exclusions; sooner or later it will destroy them, or they will destroy
the Constitution. In our Constitution there has always been a difference
between _a franchise_ and _an office_, and between the capacity for the
one and for the other. Franchises were supposed to belong to the
_subject_, as _a subject_, and not as _a member of the governing part of
the state_. The policy of government has considered them as things very
different; for, whilst Parliament excluded by the test acts (and for a
while these test acts were not a dead letter, as now they are in
England) Protestant Dissenters from all civil and military employments,
they _never touched their right of voting for members of Parliament or
sitting in either House_: a point I state, not as approving or
condemning, with regard to them, the measure of exclusion from
employments, but to prove that the distinction has been admitted in
legislature, as, in truth, it is founded in reason.
I will not here examine whether the principles of the British [the
Irish] Constitution be wise or not. I must assume that they are, and
that those who partake the franchises which make it partake of a
benefit. They who are excluded from votes (under proper qualifications
inherent in the Constitution that gives them) are excluded, not from
_the state_, but from _the British Constitution_. They cannot by any
possibility, whilst they hear its praises continually rung in their
ears, and are present at the declaration which is so generally and so
bravely made by those who possess the privilege, that the best blood in
their veins ought to be shed to preserve their share in it,--they, the
disfranchised part, cannot, I say, think themselves in an _happy_ state,
to be utterly excluded from all its direct and all its consequential
advantages. The popular part of the Constitution must be to them by far
the most odious part of it. To them it is not an _actual_, and, if
possible, still less a _virtual_ representation. It is, indeed, the
direct contrary. It is power unlimited placed in the hands of _an
adverse_ description _because it is an adverse description_. And if they
who compose the privileged body have not an interest, they must but too
frequently have motives of pride, passion, petulance, peevish jealousy,
or tyrannic suspicion, to urge them to treat the excluded people with
contempt and rigor.
This is not a mere theory; though, whilst men are men, it is a theory
that cannot be false. I do not desire to revive all the particulars in
my memory; I wish them to sleep forever; but it is impossible I should
wholly forget what happened in some parts of Ireland, with very few and
short intermissions, from the year 1761 to the year 1766, both
inclusive. In a country of miserable police, passing from the extremes
of laxity to the extremes of rigor, among a neglected and therefore
disorderly populace, if any disturbance or sedition, from any grievance
real or imaginary, happened to arise, it was presently perverted from
its true nature, often criminal enough in itself to draw upon it a
severe, appropriate punishment: it was metamorphosed into a conspiracy
against the state, and prosecuted as such. Amongst the Catholics, as
being by far the most numerous and the most wretched, all sorts of
offenders against the laws must commonly be found. The punishment of low
people for the offences usual among low people would warrant no
inference against any descriptions of religion or of politics. Men of
consideration from their age, their profession, or their character, men
of proprietary landed estates, substantial renters, opulent merchants,
physicians, and titular bishops, could not easily be suspected of riot
in open day, or of nocturnal assemblies for the purpose of pulling down
hedges, making breaches in park-walls, firing barns, maiming cattle, and
outrages of a similar nature, which characterize the disorders of an
oppressed or a licentious populace. But when the evidence given on the
trial for such misdemeanors qualified them as overt acts of high
treason, and when witnesses were found (such witnesses as they were) to
depose to the taking of oaths of allegiance by the rioters to the king
of France, to their being paid by his money, and embodied and exercised
under his officers, to overturn the state for the purposes of that
potentate,--in that case, the rioters might (if the witness was
believed) be supposed only the troops, and persons more reputable the
leaders and commanders, in such a rebellion. All classes in the
obnoxious description, who could not be suspected of the lower crime of
riot, might be involved in the odium, in the suspicion, and sometimes in
the punishment, of a higher and far more criminal species of offence.
These proceedings did not arise from any one of the Popery laws since
repealed, but from this circumstance, that, when it answered the
purposes of an election party or a malevolent person of influence to
forge such plots, the people had no protection. The people of that
description have no hold on the gentlemen who aspire to be popular
representatives. The candidates neither love nor respect nor fear them,
individually or collectively. I do not think this evil (an evil amongst
a thousand others) at this day entirely over; for I conceive I have
lately seen some indication of a disposition perfectly similar to the
old one,--that is, a disposition to carry the imputation of crimes from
persons to descriptions, and wholly to alter the character and quality
of the offences themselves.
