XXIII. 1790. far more virulence, and in present circumstances BOOK therefore of far more efficacy. He expressed his ❝utter contempt of all abstract principles of natural right: these (he said) were annihilated by society, which secured the possession of every com fort which those proud and boastful rights impo tently held out, but could not bestow. He astonished and alarmed the house with reading several passages from the writings of dissenting divines on the subject of Ecclesiastical Establishments, expressed with the usual acrimony and violence of theological polemics. From these testimonies Mr. Burke inferred the inveterate enmity of the dissenters to the church; and he adjured the house to suffer the fatal incidents which had taken place in France, and the sudden ruin of the Gallican church, to awaken their zeal for the preservation of our present happy and excellent establishment." ed with re attendant stances. On the division the numbers were, ayes 105,-Negativnoes 294; so that the majority against the repeal markable had increased since the last session from 20 to 189 circum voices. In consequence of the unhappy manner in which this question was treated, the spirit of religious bigotry, prejudice, and animosity, was revived throughout the kingdom in an extraordinary degree. The grand fabric of policy which it had been the labor of a century to rear, and the glory of the house of Hanover for two successive reigns to cherish, was now in a moment of rash XXIII. 1790. BOOK ness and resentment demolished and overthrown. The dissenters on their part can by no means be acquitted of blame. Considering the great plausibility which may be given by eloquent and artful men to principles the most absurd and erroneous, it is no wonder that many highly respectable persons, far removed from contempt as to knowledge and understanding, should regard the repeal of the Test Laws as attended with a degree of risk and danger. Till the PASSIONS of the public were *«The sufferings of men in their civil rights upon religious accounts (says bishop HOADLEY in his memorable answer to bishop SHERLOCK) was the INFLAMING CONSIDERATION—and what gave rise to those passions which in the last century produced such fatal effects. The contrary conduct, therefore, would have the contrary effect. Let all hardships and all oppressions cease. Let there be no civil punishment, or civil suffering, or civil inconvenience, call it as you please, on account of what is the dictate of men's private conscience, unless it immediately affect the civil government. If the former method has been tried, and has been seen to blow up disaffection into violence, then the true cure for these evils is to prevent them by acting a contrary part, and trying that which never yet has had in any part of the world so fatal effects. To go on in the old way of continuing grievances and burdens is only to pave the way to the same evils whenever time and opportunity shall offer; and this as certainly as that the same human nature will be worked upon in the same manner by the same methods; or as certainly as that the same causes, all things concurring, will ever produce the same effects. Those evils were begun by partiality and oppression, and therefore the true lasting effectual remedy would be for government to XXIII. 1790. awakened, it is however extremely evident that BOOK the arguments of the dissenters, and of their advocates, both in and out of parliament, made a sensible impression in their favor; but when they proceeded to a rude and arrogant mode of urging their claim, the voice of reason was lost in the subsequent conflict. Had the dissenters conducted themselves with the respect and deference due to the government of a country even when in error, it is by no means improbable that at a future period the court might have suffered the repeal to pass; but by pressing the repeal with a boldness and precipitancy which allowed no salvo for the honor of government, they could expect no other than a decided and acrimonious opposition. It is nevertheless very remarkable in one view, that the measure in question should be opposed with such abolish all partiality as to civil rights, and all hardship whereever there is equal affection to the civil government, properly so called. Admitting, for argument's sake, the disaffection of the dissenters to the government at former periods, if that disaffection to the civil constitution, testified by former actions, were a just ground for making such exclusive acts, then certainly the truest affection to the present civil constitution, testified through a long series of years and in times the most critical and dangerous, is the justest reason in the world for putting an end to these acts." Such were the noble sentiments, and such the generous and enlightened policy, with which the dissenters were not only uniformly treated, but publicly defended, by those men in whom the house of Brunswic once placed their trust and confidence. XXIII. 1790. BOOK pertinacity by the executive government, since the very object of the repeal was merely to remove a restraint upon the exercise of its prerogative. And if the object of these successive applications had been attained in its utmost extent, it would still have depended upon the pleasure of the crown, whether a single dissenter should have been employed in any office for which a compliance with the Test was previously necessary. The conduct of the dissenters, too eagerly solicitous to remove a stigma which they were conscious they did not deserve, must indeed be acknowledged unwise and indefensible. But when was wisdom supposed the characteristic of a promiscuous and countless mul titude? The conduct of government was also at least equally unwise. But from the government of a great nation we have a right to expect wisdom; and from the palpable want of it during the present reign, evils and mischiefs beyond all power of calculation have resulted. After the fatal experience of thirty years, that most important of all political truths remained to be discovered-that mankind are with infinitely more ease and efficacy to be governed by mildness than severity.* Of the apologues of antient and of modern times, there is none perhaps that conveys so beautiful a moral, and so extensively applicable, as that of the sUN and WIND. "A traveller (says the fabulist) was journeying with a large and thick cloak loosely cast upon his shoulders, when an eager contention XXIII. 1790. Mr. Flood's a reform in Shortly after the decision of the house upon this BOOK business, Mr. Flood, so long celebrated as a patriot and orator in the Irish house of commons, and who had sat some years almost undistinguished in motion for the British parliament, brought forward a plan the British parliament. of parliamentary reform, in conformity to which an additional number of representatives, to the amount of one hundred, was to be admitted into the legislative body, in a proportional ratio to the population of each county, by the election of the resident householders only. This was a bold and happy effort at reform; and it was supported by the mover in a very able and eloquent speech, in arose between the Sun and the Wind, which could with the greater facility cause him to throw it off. To ascertain this question, the Wind first began to blow with keenness, then with violence, rising by degrees into a dreadful tempest. But the traveller, far from casting away his cloak, only wrapped it round him the closer. The Sun then, smiling at the fierce and at the same time impotent efforts of his antagonist, began to shine, till at length, overpowered by the increasing splendor of his beams, the traveller threw off his cloak, not merely as a superfluous, but inconvenient and cumbrous burden. The Wind, now instructed by experience, ingenuously confessed the wretched inefficacy of terror to influence the will, when compared with the generous glow of kindness, and the cheering rays of beneficence."-" Constraint (says a most discerning judge of mankind) is the most defective of all the springs of authority. In all affairs, without exception, coercive means are the most adapted to produce in man an effect exactly opposite to the intention." |