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considerable part of the best subjects of the kingdom cannot indulge their attachment to their native land, but at the expense of their attachment to their offspring. The passion of the father for his child is opposed to his passion for the country. The barbarian, of whom we read in the papers on your table, that African tyrant who has carried the science of despotism to a perfection which Nero never knew, even he aspires at nothing more than to destroy the family attachment, and to annihilate the parental feeling. He does not attempt to oppose the attachment of the father to the duty of the citizen; but the British law is founded in deeper cruelty. Its object is to create a war of attachments, and to establish a conflict of passions. It is to make virtue inconsistent with virtue, duty irreconcilable to duty, affection incompatible with affection. Can such laws be consistent with the interests of the state? When the kingdom, a few years since, was assailed by the adherents to another claimant of the crown; when the faith of a large proportion of people was dubious; when the loyalty of many of those who were near the person of the king was thought to be tainted, and terror had palsied even more than corruption had seduced, what was then the conduct of the Protestant Dissenters of England? To say, that of the multitudes which composed that varied society there was not one man, not a single individual, who joined the enemy of his Majesty's house (unexampled as this proof of their loyalty was), is, however, but to speak the smallest part of their praise; for at the very time when the armies of the state had been repeatedly discomfited; at the very time that those who reached at his majesty's crown were actually in possession of the centre of the kingdom: at the very time wher Britain, unable to rely on her native strength, and hourly trembling for her safety, had recourse to foreign aid; at that very time, the Dissenters, regardless of the dreadful penalties of the law, and anxious for their country alone, eagerly took up arms. And what was the return which they received? As soon as the danger was passed by, they were compelled to solicit protection of that general mercy which was extended to the very rebels against whom they fought; they were obliged to shelter themselves under that act of grace which was granted to the very traitors, from whose

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arms they had defended the crown, and the life of the sovereign. It was thus only that they escaped those dreadful penalties which they incurred by their loyalty, and which the irritated friends of the rebellion were impatient to bring down upon them. To the disgrace of our statutes, to the dishonor of the British name, to the reproach of humanity, these persecuting statutes are still unrepealed.

As yet, I have spoken as an advocate for a numerous description of my fellow-subjects, whose moral virtues I esteem, whose patriotism I revere, whose situation, as much injured men, has strongly attached me to their cause, but to whose religious persuasion I myself do not belong. Permit me now, for a few moments, before I conclude, to speak of interests, in which I have a more immediate and personal concern, the interest of the church of England. From all testimonies, ancient and modern, I have ever understood, that the worst practice of which a legislature can be guilty, is that of employing the laws of a country to degrade and make contemptible the religion of the country. For what man is so little acquainted with the motives of the human heart, or knows so little of the history of nations, as not to be aware, that in proportion as he weakens in the people their respect for religion, he corrupts their manners, and in proportion as he corrupts their manners, he renders all laws ineffectual. Now, of all the solemn rites and sacred ordinances of her faith, there is not one so guarded round with terrors, and over which the avenging sword of the Almighty appears so distinctly to the view, as the ordinance of the holy sacrament; for, "he who presumes to eat of that bread, and to drink of that cup unworthily, eateth and drinketh his own damnation; he is guilty of the body and blood of Christ, and provokes the Almighty to plague him with divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death." That these terrible denun ́ciations may not be lightly and unthinkingly incurred, the minister is directed, when he stands at the holy altar, to prohibit the approach of all persons of abandoned morals and of a profligate life. Such are the injunctions of his religion; but the law tells him, that to those very persons, abandoned and profligate as they are, if by any means they have found their way to office, he must

administer the sacrament. Is he informed, that the man who demands it, is covered with crimes; a smuggler perhaps (for such appointments have been at no time unfrequent) who has obtained his employment as a reward for having betrayed his associates, and for having added private treachery to a long course of public fraud? Is he told, that this man, new as he is to office, is already supposed to have violated his oath, and that the weight of accumulated perjury is already on his head? Still, however, the clergyman must comply with his demand; for perjured as he is, the Test act has given him a legal right to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Should the minister refuse, the expense of a ruinous suit would devour his scanty means, and consign him for life to a prison. Thus circumstanced, the minister has no choice; yet he cannot but know that in taking it unworthily he eats and drinks his own damnation! Such is the task which the Test act has assigned to these very men, whose particular duty it is to guard their fellow-subjects from perdition, and to guide them in their road to happiness. If in the records of human extravagance, or of human guilt, there can be found a law more presumptuous than this, I will give up the cause. And to what purpose is this debasement of religion? If it be thought requisite that Dissenters be excluded from the common privileges of citizens, why must the sacrament be made the instrument of the wrong? Why must the purity of the temple be polluted? Why must the sanctity of the altar be defiled? Why must the most sacred ordinance of her faith be exposed to such gross, such unnecessary prostitution? If there be persons who are too little attached to the theory of the Christian faith, to be shocked at the impiety, they must at least be astonished at the folly of such a conduct.

