opinions upon the subject, and should therefore now restate them with greater force and confidence.

He considered both himself and the House under great obligation, however, to the right honourable gentleman, for his clear and candid statement of the precise object of the dissenters in their present application; he had completely unravelled the mystery in which their views had been enveloped; and, in a plain, open, and manly manner, had exhibited the full extent to which his motion was intended to be carried. Had it ever been possible for him to be at a loss on the subject, his doubts must now forsake him. The important question at issue was simply and plainly this: Whether the House ought or ought not to relinquish at once those acts which had been adopted by the wisdom of our ancestors to serve as a bulwark to the church, whose constitution was so intimately connected with that of the state, that the safety of the one was always liable to be affected by any danger which might threaten the other? He, for one, was clearly convinced that we ought not to relinquish those great and fundamental principles upon which the prosperity of the state so much. depended.

The right honourable gentleman's sentiments on the general principles of dissension and toleration coincided with his own; yet, he must take leave to differ from him in his definition of toleration, which he had carried to an extent which, in his opinion, it would not bear. Toleration could, by no means, be considered as an equality; for it only consisted in a free exercise of religious tenets, and in the enjoyment of the protection of the laws. The dissenters had a right to enjoy their liberty and property; to entertain their own speculative opinions, and to educate their offspring in such religious principles as they approve. But the indispensable necessity of a certain permanent church establishment, for the good of the state, required that toleration should not be extended to an equality; for that would inevitably endanger such an establishment. Upon the supposition that every class of dissenters, agreeably to the extent of the right honourable gentleman's principles, were admitted to a full and complete equality

of participation, those would be admitted, who might conscientiously think it their duty to subvert the establishment; for not only Roman catholics, but also papists who acknowledge the supremacy of a foreign ecclesiastical prince, were not to be excluded until the commission of some overt act against the constitution. If this were once to be done, there would be an end for ever put to the wise policy of prevention, and a dangerous door would be opened to the absolute ruin of the constitution. He was ready to admit, that no citizen of a free state ought to be subject to any punishment for his speculative opinions; nor should even the publication of them, with moderation and decency, fall under the cognisance of the civil power: but he contended that the interest of individuals claiming pecuniary rewards, or lucrative employments, was very different from this, and that the public safety required, in his opinion, such a species of security for an establishment, as the test laws prescribed. Our very constitution had been saved by virtue of their sanction: had it not been for such bulwarks of defence, the family of Stuart might have been now in possession of the throne, and the right honourable gentleman had never had the opportunity of delivering those opinions in that House which they had that day heard. Although all cognisance of opinion might not be a warrantable ground for crimination, until the commission of some overt acts, yet he should ever contend, that an inquiry and test of a man's opinion, as the means of judging of his religious and constitutional principles, was highly expedient.

It had been exposed as extremely absurd that a test of religious tenets should be imposed upon persons about to occupy the meanest civil offices, while there was no inquiry into the religious opinions even of the members of the legislature. The fact was otherwise. In the oath of abjuration, a religious test was imposed on the constitutional tenets of the legislative body. The oath against transubstantiation was purely religious, and the oath of allegiance was a civil and political

any kind was contrary to the genius and spirit of monarchy; much more, then, must the obligation of test laws be necessary to a government like ours, where the monarchy is limited. The executive power should be allowed undoubtedly the exercise of a right of discrimination into the fitness of individuals to occupy stations of trust, for which that branch of the government was always responsible. The benefit of the general community required the establishment of public offices; and, as a distinction. in their distribution was highly conducive to the same important service, the idea of right to civil offices, then, was highly absurd and ridiculous: there could be no foundation for such extraordinary claim, unless it were agreed that the offices in question were created more for the advantage of those who occupied them, than as a trust for the benefit of the public; and that their salaries were to be defrayed upon the principle of a lottery, rather than out of the public treasury. While our constitution, however, had invested the executive power with the appointment of offices, the legislature had made a wise application of a limited monarchy, by restricting the supreme magistrate in the disposal of these offices.

