do not choose to recollect;" I do not wish to recollect the birth-place of the design, but such was the attempt. I had the honour to inform the public of my view of the consequences of that attempt, and upon that occasion had the satisfaction of receiving the thanks of a very respectable, learned and pious body. When they came to me and I gave them my assistance, they asked me what they could render in return. I answered, "All I want of you is, if you are pleased with the defence of your own rights, then whenever anybody stands in need of such assistance, allow me to call on you for your co-operation in their defence." A year did not elapse before I had occasion to sign the draft, [laughter,] and I must say, that it was duly, it was gloriously honoured. (Cheers.) A meeting was called by men favourable to intolerance in Wiltshire. I invited my friends among Protestant Dissenters to redeem their pledge. Well was it redeemed. The Protestant Dissenters hastened to support me. The intolerants were scattered; and energy and union in a good cause then prevailed. After the attempt to which I have referred, this Society was formed, mainly, as you have already heard, by our good friend so near me (Mr. Wilks); and since its formation, it has never slumbered heedless at its post. (Applause.) Nor will it slumber while religious. liberty needs protection, or the fundamental principle of Protestantism and Dissenterism may be infringed. (Immense cheers.) When persons, indeed, have seen individual opinions, and speeches, and sermons, they have raised a charge against the whole body of Protestant Dissenters, and said, Though these people call out for toleration, and though they ask for religious liberty, yet they are not willing to grant to others that which they claim. But I always have said, and now repeat, I have found it quite the contrary. (Cheers.) Now, if you feel any gratitude to me upon this subject, (and I wish I deserved it more,) I make the same answer to you that I made seventeen years ago, Assist me to assist others who need to be assisted." (Immense applause.) I can only assure you, and what I say here I have said in my place in Parliament, that though I should rejoice to find that the great victory you have gained over intolerance and persecution shall lead to a further victory, and to further improvement of the statute-book, yet it was not with this view I acted:

VOL. XIV.

2 G

for if I was convinced that every man in this immense assembly was an enemy to Catholic Emancipation, I would have struggled for your wishes, nor to you should justice have been by me denied. (Cheers.) Certainly, without having any particular religious tenets to bind me to the body of Protestant Dissenters, I have ever had a powerful predilection for them. Yet it was hot on that account that I urged the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. And now, when I recommend the repeal of acts still more oppressive, on six millions of our fellow-subjects (cheers), it is not from any great love or great admiration for their particular ritual or creed. But shall I grasp, or allow other puny arms to grasp, the lightning and thunder, and punish by exclusion those from whom I differ; and persecute and proscribe those who, as honest men, adhere to the ritual and creed of their forefathers, and to which their judgment and their will adhere? (Cheers.) No, no, no! Such are my rules of conduct; such the principles you have aloud proclaimed. (Cheers.) These are the grounds on which I think this Institution was wisely founded. The founders have acted up to their principle, and now gather, joyfully, some of their summer fruits. (Cheers.) A gentleman to my right (Dr. Cox) mentioned that he looked forward to the funeral of this Institution. I look forward to it also; but I hope it will remain in vigour as long as its energies shall be required. (Cheers.) As long as there be any thing imperfect, such as the matters mentioned in your Resolutions; or as long as the principle of persecution lingers on in, life, I trust it will abide and flourish all along, and cling most closely to the sacred principles which Protestants, as well as Protestant Dissenters, must profess. Enjoy the relief you have acquired, and extend to all the benefits of your energy. But, exhausted, I must sit down, and I sit down with an overflowing heart, thanking you again, and again, and again, for the attention and kindness you towards me have uniformly shewn. (His Lordship sat down, and the Assembly rose spontaneously and expressed their feelings by repeated cheers. Amid bursts of applause the meeting terminated, and his Lordship, attended by Mr. Alderman Wood, the Secretaries and Committee, then withdrew.)

HINTS TO UNITARIANS.

(An Extract from a Letter.)

I NEVER conceived that the Fellowship Funds were intended to save the pockets of the rich at the expense of the middling and lower classes. If they are intended to prevent all personal application, two things ought to be attended to; first, that the richer members should contribute to the Fellowship Fund of each congregation in some due proportion to their means, and not content themselves with merely giving a penny a week; and, secondly, that there should be a list of Fellowship Funds published, either in the Repository, or in the British and Foreign Unitarian Association Reports, in order that congregations wanting assistance or relief may be able to address their case to each. Indeed, I think it ought to be an object of the Committee of the Association to obtain, by correspondence, a complete list of all congregations of Unitarian Christians, in the largest sense of the word, with the names of their ministers, and of all incipient societies, &c., &c., as far as it could be done and in case that such a measure should be accomplished, it would be easy for the Committee, and through them the Unitarian body at large, to ascertain, by correspondence with persons most likely to give intelligence, the actual claims to support of each individual applicant.

