of a chicken. We pity suffering innocence-but take away the idea of innocence and we destroy all pity. Destroy merit and demerit, and we have no use for the word innocence; and then we can have no suffering innocence, and so no pity.

But the idea of a Philanthropist is just as inadmissable upon Mr. Owen's principles as that of praise or blame. Now Mr. Owen professes to be a philanthropist, that is, a lover of mer. But is love a reasonable or an unreasonable thing? If reasonable, Mr. Owen cannot, upon his own principles, be truly a philanthropist. For what reason can induce him to spend his days in benefiting men more than crows or squirrels, more than in cultivating hellebore or hemlock? A lump of animated matter, of vegetable matter, whether in the form of a biped, a quadruped, or a tulip, is matter still, and as necessary in its figure, properties, and powers as it is in being material. There is nothing in man, upon his principles, amiable more than in a goose.— The goose which furnishes this quill, and on whose coat I slept last night, and on whose carcase I feasted last Christmas, was a benefactor of man, and a philanthropist, upon Mr. Owen's theory, as worthy of praise as himself, because as reasonable and as unreasonable. If the size, figure, and animal qualities of man prompt Mr. Owen to be a philanthropist, he ought for as good reasons, to devote his life to the care of horses and elephants. If longevity, an erect position, and a peculiar organization make man worthy of so much love from him, the goose who lives longer, the tree which grows taller, and the crocodile which is as curiously organized as man, equally merit his labors of love. To say that he is a philanthropist because he belongs to the race of men, is to place philanthropy upon the same foundation with those animal affections which pervade most species of the quadrupeds and bipeds for their own. This is an unreasonable philanthropy and unworthy of the name. There cannot be a philosophic philanthropist upon any principle which divests man of merit and de. nerit, of praise and blame, of reward and punishment; upon any principle which excludes from the human mind the idea of a God and a future state. Men who deny these may call themselves philanthropists, they may labor for the good of men, but they are no more phi fanthropists than the bee which makes honey, nor the sheep which yields its fleece. They do not bestow their labors nor their coats on man from a love to him. Other motives prompt their actions. Mr. Owen may spend time, money, and personal toils on what appears to be philanthropic objects;-but these may be demonstrated to proceed from vanity, by a much more convincing logic than can be employed to shew that they proceed from the love of man, properly so called.

So

For my part if I were compelled to give up the doctrine of immortality, or could be induced to think that man differed from other animals merely in so far as he differed from them in the organization of one hundred and fifty pounds of matter, I would think it just as reasonable and philosophic that I should spend my life in raising and teaching dogs and horses, and improving their condition, as in trainmen and improving their circumstances.

The materialist, or philosophic necessarian, who says that the earth is an immense prison, and the laws of nature so many jailors, and all mankind prisoners bound in chains which cannot be dissolved; or, to speak without a figure, who says that the actions of all men are as unavoidable as the ebbing and flowing of the sea, or the waxing and waning of the moon, can never rationally be a reformer. For what could he reform? He could not pretend to reform nature, nor any of its laws. On Mr. Owen's principles the present state of the world is perfectly natural and unavoidable. Nature in the regular operation of causes and effect has issued in his trinity of evils-Religion, matrimony, and private property. Now if nature has gone wrong, and man without free agency has landed in religion, matrimony, and private property, how unphilosophic is the philosopher of circumstances, who would preach up the necessity of a change in society when he cannot change necessity!!

It is a climax in the eloquence of absurdity which Mr. Owen is aspiring after. He preaches that all things are just as they must be.-The uncontrolable laws of nature have issued in the present system of things; and yet he would have us to make things what they ought not to be; that is, he would have us to abolish religion, matrimony, and private property, which his own eternal and unchanging laws of nature, in their necessary and uncontrolable operations have originated and established. On Mr. Owen's theory all things are natural and unavoidable. It is mother nature working by her own laws, and yet he would make us all matricides!!! If Mr. Owen is not stranded here there is not a shoal in the universe.

From all eternity, according to Mr. Owen's scheme, the particles of matter have been in incessant agitation, working themselves up into ten thousand times ten thousand forms. A few of them at one time produced a Nimrod, a Pharaoh, a Moses, a Cyrus, a Nebuchadnezzer, an Alexander, a Julius Cæsar, a Buonaparte, a Paul, a Robert Owen, and a few such manufacturers of human character. Not one of them could help being born, nor being such characters, nor producing such effects on society. Blind and omnipotent Nature cast them forth as she does so much lava from the crater of a volcanoe. She tied them fast in adamantine chains of inexorable fate and gave them no more liberty to act than the Peak of Teneriffe has to emigrate to New Harmony. Yet strange, surpassing strange, as it is, this singular piece of animated matter called Robert Owen, which required old Nature in her laboratory 6000 years to produce, would now teach us to rebel and become seditious against the queen of fate; and would have us claim and take the liberty from nature of forming human beings to our own mind, and of changing the powers of nature; in fact, of binding her fast in our own cords, so that we shall abolish religion, matrimony, and private property; put the old queen Nature into jail at New Harmony, and never let her out upon a parcle of honor, so long as grass grows and water runs!

