infinite power, and said, if he had no adequate idea of it, it was a good cause of disbelieving it; for, as reason was to be judge of all things, what was not the object of reason ought to be rejected by it. He admitted, that there were some things which did exist, and that we did not as yet know the manner in which they came to exist; but it did not follow that such causes were above the reach of human reason, because she had not yet discovered them; for, he made no doubt, but that this society, by means of their free inquiry after truth, would, in the end, discover the whole; and that the manner in which a man was made, would be no more a mystery C to posterity, than it is to the present age, how they make a pudding. He concluded with saying, that some very wise and learned men, who lived near three thousand years ago, had asserted that the world had existed from all eternity, which opinion seemed to solve all difficulties, and was, as it appeared, highly agreeable to the sentiments of the whole society. Question. Whether, in the opinion of this society, the government did right in Here ends this valuable fragment, on which I shall give my comment in my next paper. NUMB. 9. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1752. Tell in what clime these people did appear, you VIRG. IT will be a very difficult matter to fix with any certainty, at what place, and amongst what people, the Robinhood society was held, as we have not the least light to guess from what language the fragment which now remains to us, was originally translated. Two things may be averred, that this society was held in some country where the people were extremely free; and, secondly, that it was in a country, where that part of the community, which the French called la Canaille, was at the head of public affairs. From the latter of these circumstances, it appears that these Robinhoodians cannot be placed among the Egyptians; for Diodorus Siculus, speaking of these people, tells us, that, Whereas in 'all democracies great injury is done to the state by the populace interfering in the public councils, the Egyptians very severely punished these arti ficers who presumed to meddle with matters of government *." Nor can I ever believe, that the question, Whether religion was of any use to the society? would ever have been supported amongst a people so highly devoted to superstition, that religion was indeed the foundation of their civil society. The same objection will recur against placing this society in Athens; for though Pericles, in his speech to the Athenians, recorded in Thucydides, compliments his countrymen with being all politicians, Among us,' says he, even the mechanics are not inferior to their fellow-citizens in • political knowledge yet in a country where Socrates was put to death, for attempting an innovation in religious matters, it is hard to believe that the dregs of the people would have been permitted to have questioned the very first principles of all religion with impunity. And this objection will, I apprehend, hold likewise against all other states, not only those which we call civilized, but even the Tartars, Goths, Vandals, and Picts, &c. from the time they are recorded in history. None of these having been found without their deities, and without a very strong persuasion of the truth of some religion or other. And so far were they all from doubting whether religion was of any use, or, as the fragment hath it, youse to the society, that they carried the images of their gods with them to war, and relied upon their favour and assistance for success in all affairs. Το say the truth, the only people now upon earth. among whose ancestors I can suppose such an assembly to have been held, are the inhabitants of a certain tract of land in Africa, bordering on the Cape of *Diod. Sic. fol. 68. Edit. Rhod. Hannov. Io de Tais δημοκρατεμέναις πόλεσιν, κ. τ. λ. † Thucyd. lib. ii. c. 40. Καὶ ἑτέροις πρὸς ἔργα τῆςαμμένοις, x. 7. λ. 1 |