THE PIONEER:

OR

LEAVES FROM AN EDITOR'S PORTFOLIO.

BY HENRY CLAPP, JR.

For Heaven's sake, Harry, do not attempt to weave your fragile, finespun theories into
the web of actual life: you have been a dreamer of dreams, and a projector of schemes all
your days, yet what have you gained by them all?
"I have gained, as Byron says, a deal of judgment."

EMMA C. EMBURY.

LYNN:

PRINTED BY J. B. TOLMAN, 12 EXCHANGE-ST.

1846.

DIVINITY SCHOOL

LIBRARY.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

"Let us speak plain; there is more force in names
Than most men dream of! and a lie may keep
Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk
Behind the shield of some fair seeming name;
Let us call tyrants, TYRANTS, and maintain
That only freedom comes by grace of God,
And all that comes not by his grace must fall;
For men in earnest have no time to waste
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."

J. R. LOWELL.

PREFACE AND INSCRIPTION.

The following pages consist mainly of editorial articles written for the "ESSEX COUNTY WASHINGTONIAN," and "THE PIONEER,"* interspersed,— for sake of variety, and to give the book a redeeming trait in the minds of those who have a strong aversion to its leading principles,—with some thirty or forty of the first poems of the age, and two or three of less pretensions, which may well congratulate themselves on having an opportunity to appear in so good company.

The sentiments which characterise the work, as will be seen at a glance, are at open war with our popular Religion, and nearly all its "Institutions." The writer sees no beauty in its rites, and no comeliness in its temples. They seem to him cold, barbarous, repulsive, and degrading. Seeing its priesthood enlisted against every radical movement for the removal of human misery, and its places of worship closed hermetically against nearly all the advocates of human progress, he fails to perceive in that Religion any elements of moral beauty or spiritual life.-Its faith is a gloomy, inhuman, sepulchral principle which may, as its partisans contend, do very well "to die by," but which is utterly unfit for any intelligent being to live by -either here or hereafter.-Its God is a haughty, despotic, revengeful king, glorying chiefly in the abasement of his subjects, and of so low a character

* "THE PIONEER " is a continuation of the " ESSEX COUNTY WASHINGTONIAN," with no change except of name. It is published weekly, in Lynn, Mass., under the editorial care of the writer, and is devoted to the advocacy of such sentiments on the subject of reform as its name indicates. It endeavors to be "independent in everything, neutral in nothing," asking "a fair field " and such favor as it deserves.