Mr. Owen is, without knowing it, or intending it, the greatest advocate of free agency I have ever known; for he would have the present generation to adopt such arrangements and so to new modify the circumstances that surround us as to prevent the goddess nature from

having it in her power ever to make another religious animal, another wedding, or to use the words mine or thine. And yet the chorus of his new music is, that we have no more liberty to act than Gibraltar has to perch itself upon the cupola of the State House of Ohio. — Such a philosopher is my good natured friend Robert Owen.—

:00:

THE DEBATE.

-ED.

Propositions were made to me by Messrs. Fairbank and Robbison of Cincinnati, Ohio, for publishing a second edition of the Debate now in press. This arrangement, however, has not as yet (July 15,) been confirmed; but their agents, it seems, who, in anticipation of its being confirmed, have been getting subscribers for their edition, have induced a belief that I have actually transferred an exclusive right to these gentlemen for furnishing certain states with this work, and in many instances have succeeded in paralizing the efforts of my agents in getting subscribers for the first edition. I wish to correct this injurious impression, and to assure my agents that should any such arrangements be made, it will not interfere with my supplying them and their subscribers with the first edition, and that I depend upon their activity in enabling me to sustain the very great expense at which I have been in furnishing this work to the public. I did wish to have transferred this publication into other bands; but matters eventuating, as already stated, it devolved upon me to give the work to the public; and nothing but a high estimate of its probable utility, and the much need I saw and felt for such a work at the present crisis, could have induced me to undertake so laborious a task, already oppressed with much more than an adequate share of business. No transfer of a right to publish shall be made to any person to interfere with my disposing of the first edition as s'ipulated in my conditions. EDITOR.

A writer of very respectable talent in the Western Review has undertaken to prove that language is a human invention, and that the ideas of a God, Altar, and Priest, are also human inventions, contrary to some positions taken in my debate with Mr. Owen. Whether the writer is a bumpologist, craniologist, or a phrenologist-a believer in rebus spiritualibus, or in rebus naturalibus I am not quite so certain. But so soon as he has got through; and we have got a little leisure, we z intend to try his logic, if he will only have the goodness to tell us to what school he belongs, or in what country the flowers grow inscribed with the name of their king. If this would be too serious a demand upon his courtesy, if he will only give us the vowels and consonants by which he is designated from any other of the species, this would save me the hazard of breaking two or three lances on the steel cap of some veteran bumpologist, or of wounding some innocent theorist who spends his time in gathering flowers for the female admirers of EDITOR.

nature.

OBITUARY,

THIS work, by far too small to allow it, and it being no part of its design, we have not attended to obituary notices. But our sym

pathy with Bishop Jeremiah Vurdeman, and our deep interest in bis son AMBROSE DUDLEY VARDEMAN, who, to me, has been most unexpectedly called home, on the 25th June, compels me to an nounce the painful fact of his premature demise. This most interesting young man, with whom I became first acquainted during my debate at Washington, Ky. and who, out of unfeigned attachment to my person and views of christianity, accompanied me from Lex. ington, through the Green River country, to Nashville, Tenn. in the beginning of 1827, was one of the most hopeful youths in the range of my acquaintance. Possessed of a fine natural genius, of good education, of very amiable and persuasive manners, of the finest constitution, and of uncommon clear perceptions of the christian religion; I had unhesitatingly marked him down as a youth of the brightest promise in the wide circle of my acquaintance. To consummate my hopes, too, he had boldly, in the very morning of life, when the charms of the gilded world assume the most fascinating hue, when the fervor of youthful passion requires the wisdom of age, to repress and moderate it, especially in a fine constitu tion I say, he did, in defiance of all these alurements, bow his neck to the yoke of Jesus, and enlist himself amongst the self-denying disciples of a crucified King. It is only through the contemplation of this consoling consideration that I could approach his venerable father, and his affectionate relatives, and tell him and them that I most unfeignedly condole with them in this most trying bereavement. Had I not this plea to assuage their griefs, I could not mention this otherwise most melancholy event. If there was wanting a single argument to shake the resolution of the young and healthy, who from a high estimate of their fine constitution, good health, and cheerful spirits, promise themselves an exemption from an early summons from the implacable destroyer, I would point them to Ambrose Dudley Vardeman, who in two short weeks from the derangement of a few particles of matter, called bilious fever, in the healthy climate of Lexington, Ky. was registered among the nations of the dead. They cannot die too soon, who fall asleep in the faith and hope of immortality; and he who at the age of one hundred years, falls like an old tree, alike void of faith and hope, and the fruits thereof, dies too soon.