This universal exclusion seems to me a serious evil,--because many
collateral oppressions, besides what I have just now stated, have arisen
from it. In things of this nature it would not be either easy or proper
to quote chapter and verse; but I have great reason to believe,
particularly since the Octennial Act, that several have refused at all
to let their lands to Roman Catholics, because it would so far disable
them from promoting such interests in counties as they were inclined to
favor. They who consider also the state of all sorts of tradesmen,
shopkeepers, and particularly publicans in towns, must soon discern the
disadvantages under which those labor who have no votes. It cannot be
otherwise, whilst the spirit of elections and the tendencies of human
nature continue as they are. If property be artificially separated from
franchise, the franchise must in some way or other, and in some
proportion, naturally attract property to it. Many are the collateral
disadvantages, amongst a _privileged_ people, which must attend on those
who have _no_ privileges.
Among the rich, each individual, with or without a franchise, is of
importance; the poor and the middling are no otherwise so than as they
obtain some collective capacity, and can be aggregated to some corps. If
legal ways are not found, illegal will be resorted to; and seditious
clubs and confederacies, such as no man living holds in greater horror
than I do, will grow and flourish, in spite, I am afraid, of anything
which can be done to prevent the evil. Lawful enjoyment is the surest
method to prevent unlawful gratification. Where there is property, there
will be less theft; where there is marriage, there will always be less
fornication.
I have said enough of the question of state, _as it affects the people
merely as such_. But it is complicated with a political question
relative to religion, to which it is very necessary I should say
something,--because the term _Protestant_, which you apply, is too
general for the conclusions which one of your accurate understanding
would wish to draw from it, and because a great deal of argument will
depend on the use that is made of that term.
It is _not_ a fundamental part of the settlement at the Revolution that
the state should be Protestant _without any qualification of the term_.
With a qualification it is unquestionably true; not in all its latitude.
With the qualification, it was true before the Revolution. Our
predecessors in legislation were not so irrational (not to say impious)
as to form an operose ecclesiastical establishment, and even to render
the state itself in some degree subservient to it, when their religion
(if such it might be called) was nothing but a mere _negation_ of some
other,--without any positive idea, either of doctrine, discipline,
worship, or morals, in the scheme which they professed themselves, and
which they imposed upon others, even under penalties and incapacities.
No! No! This never could have been done, even by reasonable atheists.
They who think religion of no importance to the state have abandoned it
to the conscience or caprice of the individual; they make no provision
for it whatsoever, but leave every club to make, or not, a voluntary
contribution towards its support, according to their fancies. This would
be consistent. The other always appeared to me to be a monster of
contradiction and absurdity. It was for that reason, that, some years
ago, I strenuously opposed the clergy who petitioned, to the number of
about three hundred, to be freed from the subscription to the
Thirty-Nine Articles, without proposing to substitute any other in their
place. There never has been a religion of the state (the few years of
the Parliament only excepted) but that of _the Episcopal Church of
England_: the Episcopal Church of England, before the Reformation,
connected with the see of Rome; since then, disconnected, and protesting
against some of her doctrines, and against the whole of her authority,
as binding in our national church: nor did the fundamental laws of this
kingdom (in Ireland it has been the same) ever know, at any period, any
other church _as an object of establishment_,--or, in that light, any
other Protestant religion. Nay, our Protestant _toleration_ itself, at
the Revolution, and until within a few years, required a signature of
thirty-six, and a part of the thirty-seventh, out of the Thirty-Nine
Articles. So little idea had they at the Revolution of _establishing_
Protestantism indefinitely, that they did not indefinitely _tolerate_ it
under that name. I do not mean to praise that strictness, where nothing
more than merely religious toleration is concerned. Toleration, being a
part of moral and political prudence, ought to be tender and large. A
tolerant government ought not to be too scrupulous in its
investigations, but may bear without blame, not only very ill-grounded
doctrines, but even many things that are positively vices, where they
are _adulta et prævalida_. The good of the commonwealth is the rule
which rides over the rest; and to this every other must completely
submit.
The Church of Scotland knows as little of Protestantism _undefined_ as
the Church of England and Ireland do. She has by the articles of union
secured to herself the perpetual establishment of _the Confession of
Faith_, and the _Presbyterian_ Church government. In England, even
during the troubled interregnum, it was not thought fit to establish a
_negative_ religion; but the Parliament settled the _Presbyterian_ as
the Church _discipline_, the _Directory_ as the rule of public
_worship_, and the _Westminster Catechism_ as the institute of _faith_.
This is to show that at no time was the Protestant religion,
_undefined_, established here or anywhere else, as I believe. I am sure,
that, when the three religions were established in Germany, they were
expressly characterized and declared to be the _Evangelic_, the
_Reformed_, and the _Catholic_; each of which has its confession of
faith and its settled discipline: so that you always may know the best
and the worst of them, to enable you to make the most of what is good,
and to correct or to qualify or to guard against whatever may seem evil
or dangerous.
