Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/40

28 Mr. Eaton.

In this manner almost every fact, and every doctrine that has been recorded or delivered in the New Testament, is made the subject of the most wanton ridicule: the writer forgets that though religion may be a jest with him, it is a subject of serious moment to the rest of the world. If his opinions, therefore, chance to be right, the manner in which he has chosen to express them, indicates an équal destitution of modesty and feeling; and if he be wrong where is his hope, or how shall he escape the justice of the avenger?

When Mr. Eaton in the fulness of revenge committed this production to the world, he had forgot the former clemency of his sovereign, and his duty towards that community which he was enabled to revisit through the personal kindness of the king of England towards one of the humblest and most undeserving of his subjects. If I am not misinformed, Mr. Eaton, in consequence of some relationship to his majesty's nurse, occasionally experienced the kindness and condescension of the sovereign, and obtained from his indulgent monarch, a pardon which enabled him to return from voluntary banishment.

If the policy of prosecuting the authors and publishers of infide! writings be once admitted, the exercise of that power ought at least to be guided by discretion. It might be expected that the Attorney-general would reserve his terrors for important occasions and suffer the inoffensive ephemera of the day to glide unnoticed to oblivion. In the present instance by punishing Mr. Eaton for a harmless publication, he has disabled himself from visiting with. deserved severity a production not less dangerous in itself than infamous on account of the spirit that it displays. * Yours, truly, Orchard Street. J. L. BUTLER.

• I have some reason to believe that this work is the

duction of a late editor of the Statesman. pro-