This argument ad verecundiam has as much force as any such have.  But I think it fares but very indifferently with those who make use of it; for they would get but little to be proved abettors of tyranny at the expense of putting me to an inconvenient acknowledgment.  For if I were to confess that there are circumstances in which it would be better to establish such a religion....

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With regard to the Pope’s interest.  This foreign chief of their religion cannot be more formidable to us than to other Protestant countries.  To conquer that country for himself is a wild chimera; to encourage revolt in favor of foreign princes is an exploded idea in the politics of that court.  Perhaps it would be full as dangerous to have the people under the conduct of factious pastors of their own as under a foreign ecclesiastical court.

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In the second year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth were enacted several limitations in the acquisition or the retaining of property, which had, so far as regarded any general principles, hitherto remained untouched under all changes.

These bills met no opposition either in the Irish Parliament or in the English Council, except from private agents, who were little attended to; and they passed into laws with the highest and most general applauses, as all such things are in the beginning, not as a system of persecution, but as masterpieces of the most subtle and refined politics.  And to say the truth, these laws, at first view, have rather an appearance of a plan of vexatious litigation and crooked law-chicanery than of a direct and sanguinary attack upon the rights of private conscience:  because they did not affect life, at least with regard to the laity; and making the Catholic opinions rather the subject of civil regulations than of criminal prosecutions, to those who are not lawyers and read these laws they only appear to be a species of jargon.  For the execution of criminal law has always a certain appearance of violence.  Being exercised directly on the persons of the supposed offenders, and commonly executed in the face of the public, such executions are apt to excite sentiments of pity for the sufferers, and indignation against those who are employed in such cruelties,—­being seen as single acts of cruelty, rather than as ill general principles of government.  But the operation of the laws in question being such as common feeling brings home to every man’s bosom, they operate in a sort of comparative silence and obscurity; and though their cruelty is exceedingly great, it is never seen in a single exertion, and always escapes commiseration, being scarce known, except to those who view them in a general, which is always a cold and phlegmatic light.  The first of these laws being made with so general a satisfaction, as the chief governors found that such things were extremely acceptable to the leading people in that