re 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 sha