In Scripture we are told, the bread of the poor is his life, and they who defraud him thereof are men of blood; and by whom are the poor defrauded of their bread if not by those who, like the Bishops of London and Chester, legislate for poverty as if it were a crime, and lend theft sanction to a system which, while it necessitates the wholesale pinching and screwing even in the commonest necessaries of life ’of independent labourers,’ does also necessitate the wholesale starvation of still more wretched paupers?  Formerly our ‘surplus populations’ were ‘killed off’ by bullet and sabre, now they are got rid of in Poor Law Unions by a process less expensive perhaps, but not less effectual.

Did Atheists thus act, did they perpetrate, connive at, or tolerate such atrocities as were brought to light during the Andover inquiry, such cold blooded heartlessness would at once be laid to the account of their principles.  Oh yes, Christians are forward to judge of trees by their fruit, except the tree called Christianity.  Their great ‘prophet’ argued that if the tree is good the fruit will be good; but when their own religion is in question they give such argument the slip.  The vices of the Atheist they ascribe to his creed.  The vices of the Christian to anything but his creed.  Let professors of Christianity be convicted of gross criminality, and lo its apologists say such professors are not Christians.  Let fanatical Christians commit excesses which admit not of open justification, and the apologist of Christianity coolly assures us such conduct is mere rust on the body of his religion—­moss which grows on the stock of his piety.

It has been computed that the Spaniards in America destroyed in about forty-five years ten millions of human creatures, and this with a view of converting them to Christianity.  Bartholomew Casa, who made this computation, affirms that they (the Spaniards) hanged those unhappy people thirteen in a row, in honour of the thirteen Apostles, and that they also gave their infants to be devoured by dogs. [75:1]

Corsini, another religious author, tells us the Spaniards destroyed more than fifteen millions of American aborigines, and calculates that the blood of these devoted victims, added to that of the slaves destroyed in the mines, where they were compelled to labour, would weigh as much as all the gold and silver that had been dug out of them.

If these or similar horrors were perpetrated by Atheists, who can doubt that Roman Catholics would at once ascribe them to the pestiferous influence of Atheistical principles.  And the Author of this Apology is of opinion that they would be justified in so doing.  When whole nations of professed irreligionists shall be found conquering a country, and hanging the aborigines of that country thirteen in a row, in honour of some thirteen apostles of Atheism, their barbarity may fairly be ascribed to their creed.  Habit does much, and perhaps much of our virtue, or its opposite is