before: nor, had it happened, would it have been respectfully announced.
There are people who are very unfortunate in the expression of their meaning. Mr. Holyoake, in the name of the 'London Society,' &c., forwarded a pamphlet on the existence of God, and said that the Society trusted I 'may be induced to give' the subject my 'consideration.' How could I know the Society was one person, who supposed I had arrived at a conclusion, and wanted a 'guiding word'? But so it seems it was: Mr. Holyoake, in the English Leader of October 15, 1864, and in a private letter to me, writes as follows:—
"The gentleman who was the author of the argument, and who asked me to send it to Mr. De Morgan, never assumed that that gentleman had 'that particular subject to begin'—on the contrary, he supposed that one whom we all knew to be eminent as a thinker had come to a conclusion upon it, and would perhaps vouchsafe a guiding word to one who was, as yet, seeking the solution of the Great Problem of Theology. I told my friend that 'Mr. De Morgan was doubtless pre-occupied, and that he must be content to wait. On some day of courtesy and leisure he might have the kindness to write.' Nor was I wrong—the answer appears in your pages at the lapse of seventeen years."
I suppose Mr. Holyoake's way of putting his request was the stylus curiæ of the Society. A worthy Quaker who was sued for debt in the King's Bench was horrified to find himself charged in the declaration with detaining his creditor's money by force and arms, contrary to the peace of our Lord the King, &c. It's only the stylus curiæ, said a friend: I don't know curiæ, said the Quaker, but he shouldn't style us peace-breakers.
The notion that the non-existence of God can be proved, has died out under the light of discussion: had the only lights shone from the pulpit and the prison, so great a step would never have been made. The question now is as above. The dictum that Christianity is 'part and parcel of the law of the land' 1s also abrogated: at the same time, and the coincidence is not an accident, it is becoming somewhat nearer the truth that the law of the land is part and parcel of Christianity. It must also be noticed that Christianity was part and parcel of the articles of war; and so was duelling. Any officer speaking against religion was to be cashiered; and any officer receiving an affront without, in the last resort, attempting to kill his opponent, was also to be cashiered. Though somewhat of a book-hunter, I have never been able to ascertain the date of the collected