Suppose the case of a republic, the government of which was the purest democracy, the officers of state elective out of the general body, where the most perfect equality existed. Now, imagine any form of religion, or superstitious ceremony, to be entertained and professed by a small part of the people, whose tendency might be to destroy the democratic equality, and, consequently, the constitution itself: would not the majority, with a view to the preservation of this constitution, be warranted in the exclusion of such an obnoxious party from the right either of electing, or being elected, to fill offices of trust in the state? Most undoubtedly. It should then be recollected, that the test laws under discussion were enacted with a direct view to the defence and preservation of our excellent constitution. They were to be regarded as a species of jealousy of the monarch, which had never been considered as unconstitutional. They had a direct tendency to check the influence of the royal prerogative,

which was a circumstance never very unpopular in a free state; and he hesitated not to say, if any distrust were to be entertained of either of the three branches of the constitution, it ought to be of the executive power. The test laws, by abridging the prerogatives of the crown, in preventing the sovereign from employing persons in offices of trust, who could not give a certain pledge or security of their attachment to the government, guarded against all danger or abuse from this branch of the legislature. The persons excluded by the test laws from civil offices lay under no kind of stigma, in his opinion, more than those who were necessarily kept out of that House, or from voting at an election, in consequence of their disqualification by statute from their elective rights. It was a common policy which obtained in private life, for no man to admit another to the management of his affairs, whose principles he did not approve; the same policy should prevail in states. The exclusion of the dissenters, therefore, from civil offices, from a disapprobation of their political sentiments, could be no usurpation in the government.

The merits or demerits of individuals ought, most undoubtedly, to have no weight or influence in the discussion of the present question. Yet the conduct of the dissenters seemed to him liable to just reprehension; for when they were reprobating the test laws, they were loud in their complaints, and were appealing to the legislature for redress of their grievances; even at that moment, they discovered intentions of forming associations throughout the whole country, for the sole purpose of putting the members of that House to a test; of whose fitness and competency to discharge their parliamentary duty they were to judge from their votes upon this single question. They had, indeed, explained themselves, that it was far from being their intention to put a test to any one; but even in their explanation a test was evidently implied. For in their resolutions, under the signature of Mr. Jefferies, it was expressly declared, that the dissenters meant to favour such members with their support, who

Their construction and application of such terms must be obvious to every understanding. No man, in their estimation, would be regarded as a friend to civil and religious liberty who did not vote for the repeal of the test laws.

Although the right honourable gentleman had well expatiated on the excellence of toleration, yet he was not certain that the description of men, whose cause he had so ably pleaded, would be eminently distinguished for their candour, moderation, and tolerance, should they succeed in their application. He owned he was not prepared to repose implicit confidence in any fair promises they should make, from the suspicious circumstance of their applying for a repeal of the test laws, when, at the same time, they were threatening the legislature itself with a test. No individual, therefore, as he had contended, could either have a right to occupy, or be eligible to occupy, any official situation under a government like ours, especially if such an appointment, too, was likely to be attended with any political inconvenience; for when such an inconvenience. ever exists, the claim of right must be utterly unfounded. The claim of the dissenters, therefore, to be admitted to civil employments, upon the ground of right, equally with the members of the establishment, must of necessity fall to the ground. He had no idea of such levelling principles as those which warranted to all citizens an equality of rights; as if the whole property, under the control of government, were equally to be distributed among the public again. The appointment to offices rested with government, which no citizen could claim as a matter of right. The dissenters ought not to consider themselves, by the operation of the test laws, as debarred from any right to fill official situations under government, nor ought their exclusion to be regarded as any stigma upon them; since the government, in concurrence with the majority, are of opinion that none ought to be admitted to civil employments, except members of the establishment. To ascertain this important circumstance, without exacting either promise or obligation from any individual of the community, the test laws are enforced.