The Saviour of the world instituted the Eucharist in commemoration of his death, an event so tremendous that nature afflicted hid herself in darkness; but the British legislature has made it a qualification for gauging beer-barrels and soap-boiler's tubs; for writing custom-house cockets and debentures, and for seizing smuggled tea! The mind is oppressed with ideas so misshapen and monstrous! Sacrilege, hateful as it always is, never before assumed an appearance so hideous and deformed. Endeavors

have been often used to justify the legal establishment of this impious profanation, by comparing it with those provisions of our law, which enjoined the sanction of an oath: but the argument equally insults the integrity and understanding of every man to whom it is addressed; for though it be, indeed, true, that the legislature by compelling every petty officer of the revenue, and every collector of a turnpike toll, to swear deeply on his admission into office, and has made the crime of perjury more frequent than it ever before was in any age or country, yet how does the frequent commission of this crime against law justify the establishment of a religious profanation by law? But without commenting on the folly of pleading for a legislative debasement of religion in one way, by showing that the legislature has contributed to its debasement in another, what resemblance does the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which is merely a religious institution, bear to the ceremony of an oath, which is an institution entirely political? An oath answers none of the purposes of religion: it neither promotes any of her interests, nor forms any part of her establishment. It belongs to the Jew, the Mahometan, and the idolater of every description, as much as it belongs to the Christian; but such are the arguments by which the Test and Corporation acts have ever been defended.

FOX ON THE SAME SUBJECT.

WERE we to recur to first principles, and observe the progress of the Christian religion in the first stages of its propagation, we should perceive that no vice, evil, or detriment had ever sprung from toleration. Persecution had always been a fertile source of much evil perfidy, cruelty, and murder had often been the consequence of intolerant principles. The massacres at Paris, the martyrdom at Smithfield, and the executions of the Inquisition, were among the many horrid and detestable crimes which had at different times originated solely from persecution. To suppose a man wicked, or immoral, merely on account of any difference of religious opinion, was as false as it was absurd; yet this was

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the original principle of persecution. Morality was thought to be most effectually enforced and propagated, by insisting on a general unity of religious sentiments; the dogmas of men in power were to be substituted in the room of every other religious opinion, as it might best answer the ends of policy and ambition; it proceeded entirely on this grand fundamental error, that one man could better judge of the religious opinions of another than the man himself could. Upon this absurd principle, persecution might be consistent; but in this it resembled madness; the characteristic of which was, acting consistently upon wrong principles. The doctrines of Christianity might have been expected to possess sufficient influence to counteract this great error: but the reverse had proved to be the case. Torture and death had been the auxiliaries of persecution-the grand engines used in support of one particular system of religious opinion, to the extermination of every other. Toleration proceeded on direct contrary principles. Its doctrines, he was sorry to say, even in this enlightened age, were but of a modern date in any part of the world. Before the reign of King William, it had not a footing in England. The celebrated act of toleration of that reign, notwithstanding the boasted liberality of its principles, was narrow, confined, and incomplete. What was it, but a toleration of thirty-four articles, out of thirty-nine prescribed as the standard of belief in matters of religion? Was any tolerated who did not subscribe to the thirty-four articles in question? No! Strict and implicit conformity to these was enjoined on accepting any civil employment. Persecution indeed originally might be allowed to proceed on this principle of kindness-to promote a union of religious opinion, and to prevent error in the important matters of Christian belief. But did persecution ever succeed in this truly humane and charitable design? Never. Toleration, on the other hand, was founded on the broad and liberal basis of reason and philosophy. It consisted in a just diffidence of our own particular opinion, and recommended universal charity and forbearance to the world around us. The true friend of toleration ought never to impute evil intentions to another, whose opinions might, in his apprehensions, be attended with dangerous consequences. The