— a practical caution against too great venturesomeness in building chapels on the ground of expectation that, like a hive, each building will be sure to collect a

swarm.

A good school, or other public room, is generally the best, but always the safest, way of beginning; and if a collection, once every Lord's-day, were made and lodged in some Savings' Bank, and allowed to accumulate, a fund would in time be raised without being obliged to any body; though, perhaps, a little obligation to friends may be of use as a means of making the parties known to each other.

THE POLSTEAD MURDER.

THE public papers have lately been filled with the details of this gross and horrible barbarity. William Corder, aged 24, the son of a farmer deceased, has been tried, convicted, and executed, for the murder of Maria Marten, a labourer's daughter. Both were natives and residents of Polstead, a village in the county of Suffolk. The trial was held at Bury St. Edmund's, and Corder was executed there on Monday, the 11th of August. The body of the criminal has been exposed to the public gaze, and given up to the surgeons for dissection.

As a proof of the public interest in this case, as well as of the expeditious mode of conducting the diurnal press, it may be stated, that the report of one day's proceedings at Bury was regularly given in the London newspapers of the next morning.

We do not blame the conductors of our journals for catering for the public taste, nor do we consider the eagerness of the people of England for information concerning every particular of the case to be absolutely evil; but we seriously think that on all occasions of this sort too much account is taken of malefactors, and that their actions and sayings out of the court of justice are magnified into an importance which is at once ridiculous and mischievous. Before trial, every prisoner is in the eye of the law innocent, and nothing ought to be said or done by speaking or writing to prejudge his cause. The Chief Baron, in summing up, on Corder's trial, very properly

* An Englishman, jealous of the honour of his country, must feel some humiliation when he reads in newspapers which will make their way over the whole civilized world, that the Red Barn at Polstead has been stripped of its boarding by the populace, eager to possess some relic of the scene of the murder; that the High Sheriff of Suffolk contended eagerly with a police officer for the property in the pistols, with one of which the murder was perpetrated, the police officer alleging that the murderer had given the precious instruments of death to him, the Sheriff maintaining his right to them by virtue of his shrievalty; and that there was a sharp bidding for the rope with which the wretched man was hanged, and even for bits of it, at a guinea a bit; and that it was rumoured on the spot the rumour is disgraceful, though the notion is ridiculous -that one of the highest biddings was made for the University of Cambridge !

censured in the strongest terms the various publications and prints that had been issued relating to him, and above all, the conduct of a preacher of the name of Young, who had gathered immense assemblies near the barn in which the body of the young woman was found, and in his addresses to them had taken for granted that the accused was guilty. After trial and conviction, a murderer should, in our opinion, be withdrawn from the public gaze. He must now be regarded as an atrocious criminal, whom the law neither of God nor man suffers to live. Let him be treated as a fallen human being, but let there be no endeavour to excite the public sympathy with or for him. The attempt to extort a confession from a convict appears to us exceedingly improper, as implying a suspicion of the justness of the verdict. Who could have a doubt of Corder's guilt, if he had gone out of the world asserting his innocence? His confession was partial, and there can be no doubt false; he represents the murder to have been committed in a fight between him and his victim, whereas every part of the evidence shews that he deliberately premeditated her death, and that he lured her to the fatal scene of violence for the sake of accomplishing her destruction. Notwithstanding his confession, then, he may be said to have died with a lie in his right hand. He did not confess a previous murder, but the death and burial of the child which the unhappy girl had borne, and of which he was the father, are enveloped in mystery, and the most probable motive for Corder's destroying the mother was the hope of putting out of the way the only witness of his guilt, whose conscience or whose resentment and desperation might one day induce her to reveal the fatal secret. Of other sins, and of one crime at least punishable with death, this hardened offender's conversation shewed that he had been guilty; and, in short, there was nothing in his story, or in his mind or manners, to miti gate the feeling of disgust and abhorrence in every judicious and well-principled observer. It ought to be reckoned fortunate for society that villany should be, as it generally is, associated with egregious folly. The public are regardless of their own dearest interests when they allow the courage and intrepidity of a criminal to lessen their detestation of the crime; but they are chargeable with something worse than injury to themselves when they