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