Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/263

 remonstrances of the prelates in the House of Lords against this overt inculcation of murder, under the soft name of satisfaction: it is neither in Watt, nor in Lowndes, nor in any edition of Brunet; and there is no copy in the British Museum. Was the collected edition really published?

[The publication of the above in the Athenæum has not produced reference to a single copy. The collected edition seems to be doubted. I have even met one or two persons who doubt the fact of the Bishops having remonstrated at all: but their doubt was founded on an absurd supposition, namely, that it was no business of theirs; that it was not the business of the prelates of the Church in union with the State to remonstrate against the Crown commanding murder! Some say that the edition was published, but under an irrelevant title, which prevented people from knowing what it was about. Such things have happened: for example, arranged extracts from Wellington's general orders, which would have attracted attention, fell dead under the title of 'Principles of War.' It is surmised that the book I am looking for also contains the protests of the Reverend bench against other things besides the Thou-shalt-do-murder of the Articles (of war), and is called 'First Elements of Religion' or some similar title. Time clears up all things.]

With the general run of the philosophical atheists of the last century the notion of a God was an hypothesis. There was left an admitted possibility that the vague somewhat which went by more names than one, might be personal, intelligent, and superintendent. In the works of Laplace, who is sometimes called an atheist from his writings, there is nothing from which such an inference can be drawn: unless indeed a Reverend Fellow of the Royal Society may be held to be the fool who said in his heart, &c. &c., if his contributions to the Philosophical Transactions go no higher than nature. The following anecdote is well known in Paris, but has never been printed entire. Laplace once went in form to present some edition of his 'Systemè du Monde to the First Consul, or Emperor. Napoleon, whom some wags had told that this book contained no mention of the name of Grod, and who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with—'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of