The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1824-01-31 00:00:00

lingo, except on thmdays and holidays to go to Mass. They are
forbidden to meet mere than three together, and as soon as the
drum beats to quarters they must go to their homes; those persons
whO shall detain them ',hall be liable to the severest punishment.
Discharged mothers daily pass through Madrid, wbo joyfully re-
turn to France. There is little news in circulation at Madrid,
where people do not talk politics. Every body is uneasy about the':
future. People here talk of a considerable corps of Russians
which is coming, they say, to join our troops in the occupatiott of
Spain, and that on this condition Ferdinand definitively cedes the
Balearic Islands.

If there is any one public appointment in which it is'
of more importance than in another, that the influence of
personal or of party favouritism should be excluded, it is
that of a Judge. It is on this ground that we feel it our
duty to draw the public attention to the appointment of
ALEXANDER to the arduous and responsible situation
of Lord Chief Baron, who, independently of his advanced
age, must be wholly unqualified, bl his previous situation
and studies, for fitly discharging the duties of it. It is no
reproach to any man—far from it, that he has passed his
grand climacteric; but in his seventieth sear an individual
is not exactly in epared to enter on a new walk of life,
and least of all, to take his place, for the first time, on
the judgment-seat. Such an exercise of patronage is dis-
creditable. It is an act of ,injustice towards the public,
who have a right to expect that such an important station
should be filled as it ought to be tilled, and not made to
furnish an example of improper and unworthy influence.
The decision of revenue cases requires a mind long habi-
tuated to that line of professional study with which such
cases are connected: to such decisions Mr. ALEXANDER
must of necessity bring a mind wholly unprepared. On
the circuit, too, the important duty will devolve upon Lim
of deciding in cases of life and death : what previous pro-
fessional education has this Master in Chancery had, that
could in any manner fit him for the due discharge of a
duty at once so awful and so arduous? This appointment,
we know, has excited the attention of the Bar, and with
it no slight accompaniment of censure and sarcasm. For
Mr. Alexander, personally, we have no feeling but of esteem
and respect. In private life no man bears a higher cha-
racter for every amiable quality which can excite appro-
bation and regard: but his elevation to the rank of Chief
Baron of the Exchequer is, to say the least of it, most
indecent and unauthorized, and betrays a disregard of
public opinion, the display of which is neither wise nor
prudent.

Though we were in possession of the proceedings at
the commemoration dinner, on Thursday, to celebrate the
memory of Paine, we thought it better not to give them a
place. Paine's memory is not celebrated in America,
though it was the land of his adoption, and the country to
whose independence his animated writings, in her day of
trial, ro strongly contributed. His melancholy closing
career, and his sceptical principles, have destroyed the
respect that would but for them have attended on his
name. But let the tide of prejudice roll however high,'
Paine, though a man of strong prejudices and passions,
possessed uncommon talents ; his mind was original,
discriminating, and daring ; his pen bold and elo-
quent ; and his judgment, when unobscured by per-
sonal or religious feeling, of the very first order. When
elected, in 179 t, a Deputy to the French Convention,
with the philosophic Priestley, he had the courage to
oppose the death of the King; and his speech against
the murder was read from the tribune on the me-
morable night that closed the " aped nomenel." On that
occasion the ferocious Ararat, who spoke immediately
after, said, the address could not possibly speak the sand-
Went* of Paine; and when it was made clear that such
were the opinions of the American Republican—" At any
late," said the appalling wretith, whose hollow accents were
full of death, "it can matter little, for Paine is a
Quaker." The faction of Robespierre was triumphant over
the Brissotines, with whom Paine was connected, in this
terrible sitting; but the independence and humanity of
his sentiments were alike honourable to his head and heart.
Paine was soon after flung into one of the prisons, then
glutted with the victims of terror. The Mountain party
were dominant, and his life hung upon a thread. He
had retired, with the fall of Ilrissot, Vergniaud, Guadet,
and Roland, with whom he was intimately connected, and
lived in a sequestered house in an obscure faubourg of
Paris; but his seclusion could not protect him. It is an
extraordinary, but yet an incontrovertible fact, that his
Age of Reason was written in the prison of La Force, when
each (lay that rose upon him through his prison bars might
have been his last. He sent it forth to France as hisdying
sentiments on the Christian religion. The work was
coarse; it was blasphemous and ineffective ; there was no
power, no argument, or conviction about it ; it could not
make proselytes but among the most ignorant and be-
sotted ;—but it came from Paine as his last sentiments,
with all the fervour of conviction. lie was ant an atheist,
for he had the sublimest opinions of the existence and at-
tributes of one great Deity ; but he denied the truths and
inspiration of the Bible, and Christianity possessed in
him a vituperant and most inveterate antagonist. The
death of the atrocious tyrant (who reigned supreme in the
Convention and Committees, and, with his associates in
the bloody triumvirate, Couthon and St. Just, almost de-
cimated France, and carried mourning into innumerable
families) again burst the prison doors of Paine, and saved
him from that scaffold, where the Deputies of the Gironde
bad perished ; hut it made no change in his religious
antipathies. The well-known Redhead Yorke saw
him at Paris near tett years after, in lon : be was
then living in a wretched apartment, with one old
female as his attendant ; and though half his hours were
buried in intoxication, his faculties were yet powerful and
clear. He recurred, almost instantly, to his situation in
1794, and to his favourite religious opinions, and declaimed
against Christianity and the Inspired Writings in the most
violent terms. But his description of what he conceived
the Deity to be—an almighty, omniscient, and pre-existent
Being, before all time and matter—was given in the most
sublime and glowing language. Such is the account given
by a man who was in every ray a zealot on the other side,'
and whose record of Paine and his sentiments may there-
fore be received with something like confidence. liThen,
therefore, the Conricr (a wretched authority in any ease)
talks of a knot of " atheists" assembling to celebrate
Paine's memory, it is utter falsehood and nonsense; Paine
never was an alltrimt ; he was one of the heads of the sect
of Theophilanthropists in France—men who denied the
Trinity, but acknowledged one dod. Paine was, in fact,
what the Unitarian, now are ; and they are protected by sta-
tute. The only difrerence is, that they dissemble their true
opinions, while Paine blasphemously and fearlessly avowed
his. Time Courier is too ignorant to know this; but it is'
of a piece with all this mountebank journal ever writes.
Little consequence can be attached to any thing tl:e
party, who assembled in Paine's name, can either say
or do, or we should, ourselves, have given a place to
their revels. It was not, their poverty nor their obscurity
that prevented us ; fer among time humbler orders of this
country, may be found many of sterling honesty and in-