lishments are unjust, and that they press injuriously on that large class of the community who cannot conscientiously join them, then which party is the aggressor? Is it that party that seeks, by fair and constitutional means, relief from a grievance; or is it the party, by whom, or for whom, the grievance was made, and by whom it is sought to be perpetuated? Is the oppressor, who seeks to continue his oppression, or is the oppressed, who seeks only immunity, the first assailant in the contest by which the question at issue between them is to be decided? Or if oppression be considered a strong and offensive similitude, is the monopolist, who strives to maintain his unjust advantages to the exclusion of his neighbour, and scolds and threatens when his supposed rights are called in question, is he not the aggressor on the rights of those around him, rather than those who suffer by the unjust partiality which he enjoys, and who seek, not the possession of his advantages, but simply, the abolition of his monopoly, unaccompanied with any claim for damages or compensation for the injuries they have long sustained? For the rest-dissenters ought to be grateful to the Father of mercies for the great advantages they enjoy, and grateful to those legislators, (Churchmen, I suspect, can claim but a small share of this homage,) by whose exertions these advantages have been secured to them; but it is not inconsistent with gratitude for the advantages we enjoy, to seek exemptions from evils we still suffer. And, as for disaffection to the state, it will probably be found, that these are the best friends of the peace of their country, and the stability of its laws and its government, not who defend abuses which existing law may unhappily sanction, and which spread through the state disease and weakness, but who, with cautious yet firm decision, would apply the knife to the gangrene, that the health and vigour of the body may be increased and prolonged.

On these mistakes I have probably dwelt too long in the apprehension of some of my readers; but every one who has watched the discussion of great public questions must have remarked, how greatly and how long, the chief subjects in debate have been concealed, or obscured, by the mists which error, and prejudice, and

excited feeling have succeeded in throwing around them. And I am persuaded that whoever is acquainted with the history of this controversy, and with its present state, must in candour admit, that had every thing been spared which is fairly referable to the various fallacies which I have noticed, a very large deduction would have been made from the speeches and the writings to which it has already given rise.

SECTION II.

INQUIRY INTO THE LAWFULNESS OF CIVIL ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION.

THE manner in which the Church has enjoyed the support of the state has not been uniform. It appears in several and important varieties at the present day, and it has done so in former ages. Nor has less diversity appeared in the pleadings which the advocates of ecclesiastical Establishments have advanced in their favour. A faithful and minute history of these varieties, both in the institutions themselves, and in the principles on which they have been professedly formed and defended, would be very instructive, and not a little curious. It will suffice for my purpose to indicate some of these, in the shortest manner.

The absolute and despotic form demands notice first, as having been the most ancient probably, and certainly the most general. Under this form, the state allying itself with some one class of professed Christians exclusively of all others, not only throws around it the protection of law, and supports it by compulsory exactions, but interdicts the creed and worship of all other denominations; and regarding the toleration of these sects as a criminal connivance with their errors and false worship, employs all its power and terrors, to compel universal obedience to one spiritual, as to one civil code of law. This is religious intolerance and despotism in the very zenith of their glory. It must not, however, be thought that religion and religious uniformity, the plausible objects for

which such expedients are ostensibly employed, have been gained by them, any farther at least, than profession is concerned. The Church has either been the tool of the state, or the state has been the vassal of the Church; and the one has employed the other, for religion professedly, but really for its own purposes of ambition, or lucre. From these unhappy countries in which such systems of civil and religious tyranny prevail, true religion flies; and her place is usurped, though under the veil of hypocrisy, by superstition, error, infidelity, and crime. In this form Civil Establishments appeared in Christendom prior to the Reformation, and continue in some Catholic states to this day; but I am not aware that in any country where the light of the Reformation penetrated, and still shines, however faintly, there is any extensive desire to recur to it.