Since writing the above, I have been informed by Bishop J. Craith jun. that our amiable departed brother died like a christian of the ancient order. With the utmost serenity of mind, he wound up his watch, and told his step-mother that before one hour his race would be run-in thirty minutes afterwards he expired-his last words were those of the dying Stephen, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit." Without a struggle or a fear he fell asleep in Jesus, and according to his promise he will raise him up at the last day.

MONTHLY RECEIPTS,

EDITOR.

For the Christian Baptist, from June 23, to July 16. David Hughes, Old Court House, Miss. paid for Capt. Hills, vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; F. A. Newcomb, D. Pikes, Esq. A. Brown, and for

himself, for vol. 6. Amos Kirkpatrick, Meigsville, Ten. paid for W. Kirkpatrick, Wm. Hamilton, and James Hall, for vol. 6, and for B. Butler, vols. 5, 6. J. W. Jeffreys, Va. paid vols. 5, 6, 7, for Wm. Hatchett, Double Bridge, for A. Hatchett, Jeffrey's Store, for vol. 6; Dr. A. Hubbs, Cookstown, Pa. paid for J. Winnet, vol. 4, 5, 6. E. Milner, Clarks., Ohio, paid vol. 5. Dr. J. B. Power, Yorktown, Va. paid for H. Howard, vol. 7; R. Coke, vol. 5, 6, 7; W. P. Taylor, vol. 5; G. B. Lightfoot, vol 5; E. Barry, vol. 5, 6; Elder P. Ainsloe, vol. 3, 4, 5; J. Howard, vol. 5, 6, L. Davis, S. C. paid vol. 7; Joseph Alexander, Washington Co. Pa. paid for vol. 6; John Curtis, West Liberty, Va. paid for vol. 6; J. H. Stiger, Smiths X Roads, Va. paid for Elder J. Wooldridge, Elder E. Baptist, D. Bacon, of Cartersville, H. Harris and for himself vol. 6; Major R. Thompson, Georgetown, Ky. paid for B. B. Ford, T. Turner, J. Delph, Thos. Jackson, and B. Baywell, for vol. 6, and for all his subscribers for vol. 6. G. W. Trabue, Glasgow, Ky. paid for S. M. Bagby vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, for R. Mumford, 4, 5, 6, for E. Porter 1 doll. for Jacob Lock, 1 doll; A. Rice. Mt. Sterling, Ky. paid for J. T. Fall, vol 6, R. Williams, vol. 6, P. Mason, 4, 5, 6. Bishop Cole, Charlestown, Inda. paid for M. Martin, vols. 5, 6, J. E- Rese, vol. 6; A. Smith, New Albany, vol. 6, W. Buchanan, vol. 5, 6, E. Baldwan, 6, 7, W. Whiatly, 5, 6, D. Gray, vol. 6, Boyd H. Hudson, for 5, 6, D. Patterson, 6, W. w. Goodwine, 6; J. Wilkinson, Esq. Syracuse, New York, paid 4, 5. G. W. Elley, paid for Dr. S. Glass, Brownsville, for vol. 2, 3, 4, 5, for P. Whitten, Nicholasville, Ky. for vol. 6. W. T. Williams, Fredericksburg, Va. for H. Carpenter, 2 dolls. for Mr. Lipscomb, 1 doll; J. Scott, Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, for his subscribers, 10 dolls; Daniel Rounds, Ellsburg, N. Y. paid for vol 6; D. McDonagh, Pigeon Creek, Pa. and for J. Pangburn, J. McDonagh, C. Leyde, and for himself, for vol. 6; Bishop J. Rogers, Carlile, Ky. for A. Couchman, vol. 6, Thos. Stevenson, vol. 5, T. Cheeves, vol. 6, and 2 dolls. for himself; J. Winters, Steubenville, Ohio, for vols. 3, 4, 5; Jacob Turner, Indianopolis, Inda.; paid, vol. 6; J. Paton, Wilmington, through G. Bruce, Esq. paid vol. 6. E. Phillips, Mt. Jackson, Pa. paid for Jahn Foster for vols 3, 4, 5, 6, and vol. 4 for himself. J. D. White, Georgetown, O. paid for vols. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. D. Burnett, Dayton, O. Paid, vol 6. Sebastion Bowry, Monroe, O. paid, vol 6. Dr. Joseph Trevor, Connelsville, Pa. whose name was overlooked in our list of Agents, paid for B. Shallenberger, vol 6. Dr. J. Rogers, vol 6, J. Herbert, vols 5, 6, Jacob Golly, vol 6.

NEW AGENTS.

Virginia-John Jordan in place of J. Wooldridge, Powhatan.— Robert Hunt, Hallifax Co.

Errata-In page 7, 3d line from bottom, for reformation read information.

For six months, I request all my friends not to expect me to answer a centimental letter, except through the medium of the press.