As to the coronation oath, to which you allude, as opposite to admitting
a Roman Catholic to the use of any franchise whatsoever, I cannot think
that the king would be perjured, if he gave his assent to any regulation
which Parliament might think fit to make with regard to that affair. The
king is bound by law, as clearly specified in several acts of
Parliament, to be in communion with the Church of England. It is a part
of the tenure by which he holds his crown; and though no provision was
made till the Revolution, which could be called positive and valid in
law, to ascertain this great principle, I have always considered it as
in fact fundamental, that the king of England should be of the Christian
religion, according to the national legal church for the time being. I
conceive it was so before the Reformation. Since the Reformation it
became doubly necessary; because the king is the head of that church, in
some sort an ecclesiastical person,--and it would be incongruous and
absurd to have the head of the Church of one faith, and the members of
another. The king may _inherit_ the crown as a _Protestant_; but he
cannot _hold it_, according to law, without being a Protestant _of the
Church of England_.
Before we take it for granted that the king is bound by his coronation
oath not to admit any of his Catholic subjects to the rights and
liberties which ought to belong to them as Englishmen, (not as
religionists,) or to settle the conditions or proportions of such
admission by an act of Parliament, I wish you to place before your eyes
that oath itself, as it is settled in the act of William and Mary.
"Will you to the utmost of your power maintain
1 2 3
the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel,
4
and the Protestant Reformed Religion _established by_
5
_law_? And will you preserve unto the _bishops_ and clergy of this
realm, and to the churches committed to _their_ charge, all such rights
and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, or any of
them?--All this I promise to do."
Here are the coronation engagements of the king. In them I do not find
one word to preclude his Majesty from consenting to any arrangement
which Parliament may make with regard to the civil privileges of any
part of his subjects.
It may not be amiss, on account of the light which it will throw on this
discussion, to look a little more narrowly into the matter of that
oath,--in order to discover how far it has hitherto operated, or how far
in future it ought to operate, as a bar to any proceedings of the crown
and Parliament in favor of those against whom it may be supposed that
the king has engaged to support the Protestant Church of England in the
two kingdoms in which it is established by law. First, the king swears
he will maintain to the utmost of his power "the laws of God." I suppose
it means the natural moral laws.--Secondly, he swears to maintain "the
true profession of the Gospel." By which I suppose is understood
_affirmatively_ the Christian religion.--Thirdly, that he will maintain
"the Protestant reformed religion." This leaves me no power of
supposition or conjecture; for that Protestant reformed religion is
defined and described by the subsequent words, "established by law"; and
in this instance, to define it beyond all possibility of doubt, he
swears to maintain the "bishops and clergy, and the churches committed
to their charge," in their rights present and future.
The oath as effectually prevents the king from doing anything to the
prejudice of the Church, in favor of sectaries, Jews, Mahometans, or
plain avowed infidels, as if he should do the same thing in favor of the
Catholics. You will see that it is the same Protestant Church, so
described, that the king is to maintain and communicate with, according
to the Act of Settlement of the 12th and 13th of William the Third. The
act of the 5th of Anne, made in prospect of the Union, is entitled, "An
act for securing the Church of England as by law established." It meant
to guard the Church implicitly against any other mode of Protestant
religion which might creep in by means of the Union. It proves beyond
all doubt, that the legislature did not mean to guard the Church on one
part only, and to leave it defenceless and exposed upon every other.
This church, in that act, is declared to be "fundamental and essential"
forever, in the Constitution of the United Kingdom, so far as England is
concerned; and I suppose, as the law stands, even since the
independence, it is so in Ireland.
All this shows that the religion which the king is bound to maintain has
a positive part in it, as well as a negative,--and that the positive
part of it (in which we are in perfect agreement with the Catholics and
with the Church of Scotland) is infinitely the most valuable and
essential. Such an agreement we had with Protestant Dissenters in
England, of those descriptions who came under the Toleration Act of King
William and Queen Mary: an act coeval with the Revolution; and which
ought, on the principles of the gentlemen who oppose the relief to the
Catholics, to have been held sacred and unalterable. Whether we agree
with the present Protestant Dissenters in the points at the Revolution
held essential and fundamental among Christians, or in any other
fundamental, at present it is impossible for us to know: because, at
their own very earnest desire, we have repealed the Toleration Act of
William and Mary, and discharged them from the signature required by
that act; and because, for the far greater part, they publicly declare
against all manner of confessions of faith, even the _Consensus_.