In the countries which acknowledged the Reformation, establishments of Christianity assumed a milder form, for the most part. When the Popish church was repudiated, and a purer faith owned, the Reformed Churches obtained that favour with the state, from which their predecessor had been ejected. The laws which formerly established Popery now sanctioned the creed of Calvin or Luther; the revenues which the Popish church enjoyed were now transferred to the Reformed, as far as they escaped the rapacious hands of the monarch, or his nobles; and in most cases, the fallen party was subjected to discountenance and disabilities, the same in kind, though modified in the degree of their severity, which itself had been accustomed to inflict. In those days of dim vision-very dim in as far as the perception of the common rights and liberties of mankind was concerned-before the advancing light had shown to Protestants the unrighteousness of all civil inflictions for conscience' sake, the presumption of man's usurping the throne of the Almighty, and judging for his fellow-man respecting his duty to God and his eternal salvation, even Protestants were doing in one country toward Roman Catholics the same things in substance which, in another, Roman Catholics were doing toward Protestants; and, (which was not unnatural, after the principle was adopted and acted on,) inflicting on their fellow-Protestants a discipline not dissimilar to that

which they had themselves experienced from the hands of Rome. Our own illustrious Knox, and his reforming compeers were passing through the medium of a Scottish Parliament bloody laws against Papists, ordaining that the idolater must die the death, (laws, I believe, which, independently of other circumstances, their own better nature would have restrained them from executing) while the flames of the Inquisition were consuming Protestant martyrs in Spain and Italy. The "bright occidental star" of England, proud Elizabeth, shed no very benign influences on her puritanical subjects; and our Jameses and Charleses employed their High Commissions, their Star Chambers, the bayonets of their soldiers, and the decisions of their Lauds and their Lauderdales, to force Episcopacy on Presbyterians, while the blood of the Hugenots flowed in profusion, under the counsels of the Guises, and the bloody despotism of the Charleses, and Henrys, and Louises of France. There is no doubt that the Reformed Churches were hostile to the doctrine of toleration; wished to monopolize religious liberty; and were restrained, as far as they were restrained, from intolerance in practice, not by their own principles, but by the mild influence of the gospel of peace, and the advancing spirit of the age in which they lived. Few modern friends of Establishments would plead for reducing to practice the laws of those days; and are not over fond of having them drawn forth to public view from the statute-books, or religious formularies, in which they are recorded. In this second form of Establishments, then, the separatists exist rather by connivance, and practical sufferance, and with great consequent annoyances, than by formal toleration and acknowledgment.

But the most plausible form in which Establishments have appeared is in alliance with toleration. "Toleration is of two kinds-the allowing to dissenters the unmolested profession and exercise of their religion, but with an exclusion from offices of trust and emolument in the state; which is partial toleration; and the admitting them, without distinction, to all the civil privileges and capacities of other citizens; which is a complete toleration."*

* Paley's Moral Philosophy.

The approach which has been happily made in Great Britain to the complete toleration which Dr. Paley describes, is comparatively recent; and like every great improvement in the practice of legislation, has resulted remotely from free discussion, but more immediately from a succession of wrongs and struggles; of wrongs rousing the injured, and through them forcing onward the tide of sentiment; and of struggles, the object of which has been to compel institutions to adjust themselves to opinions. This state of extensive and advancing toleration in the British empire, from the period of the Revolution till lately, is well known. Its recent progress by the emancipation of our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and by the abolition of the truly infamous Test and Corporation Acts, is very auspicious to the hopes of the friends of religious liberty. And here we now are with religious Establishments, in the least offensive form in which they have ever appeared in this country; connected with a toleration nearly complete in Dr. Paley's sense of the term; with some of their most oppressive accompaniments, in the judgment of their opponents, confessedly abolished; with not a few of their most necessary supports, in the estimation of their friends, withdrawn. Here we are, with an Episcopalian Establishment in England and Ireland, a Presbyterian Establishment in Scotland, and a Roman Catholic Establishment in Lower Canada, all other denominations being allowed to profess and worship as they choose; only the whole ecclesiastical revenues being, by the compulsion of law, appropriated exclusively to these Establishments, with two very trifling exceptions-the grant of a small sum to Ireland annually from the public treasury-and the exemption of Episcopalian and other dissenters in Canada from paying their proportion to the local Establishment. In the following argument, I shall give the friends of Establishments the full benefit of this mild and plausible form in which they now exist; although, with all fairness, in trying the principle, I shall pursue it to its just consequences.

I am quite aware that there is a fourth form to which I ought to allude, in which all sects enjoy a legislative provision. France cares for no religion, and she equally endows all. In some of the States of America, contribu