can be little danger from a strong attachment to particular tenets in faith.  This I am perfectly sure is your case; but I am not equally sure that either zeal for the tenets of faith, or the smallest degree of charity or justice, have much influenced the gentlemen who, under pretexts of zeal, have resisted the enfranchisement of their country.  My dear son, who was a person of discernment, as well as clear and acute in his expressions, said, in a letter of his which I have seen, “that, in order to grace their cause, and to draw some respect to their persons, they pretend to be bigots.”  But here, I take it, we have not much to do with the theological tenets on the one side of the question or the other.  The point itself is practically decided.  That religion is owned by the state.  Except in a settled maintenance, it is protected.  A great deal of the rubbish, which, as a nuisance, long obstructed the way, is removed.  One impediment remained longer, as a matter to justify the proscription of the body of our country; after the rest had been abandoned as untenable ground.  But the business of the Pope (that mixed person of polities and religion) has long ceased to be a bugbear:  for some time past he has ceased to be even a colorable pretext.  This was well known, when the Catholics of these kingdoms, for our amusement, were obliged on oath to disclaim him in his political capacity,—­which implied an allowance for them to recognize him in some sort of ecclesiastical superiority.  It was a compromise of the old dispute.

For my part, I confess I wish that we had been less eager in this point.  I don’t think, indeed, that much mischief will happen from it, if things are otherwise properly managed.  Too nice an inquisition ought not to be made into opinions that are dying away of themselves.  Had we lived an hundred and fifty years ago, I should have been as earnest and anxious as anybody for this sort of abjuration; but, living at the time in which I live, and obliged to speculate forward instead of backward, I must fairly say, I could well endure the existence of every sort of collateral aid which opinion might, in the now state of things, afford to authority.  I must see much more danger than in my life I have seen, or than others will venture seriously to affirm that they see, in the Pope aforesaid, (though a foreign power, and with his long tail of et ceteras,) before I should be active in weakening any hold which government might think it prudent to resort to, in the management of that large part of the king’s subjects.  I do not choose to direct all my precautions to the part where the danger does not press, and to leave myself open and unguarded where I am not only really, but visibly attacked.