For reasons forcible enough at all times, but at this time particularly
forcible with me, I dwell a little the longer upon this matter, and take
the more pains, to put us both in mind that it was not settled at the
Revolution that the state should be Protestant, in the latitude of the
term, but in a defined and limited sense only, and that in that sense
only the king is sworn to maintain it. To suppose that the king has
sworn with his utmost power to maintain what it is wholly out of his
power to discover, or which, if he could discover, he might discover to
consist of things directly contradictory to each other, some of them
perhaps impious, blasphemous, and seditious upon principle, would be not
only a gross, but a most mischievous absurdity. If mere dissent from the
Church of Rome be a merit, he that dissents the most perfectly is the
most meritorious. In many points we hold strongly with that church. He
that dissents throughout with that church will dissent with the Church
of England, and then it will be a part of his merit that he dissents
with ourselves: a whimsical species of merit for any set of men to
establish. We quarrel to extremity with those who we know agree with us
in many things; but we are to be so malicious even in the principle of
our friendships, that we are to cherish in our bosom those who accord
with us in nothing, because, whilst they despise ourselves, they abhor,
even more than we do, those with whom we have some disagreement. A man
is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole
Christian religion. Whether a person's having no Christian religion be a
title to favor, in exclusion to the largest description of Christians,
who hold all the doctrines of Christianity, though holding along with
them some errors and some superfluities, is rather more than any man,
who has not become recreant and apostate from his baptism, will, I
believe, choose to affirm. The countenance given from a spirit of
controversy to that negative religion may by degrees encourage light and
unthinking people to a total indifference to everything positive in
matters of doctrine, and, in the end, of practice too. If continued, it
would play the game of that sort of active, proselytizing, and
persecuting atheism which is the disgrace and calamity of our time, and
which we see to be as capable of subverting a government as any mode can
be of misguided zeal for better things.
Now let us fairly see what course has been taken relative to those
against whom, in part at least, the king has sworn to maintain a church,
_positive in its doctrine and its discipline_. The first thing done,
even when the oath was fresh in the mouth of the sovereigns, was to give
a toleration to Protestant Dissenters _whose doctrines they
ascertained_. As to the mere civil privileges which the Dissenters held
as subjects before the Revolution, these were not touched at all. The
laws have fully permitted, in a qualification for all offices, to such
Dissenters, _an occasional conformity_: a thing I believe singular,
where tests are admitted. The act, called the Test Act, itself, is, with
regard to them, grown to be hardly anything more than a dead letter.
Whenever the Dissenters cease by their conduct to give any alarm to the
government, in Church and State, I think it very probable that even this
matter, rather disgustful than inconvenient to them, may be removed, or
at least so modified as to distinguish the qualification to those
offices which really _guide the state_ from those which are _merely
instrumental_, or that some other and better tests may be put in their
place.
So far as to England. In Ireland you have outran us. Without waiting for
an English example, you have totally, and without any modification
whatsoever, repealed the test as to Protestant Dissenters. Not having
the repealing act by me, I ought not to say positively that there is no
exception in it; but if it be what I suppose it is, you know very well
that a Jew in religion, or a Mahometan, or even _a public, declared
atheist_ and blasphemer, is perfectly qualified to be Lord-Lieutenant, a
lord-justice, or even keeper of the king's conscience, and by virtue of
his office (if with you it be as it is with us) administrator to a great
part of the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown.
Now let us deal a little fairly. We must admit that Protestant Dissent
was one of the quarters from which danger was apprehended at the
Revolution, and against which a part of the coronation oath was
peculiarly directed. By this unqualified repeal you certainly did not
mean to deny that it was the duty of the crown to preserve the Church
against Protestant Dissenters; or taking this to be the true sense of
the two Revolution acts of King William, and of the previous and
subsequent Union acts of Queen Anne, you did not declare by this most
unqualified repeal, by which you broke down all the barriers, not
invented, indeed, but carefully preserved, at the Revolution,--you did
not then and by that proceeding declare that you had advised the king to
perjury towards God and perfidy towards the Church. No! far, very far
from it! You never would have done it, if you did not think it could be
done with perfect repose to the royal conscience, and perfect safety to
the national established religion. You did this upon a full
consideration of the circumstances of your country. Now, if
circumstances required it, why should it be contrary to the king's oath,
his Parliament judging on those circumstances, to restore to his
Catholic people, in such measure and with such modifications as the
public wisdom shall think proper to add, _some part_ in these franchises
which they formerly had held without any limitation at all, and which,
upon no sort of urgent reason at the time, they were deprived of? If
such means can with any probability be shown, from circumstances, rather
to add strength to our mixed ecclesiastical and secular Constitution
than to weaken it, surely they are means infinitely to be preferred to
penalties, incapacities, and proscriptions, continued from generation to
generation. They are perfectly consistent with the other parts of the
coronation oath, in which the king swears to maintain "the laws of God
and the true profession of the Gospel, and to govern the people
according to the statutes in Parliament agreed upon, and the laws and
customs of the realm." In consenting to such a statute, the crown would
act at least as agreeable to the laws of God, and to the true profession
of the Gospel, and to the laws and customs of the kingdom, as George the
First did, when he passed the statute which took from the body of the
people everything which to that hour, and even after the monstrous acts
of the 2nd and 8th of Anne, (the objects of our common hatred,) they
still enjoyed inviolate.