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THE CORN LAWS AND CHRISTIANITY.

Doctor Chalmers refused to attend the synod of Clergymen gathered together to consider the relative value of the Big and Little Loaf, on the ground that the reverend gentlemen were beginning their work at the wrong end.  Wages will go up with Christianity, says the Doctor; cheap corn will follow the dissemination of cheap Bibles.  “I know of no other road for the indefinite advancement of the working classes to a far better remuneration, and, of course, a far more liberal maintenance, in return for their toils, than they have ever yet enjoyed—­it is a universal Christian education.”  Such are the words of Doctor CHALMERS.

We perfectly agree with the reverend doctor.  Instead of shipping Missionaries to Africa, let us keep those Christian sages at home for the instruction of the English Aristocracy.  When we consider the benighted condition of the elegant savages of the western squares,—­when we reflect upon the dreadful scepticism abounding in Park-lane, May-fair, Portland-place and its vicinity,—­when we contemplate the abominable idols which these unhappy natives worship in their ignorance,—­when we know that every thought, every act of their misspent life is dedicated to a false religion, when they make hourly and daily sacrifice to that brazen serpent,

        SELF!—­

when they offer up the poor man’s sweat to the abomination,—­when they lay before it the crippled child of the factory,—­when they take from life its bloom and dignity, and degrading human nature to mere brute breathing, make offering of its wretchedness as the most savoury morsel to the perpetual craving of their insatiate god,—­when we consider all the “manifold sins and wickednesses” of the barbarians in purple and fine linen, of those pampered savages “whose eyes are red with wine and whose teeth white with milk,”—­we do earnestly hope that the suggestion of Doctor Chalmers will be carried into immediate practical effect, and that Missionaries, preaching true Christianity, will be sent among the rich and benighted people of this country,—­so that the poor may believe that the Scriptures are something more than mere printed paper, seeing their glorious effects in the awakened hearts of those who, in the arrogance of their old idolatry, called themselves their betters!

“A universal Christian education!” To this end, the Bench of Bishops meet at Lambeth; and discovering that locusts and wild honey—­the Baptist’s diet—­may be purchased for something less than ten thousand a year,—­and, after a minute investigation of the Testament, failing to discover the name of St. Peter’s coachmaker, or of St. Paul’s footman, his valet, or his cook,—­take counsel one with another, and resolve to forego at least nine-tenths of their yearly in-comings.  “No!” they exclaim—­and what apostolic brightness beams in the countenance