received in England, that the extent of a manor and of a parish are regularly received for each other.  The churches which the proprietors of lands had thus built and thus endowed, they justly thought themselves entitled to provide with ministers; and, where the episcopal government prevails, the bishop has no power to reject a man nominated by the patron, but for some crime that might exclude him from the priesthood.  For, the endowment of the church being the gift of the landlord, he was, consequently, at liberty to give it, according to his choice, to any man capable of performing the holy offices.  The people did not choose him, because the people did not pay him.

We hear it sometimes urged, that this original right is passed out of memory, and is obliterated and obscured by many translations of property and changes of government; that scarce any church is now in the hands of the heirs of the builders; and that the present persons have entered subsequently upon the pretended rights by a thousand accidental and unknown causes.  Much of this, perhaps, is true.  But how is the right of patronage extinguished?  If the right followed the lands, it is possessed, by the same equity by which the lands are possessed.  It is, in effect, part of the manor, and protected by the same laws with every other privilege.  Let us suppose an estate forfeited by treason, and granted by the crown to a new family.  With the lands were forfeited all the rights appendant to those lands; by the same power that grants the lands, the rights also are granted.  The right, lost to the patron, falls not to the people, but is either retained by the crown, or, what to the people is the same thing, is by the crown given away.  Let it change hands ever so often, it is possessed by him that receives it, with the same right as it was conveyed.  It may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or fraudulently obtained.  But no injury is still done to the people; for what they never had, they have never lost.  Caius may usurp the right of Titius, but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people; and no man’s conscience, however tender or however active, can prompt him to restore what may be proved to have been never taken away.  Supposing, what I think cannot be proved, that a popular election of ministers were to be desired, our desires are not the measure of equity.  It were to be desired, that power should be only in the hands of the merciful, and riches in the possession of the generous; but the law must leave both riches and power where it finds them; and must often leave riches with the covetous, and power with the cruel.  Convenience may be a rule in little things, where no other rule has been established.  But, as the great end of government is to give every man his own, no inconvenience is greater than that of making right uncertain.  Nor is any man more an enemy to publick peace, than he who fills weak heads with imaginary claims, and breaks the series of civil subordination, by inciting the lower classes of mankind to encroach upon the higher.